<![CDATA[Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today?]]>Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today?

]]>https://citiverse.it/topic/a1415b2b-1a33-4cfe-b908-a8e9edd91585/of-all-the-activitypub-servers-that-have-ever-been-publicly-available-how-many-do-you-think-are-still-up-todayRSS for NodeWed, 07 Oct 2026 23:23:22 GMTThu, 01 Oct 2026 21:45:06 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:58:54 GMT]]>@kim I think I can do that!

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117377331024729740https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117377331024729740Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:58:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:27:48 GMT]]>@minoru @ricci @liaizon wow, that is remarkably close to my numbers!

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117377208706257093https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117377208706257093Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:27:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:44:52 GMT]]>@evan i would love a breakdown on the one user servers if you did a followup to this. are these actual servers in actual use, or developer test servers?

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://post.lurk.org/ap/users/116521380255845630/statuses/117376568030888154https://citiverse.it/post/https://post.lurk.org/ap/users/116521380255845630/statuses/117376568030888154Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:44:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:31:16 GMT]]>@ricci So, my crawler has been running for 5 years, and it also pulls data from other sources like the-federation.info, fediverse.observer, fedidb.com etc. Its database has 44142 alive nodes and 777384 dead ones, so the answer is 5.4%. If .gab.best and .cheeseland.xyz are excluded, then only 98621 nodes are dead and the answer is 30.9%.

Someone in the thread suggested that nodes might be pruning their peers lists from dead nodes. Judging by the negligible difference between Evan's number and my number, no pruning is done.

BTW, my crawler currently tracks 22 newly discovered nodes, i.e. ones that were seen in someone's peers list but whose NodeInfo hasn't been checked yet. I'm happy the Fediverse keeps growing _^

@liaizon @evan

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://functional.cafe/users/minoru/statuses/117376042699119111https://citiverse.it/post/https://functional.cafe/users/minoru/statuses/117376042699119111Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:31:16 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 06:47:02 GMT]]>@evan Thank you again! 🙂

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116057731730643199/statuses/117375632854025783https://citiverse.it/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116057731730643199/statuses/117375632854025783Sat, 03 Oct 2026 06:47:02 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 03:32:30 GMT]]>I think there might be ways to find the dark unconnected Fediverse servers using something like Common Crawl.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117374867895984210https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117374867895984210Sat, 03 Oct 2026 03:32:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:40:11 GMT]]>@evan my guess would be that, and/or a matter of who is affected if it goes down - is anyone affected who isn't responsible for running it in the first place

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117374426240429307https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117374426240429307Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:40:11 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:53:36 GMT]]>@ricci i asked a few times and no one seemed to want to say why asking about multi-user servers is more important than asking about all servers. I think, but don't know, that they want to have some answers about the viability of the volunteer-run community server model? I'm not sure.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117374007115542439https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117374007115542439Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:53:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:38:31 GMT]]>@evan OMG I have this problem SO OFTEN trying to get measurement papers published in academic venues, we answer some interesting question and the reviews are basically "but why didn't you answer this OTHER question", and I just want to respond to say *this is an interesting question and I have answered it, if you want to answer this other question, how about you answer it*

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117373947818627229https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117373947818627229Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:38:31 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:33:48 GMT]]>@liaizon @evan well... what I'm doing is using a list of servers that are currently up, and just getting nodeinfo for them, so I do have a list of *some* historical servers that are gone now, but I doubt it's anywhere near as good as Evan's data.

Someone who might have good data is @minoru who has been crawling the lists of federated servers for several years now to make https://nodes.fediverse.party/ (the list I use), and would have probably have a bunch of no-longer-reachable nodes in his database, including ones that were only known by nodes that are themselves no longer up, etc.

Fediverse nodes list

favicon

(nodes.fediverse.party)
]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117373929294689211https://citiverse.it/post/https://discuss.systems/users/ricci/statuses/117373929294689211Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:33:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:16:52 GMT]]>More data about servers:

- 27K live servers.
- 47% have one user.
- 55% of all users are on the top 20 servers.
- 88% of all users are on the top 100 servers.
- 99% of all users are on the top 1000 servers.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373862697857190https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373862697857190Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:16:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:13:17 GMT]]>@TerryHancock 55k dead servers seems like a pretty long tail to me.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373848606744367https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373848606744367Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:13:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:11:15 GMT]]>@evan

That's interesting. I figured there'd be a LONG tail of servers that someone spun up, ran for a few days, and then shut down.

But maybe there are, but live servers wouldn't remember them?

It seems like it would be a good design for them to eventually forget inactive accounts?

I know that some accounts are listed by my server as "inactive", simply because no one on my server follows them anymore (but following back to the origin server, they are still there and active).

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://realsocial.life/users/TerryHancock/statuses/117373840629134814https://citiverse.it/post/https://realsocial.life/users/TerryHancock/statuses/117373840629134814Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:11:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:02:06 GMT]]>@evan the data that @ricci pulls from for arewedecentralized is a bit more complete

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://social.wake.st/users/liaizon/statuses/117373804667963687https://citiverse.it/post/https://social.wake.st/users/liaizon/statuses/117373804667963687Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:02:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:44:52 GMT]]>@evan that was my guess to. Despite having zero clue about anything xD haha

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://mas.to/users/nemo/statuses/117373736872944557https://citiverse.it/post/https://mas.to/users/nemo/statuses/117373736872944557Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:44:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:18:15 GMT]]>@fuzzy @anca

https://cosocial.ca/@evan/117373527493484237

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373632230092492https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373632230092492Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:18:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:17:58 GMT]]>@toddsundsted I have some ideas but there are some unknown unknowns. I feel like 35-40% is a defensible number.

https://cosocial.ca/@evan/117373527493484237

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373631083326467https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373631083326467Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:17:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:03:34 GMT]]> do you know what the actual numbers are?

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://epiktistes.com/objects/BuaRRHI8U2Uhttps://citiverse.it/post/https://epiktistes.com/objects/BuaRRHI8U2UFri, 02 Oct 2026 22:03:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:56:57 GMT]]>My guess is that @dansup might have some better data than I do.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373548482827300https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373548482827300Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:56:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:56:30 GMT]]>Regardless, I'm pretty confident in using the 32-40% number. So, that's in the 26-50% quartile, and that would be my answer.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373546702804405https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373546702804405Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:56:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:55:40 GMT]]>Now, there's some dark matter out there: servers that never connected to our large connected component on the Fediverse. We can't know if they're up or down or what. They're unreachable.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373543396751609https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373543396751609Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:55:40 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:54:58 GMT]]>@evan thank you, can you share the answer?

@anca

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://beige.party/users/fuzzy/statuses/117373540643898511https://citiverse.it/post/https://beige.party/users/fuzzy/statuses/117373540643898511Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:54:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:54:36 GMT]]>So, by my estimate, of these servers, about 32-40% of Fediverse servers seen by other live servers are alive today. The rest return errors, don't resolve, have bad SSL certs, and so on.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373539196453262https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373539196453262Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:54:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Of all the ActivityPub servers that have ever been publicly available, how many do you think are still up today? on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:53:23 GMT]]>Not all ActivityPub servers support Nodeinfo. Of that same data set, about 8% give a successful 404 or 410 response for Nodeinfo. Some percentage of those are going to be non-nodeinfo Fediverse servers, and with a bit more work I could probably figure out which are which.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373534452342986https://citiverse.it/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/evan/statuses/117373534452342986Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:53:23 GMT