this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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@fediverse Fediverse user growth jumped to ~50'000'000 users. What happened ? (files.mastodon.social)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

@fediverse Fediverse user growth jumped to ~50'000'000 users. What happened ?
The FediDB *Fediverse User Growth* graph shows a significant jump in user count in February. Software distribution is also 81% *other*, and the biggest server is fediverse.hanbitgaram.com with 39 million users ! What happened ?
https://fedidb.org/

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[–] [email protected] 180 points 8 months ago (4 children)

There's also been huge waves of spam account attacks on Mastodon recently.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago

I hope that's not the entire answer but it has to add some numbers to the jump.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yep, today I have seen a dozen or more instances of some account from some obscure server making their only post with just a picture of a spam can.

Those are only the ones that go through, I am sure there is probably a lot more than the ones I saw.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

And if you go to the website that the picture is from, the page is a string of text that isn't in a spoken language or a common programming language. So the image is to make you think that it just a silly picture, when it is actually probably something pretty nefarious.

Yesterday, they seemed to always tag a warframe community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

hehe, spam can

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it's bleeding over to lemmy too when you browse by new.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Yup its on lemmy aswell.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 8 months ago (2 children)

While I’m not entirely sure wat it actually means, the message you get on that site right now might be the reason (some kind of experiment gone wrong artificially inflating the numbers):

I was creating an implementation for the activity pub instance service transfer, but it seems to have spread far. We are very sorry to those who have experienced inconvenience.

All temporarily used data has been removed and all data has been removed. The figures in the data will soon converge to zero.

I trawled unintentionally.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago

Nice.

I thought it was someone making a bunch of bot accounts for the future...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can someone do a ELI5 on this?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago

Someone was testing a program they made that links Lemmy / Mastadon (ActivityPub) to other services, think threads or Reddit.

When they ran the program it created all the dummy accounts and published it to the Fediverse making it look like a lot of new users joined.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 8 months ago (1 children)

https://fediverse.hanbitgaram.com/

410 Gone!
I was creating an implementation for the activity pub instance service transfer, but it seems to have spread far.
We are very sorry to those who have experienced inconvenience.

All temporarily used data has been removed and all data has been removed.
The figures in the data will soon converge to zero.


I trawled unintentionally.
[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ooof. That makes me feel better about that time I accidentally brought 'Test Post 1' into production by commenting on it.

[–] pythonoob 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

One time I accidentally removed access to a share drive for everyone in my entire company. It took a day to get it fixed. That was probably the worst day of my life lol

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

On resume: "dramatically increased corporate data security, drawing notice from management company-wide."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Diligented a "surprise backup restoration testing"

[–] pythonoob 3 points 8 months ago

Amazing lol

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm shocked Lemmy has so many users. Feels like only a few thousand.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There might be lots of lurkers, like myself

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Me too thanks

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

me three

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Me four

[–] mckean 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Me five

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

AND MY AXE!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Rock and Stone!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Why must you turn this instance into a house of lies!?!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago

This shows nothing, probably some kind of glitch.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • It may be counting Threads / Bsky participants
  • More likely fediverse broke through to the awareness of bit fleet maintainers....
[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, it's one smartass that spun up his own system and that reports 39m users.

A different kind of spam, looks like.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Could you please write the same comment, but without the namecalling for what seems to be an honest mistake?

Good Lord, for all the talk about the Fediverse being a nicer place than corporate-controlled social media, comments like yours really show how that is very far from the rule.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

AFAIK, no bridges to Bluesky are actually active yet, and Bridgy Fed is considering ways of going opt-in.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Forget the user count. It's probably mostly spammers. MAU is the important one.

As more fediverse platforms start to be fully interoperable with each other, it should feel more active here. Plus the upcoming possible downfalls of reddit and twitter should cause another semi-dramatic growth. As soon as they start doing some sketchy shit that even the normie users find bad, we should see an increase in both user count and MAU in the fediverse. Mastodon will probably be the biggest one for ever or maybe for just a few years as Reddit users come to Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] spam..?