Follow the “Mastodon”: Structure and Evolution of a Decentralized Online Social Network

Abstract

In this paper we present a dataset containing both the network of the "follow" relationships and its growth in terms of new connections and users, all which we obtained by mining the decentralized online social network named Mastodon. The dataset is combined with usage statistics and meta-data (geographical location and allowed topics) about the servers comprising the platform's architecture. These server are called instances. The paper also analyzes the overall structure of the Mastodon social network, focusing on its diversity w.r.t. other commercial microblogging platforms such as Twitter. Finally, we investigate how the instance-like paradigm influences the connections among the users. The newest and fastest-growing microblogging platform, Mastodon is set to become a valid alternative to established platforms like Twitter. The interest in Mastodon is mainly motivated as follows: a) the platform adopts an advertisement and recommendation-free business model; b) the decentralized architecture makes it possible to shift the control over user contents and data from the platform to the users; c) it adopts a community-like paradigm from both user and architecture viewpoints. In fact, Mastodon is composed of interconnected communities, placed on different servers; in addition, each single instance, with specific topics and languages, is independently owned and moderated. The released dataset paves the way to a number of research activities, which range from classic social network analysis to the modeling of social network dynamics and platform adoption in the early stage of the service. This data would also enable community detection validation since each instance hinges on specific topics and, lastly, the study of the interplay between the physical architecture of the platform and the social network it supports.

Mastodon Content Warnings: Inappropriate Contents in a Microblogging Platform

“…Moreover, the current dataset can be easily integrated with its complementary counterpart, i.e. the Mastodon social network, described in (Zignani, Gaito, and Rossi 2018) and released at https://dataverse.mpi-sws.org/ dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.5072/FK2/AMYZGS, to investigate how phenomena as homophily or social pressure act on the perception of the appropriateness of the published contents.…”

Network Analysis of the Information Consumption-Production Dichotomy in Mastodon User Behaviors

“…For instance, Guidi et al (2018) extensively focused on data management and availability, information diffusion, and privacy on DOSNs, highlighting the main limitations and issues that characterize the DOSNs. Mastodon, the decentralized alternative to Twitter, is recognized as the most relevant platform in the Fediverse in terms of notoriety and user base, and is indeed used as a proxy for the study of DOSNs (Cerisara et al 2018), (Trienes et al 2018), (Zignani et al 2018(Zignani et al , 2019, (Raman et al 2019), (Zulli et al 2020), (La Cava et al 2021. Notably, Zignani et al (2018) provided the first networkanalysis work on Mastodon.…”

“…Mastodon, the decentralized alternative to Twitter, is recognized as the most relevant platform in the Fediverse in terms of notoriety and user base, and is indeed used as a proxy for the study of DOSNs (Cerisara et al 2018), (Trienes et al 2018), (Zignani et al 2018(Zignani et al , 2019, (Raman et al 2019), (Zulli et al 2020), (La Cava et al 2021. Notably, Zignani et al (2018) provided the first networkanalysis work on Mastodon. La Cava et al (2021) analyzed the network of Mastodon instances, providing insights into macroscopic and mesoscopic structural traits and into the platforms evolution over the years.…”

Understanding the growth of the Fediverse through the lens of Mastodon

“…Two surveys on these topics as well as on issues related to DOSN infrastructures, data management, privacy and information diffusion, can be found in Guidi et al (2018), Datta et al (2010). Focusing on more recently developed and open-source DOSNs, to the best of our knowledge, Mastodon is the only platform in the Fediverse that has received noticeable attention from the research community (Cerisara et al 2018;Trienes et al 2018;Zignani et al 2018;Raman et al 2019;Zignani et al 2019;Zulli et al 2020). Zulli et al (2020) have recently performed a qualitative analysis based on an interview to a sample of instance moderators.…”

“…From a network science perspective, the studies by Zignani et al (2018Zignani et al ( , 2019 are particularly relevant, as they were the first to analyze a portion of the Mastodon usernetwork, focusing on degree distribution, triadic closure, and assortativity aspects, and comparing such characteristics to those in Twitter (Zignani et al 2018). From the analysis of the in-degree and out-degree distributions, Mastodon is found to show a more balanced behavior between followers and followees than what observed in Twitter.…”