Post #3826709

2026-07-15 05:59 UTC

Fediverse Ideology Story time aka "whatcha thinkin about? just admin things" Aus.social is and has been a wonderful place I will maintain long into the future.... and part of that stability included the idea of the fediverse not having MEGA nodes. (if A.S goes down for a bit, other nodes can carry the burden). So many moons ago, when aus.social hit around 15k accounts during one of the massive "twitter exodus" moments, resulting in me closing this instance's registration, and started becoming a squeaky wheel at a bunch of other admins to start sister mastodon instances.... I kept my doors closed (pointed our registration page to redirect to them) until theblower.au and mastodon.au had about 15k accounts each to try and make all of us equal in size and influence and maintain the no mega nodes philosophy. Part of me is wondering if It would have been better for the ecosystem to have just kept the doors open for as many of those 50k ish people who spread across our nodes and just became the only large instance for the sake of health and vibes (maintained by our community and the @AusSocialMods@aus.social People have recently raised the health of those other instances. Are mega nodes good actually? or is that just unrelated? We will never know... but this is an outcome of sticking to the "Decentralization maximalism" ideology which the people who made this whole fediverse concept preached... like the french revolution it's too early to say Let's hope that mastodon supports "real account migration" sooner than later....

Replies (2)

@shlee@aus.social 2026-07-15 06:36

@AusSocialMods@aus.social 2/2 Being an admin/moderator is a "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad job"... and it's been a joy to be an admin of this place. Sadly my communication with some of the admins of the blower has stopped a few years ago but I'm hoping they still keeping the lantern lit. finally, regarding the mega nodes, I think it is/was the correct answer on principle and I'm glad I did it. BUT part of me believes it would be "healthier for the ecosystem" if we had mega nodes while just shaking our heads and feeling bad about it... sometimes you gotta stick to your ideology even when there is an easier option. (metaphor about centrists here) I'm glad to be part of the Australian fediverse with those other instances. We're all in this together. Chance to say thanks to your admin. :annoyingdog:

Open ##3828199
@tubsta@social.bsdlab.au 2026-07-15 06:09

@shlee@aus.social Mega nodes are great from a neighborhood perspective but breaks the federation ideology. It was a good call you made back then. Granted, people want to move and move all their content with them but I just don't know if that is practical? How do you vet/moderate that content being ingested by your instance? Instead of hording my data, I treat the fediverse as ephemeral communications. I don't expect it to stay around and as such, has let me move instances over time without issue. I like life late/post twitter. None of the algorithm, all of the people that I really cared about are here. The conversations meaningful, the content on-time and not lost or delayed.

Open ##3848377