One of the things that irk me is that we don't really have a way of tracking the long-term growth and changes of the #Fediverse .
Yes, there is fedidb.com , but it only seems to track user statistics for the last 30 days. Currently, the "monthly user base" seems to over at slightly over 1.3 million, which seems more than it was last year - but we don't really have a good long-term data set.
How does the user base of the Fediverse grow? What are specific events that cause the Fediverse to grow? And what differentiates accounts that stay from accounts that eventually stop being active?
There are a _lot_ of scientific examinations of commercial social media platforms. One would think that the Fediverse, with its open architecture, would also make such analysis possible, but I am not aware of any.
@juergen_hubert The answer is "we don't know" or, rather, "we can't know". That's mostly by design and because people aggressively oppose attempts to find out.
These statistics and analytics rely on data hoarding, which has generally been frowned upon here, even with good intentions, even with consent, and even when the data is public. Anyone who tries to build such a tool and, god forbid, uses algorithms or AI to help is going to get lynched. So nobody wants to do it anymore.
There used to be great tools like Mastometrics and such. All torn down. I would personally build such a tool, but after getting shitlisted and piled on a few times, I unfortunately no longer have any intention of putting myself in that situation.