Skip to main content

Hello !Friendica Support
I guess I have a couple of million dead or fake accounts in my stats on f.utzer.de.

I see

Currently this node is aware of 45,119 nodes (16,721,938 active users last month, 3,634,365 active users last six months, 58,867,121 registered users in total)


here: /admin/federation

And here the Guru writes the Fediverse only has 13 million accounts?
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116591902390182432

What is the problem? Do we count that many more users in parts of the network that are not visible to the Mastodon world or what do I miss?

Eugen Rochko

2026-05-17 20:54:04


Stört mich nur dass bei Bluesky immer die Zahl der registrierten Konten angegeben wird, und nicht die monatlich aktive Nutzerzahl. Die Differenz bei registrierten Konten ist nicht so stark, das Fediverse hat auch 13M Konten. Nützt aber nicht wirklich jemandem, wenn die nicht aktiv sind.

!Friendica Support
veroandi
veroandi  
•
I would also like to know
Steffen K9 🐰
Steffen K9 🐰  
•

There was a problem with fake user numbers from GoToSocial. They provide the possibility to publicly report random user counts for their servers.

If I remember correctly @Michael 🇺🇦 did something in Friendicas code to mitigate this.

@Michael 🇺🇦
utzer
utzer  
•
@Michael 🇺🇦 @Steffen K9 🐰 will that be included in the next stable?
My server is running:
2026.01
database version 1586/1586
post update version 1550/1550.
@Michael 🇺🇦 @Steffen K9 🐰
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•
#friendica #activitypub #mastadon @utzer
utzer
utzer  
•
@pasjrwoctx👽 yes, but I know we have people here who know the algorithm behind our Friendica stats very well, I also know that some Fediverse Systems supported faked numbers, just as @Steffen K9 🐰 wrote above.
@Steffen K9 🐰 @pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•
@utzer @Steffen K9 🐰 ok Mastadon is the Bread aisle in the market, and most people writing about the fediverse write about mastadon, they only see the bread aisle, friendica sees the entire market, all of the activitypub and yes some numbers can be skewed depending on time of day stats are collected and depending on if reporting instances are sending out false info, but overall the difference in the numbers you see verse the numbers reported again is because the ones being reported are only reporting the bread aisle they can see, where you get to see the whole market activtiypubs numbers, the sad thing is if they step off the bread aisle they would realize they are in a huge market with far more aisles then they have been staring at and reporting on;
@Steffen K9 🐰 @utzer
utzer
utzer  
•
@pasjrwoctx👽 yes I know that and I always thought that the other low number is wrong, but still wonder if ours now is correct.
@pasjrwoctx👽
utzer
utzer  
•
@pasjrwoctx👽 I mean the biggest blessing of the Fediverse was Mastodon coming up at some point, while Mastodon was the biggest curse since the Fediverse was born. Two sides of the same coin. 😁
@pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•
@utzer ours is more correct, and the lower ones aren't wrong they just are not the whole picture;
@utzer
utzer
utzer  
•
@pasjrwoctx👽 that is probably correct, but I would still like to make sure that my number is correct (which is much higher that what you see), but that be because I set up relays on day one on this server because I wanted to ensure my one-user-account-server would receive lots of posts from all over the Fediverse. I think I also enabled server and user discovery.
@pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•

@utzer you can run SELECT network, COUNT(*) AS total_profiles
FROM contact
WHERE uid = 0
AND self = 0
AND network NOT IN ('feed', 'mail', '')
AND url NOT LIKE 'https://your-instance-domain.com%'
GROUP BY network;
from you sql, I got network
Network of the contact
total_profiles
apub
1313909
bsky
41664
dfrn
20073
dspr
478
stat
20
tmbl
2

that will give you a clear picture to what your instance is seeing and interacting in terms of actual users, then you can use that info to extrapolate across the broader fediverse get a cleaner picture of realistic numbers compared to what your admin instance reports,

@utzer
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•
@utzer now if Tumblr ever finishes it's migration to WordPress with activitypub, WordPress will be the largest activitypub platform on the fediverse dwarfing mastodon into obscurit and actual fediverse user numbers will explode;
@utzer
pasjrwoctx👽
pasjrwoctx👽  
•
@utzer
⇧