Abstract
Open-source, Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs) are emerging as alternatives to the popular yet centralized and profit-driven platforms like Facebook or Twitter. In DOSNs, users can set up their own server, or instance, while they can actually interact with users of other instances. Moreover, by adopting the same communication protocol, DOSNs become part of a massive social network, namely the Fediverse. Mastodon is the most relevant platform in the Fediverse to date, and also the one that has attracted attention from the research community. Existing studies are however limited to an analysis of a relatively outdated sample of Mastodon focusing on few aspects at a user level, while several open questions have not been answered yet, especially at the instance level. In this work, we aim at pushing forward our understanding of the Fediverse by leveraging the primary role of Mastodon therein. Our first contribution is the building of an up-to-date and highly representative dataset of Mastodon. Upon this new data, we have defined a network model over Mastodon instances and exploited it to investigate three major aspects: the structural features of the Mastodon network of instances from a macroscopic as well as a mesoscopic perspective, to unveil the distinguishing traits of the underlying federative mechanism; the backbone of the network, to discover the essential interrelations between the instances; and the growth of Mastodon, to understand how the shape of the instance network has evolved during the last few years, also when broading the scope to account for instances belonging to other platforms. Our extensive analysis of the above aspects has provided a number of findings that reveal distinguishing features of Mastodon and that can be used as a starting point for the discovery of all the DOSN Fediverse.
Highlights
IntroductionWe witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of Online Social Networks (OSNs)
In the last decade, we witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of Online Social Networks (OSNs)
While it can be observed a significant decrease in the average indegree—from around 31 in the original, unpruned network up to 11–15, resp. about 4–5, using marginal likelihood filter (MLF) and disparity, respectively—the degree assortativity remains negative in all cases, with a small decrease in module under MLF, and comparable or increased in module for disparity with significance level 0.05 and 0.01, respectively
Summary
We witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of Online Social Networks (OSNs). The extreme popularity gained by Facebook and the other worldwide available yet centralized OSN platforms (i.e., hosted and controlled by a single company) has soon led their owners to pursue a collateral social-marketing goal, which is mostly implemented. La Cava et al Appl Netw Sci (2021) 6:64 through content personalization mechanisms and advertisement strategies. As it is wellknown, side-effects such as the formation of information bubbles and concerns about the protection of data and user privacy normally characterize most existing centralized OSNs. The above aspects contributed to raise the opportunity for developing new paradigms of OSNs to become “user-centric” rather than “company-centric” platforms. Privacy control, as well as spontaneous and recommendation-free communications among the users, are favored and unbiased as much as possible from the invasiveness of advertisements
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
