Comparing User Activity on X and Mastodon
arxiv.org
The "Fediverse", a federation of decentralized social media servers, has emerged after a decade in which centralized platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have dominated the landscape. The structure of a federation should affect user activity, as a user selects a server to access the Fediverse and posts are distributed along the structure. This paper reports on the differences in user activity between Twitter and Mastodon, a prominent example of decentralized social media. The target of the analysis is Japanese posts because both Twitter and Mastodon are actively used especially in Japan. Our findings include a larger number of replies on Twitter, more consistent user engagement on mstdn.jp, and different topic preferences on each server.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/26798208

The “Fediverse”, a federation of decentralized social media servers, has emerged after a decade in which centralized platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have dominated the landscape. The structure of a federation should affect user activity, as a user selects a server to access the Fediverse and posts are distributed along the structure. This paper reports on the differences in user activity between Twitter and Mastodon, a prominent example of decentralized social media. The target of the analysis is Japanese posts because both Twitter and Mastodon are actively used especially in Japan. Our findings include a larger number of replies on Twitter, more consistent user engagement on this http URL, and different topic preferences on each server.

  • Obelix@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    Just FYI: Data is from May till June 2023. Musk took over Twitter end of Oct. / Nov 2022. A lot of stuff has happened since then, so that study can’t tell you much about the current X

  • Kane@femboys.bizEnglish
    1·
    20 hours ago

    Interesting report. Might give Mastodon a try someday, I quit Twitter a little bit before the acquisition.