@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/

  • fr0g@feddit.deEnglish
    179·
    9 months ago

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

    • HandlesEnglish
      24·
      9 months ago

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

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      17·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        9 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.

  • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    89·
    9 months ago

    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.

      • Devorlon@lemmy.zipEnglish
        28·
        9 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.

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    78·
    9 months ago

    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.
    • freamon@endlesstalk.orgEnglish
      311·
      9 months ago

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

  • GuyWithLag@lemmy.world
    211·
    9 months ago
    • It may be counting Threads / Bsky participants
    • More likely fediverse broke through to the awareness of bit fleet maintainers…
    • GuyWithLag@lemmy.world
      276·
      9 months ago

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

      A different kind of spam, looks like.

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        3116·
        9 months ago

        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.

    • Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

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

  • asudox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    9 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.