Decentralization Scoring System (v1.3)
from AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee to fediverse@lemmy.world on 22 Apr 12:26
https://lemm.ee/post/62072407

This scoring system evaluates how decentralized and self-hostable a platform is, based on four core metrics.

📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)

Metric Weight Description
Top Provider User Share 30 Measures how many users are on the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%.
Top Provider Content Share 30 Measures how much content is hosted by the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%.
Ease of Self-Hosting: Server 20 Technical ease of running your own backend. Full points for simple setup with good docs.
Ease of Self-Hosting: User Interface 20 Availability and usability of clients. Full points for accessible, FOSS, multi-platform clients.

📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)

Platform Score Visualization
📧 Email 95 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🐹 Lemmy 79 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🐘 Mastodon 74 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟣 PeerTube 94 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🖼 Pixelfed 42 🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
🔵 Bluesky 14 🟥🟥🟥
🟥 Reddit 3 🟥

📧 Email

Total: 95/100


🐹 Lemmy

Total: 79/100


🐘 Mastodon

Total: 74/100


🟣 PeerTube

Total: 94/100


🖼 Pixelfed

Total: 42/100


🔵 Bluesky

Total: 14/100


🟠 Reddit

Total: 3/100


How Scores are Calculated

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work

This measures how many users are on the largest provider (or instance).

📊 Formula:

Score = 30 × (1 - (TopProviderShare - 20) / 60)
…but only if TopProviderShare is between 20% and 80%.
If below 20%, full 30. If above 80%, zero.

📌 Example:

If one provider has 40% of all users:
Score = 30 × (1 - (40 - 20) / 60) = 30 × (1 - 0.43) = 17.1 points

🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work

These scores measure how easy it is for individuals or communities to run their own servers or use clients.

This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server) or User Interface (e.g., web-interface or mobile-app)


📚 Sources

Footnotes

This is a work in progress and may contain mistakes. If you have ideas or suggestions for improvement, feel free to let me know.

Source: github.com/…/decentralization_score_2025.04.md

#fediverse

threaded - newest

supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz on 22 Apr 13:26 next collapse

This is amazing!

dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de on 22 Apr 13:31 next collapse

Having set up a couple of mail servers myself, I wouldn’t call it easy. Most solutions boil down to a tangled web of dovecot, postfix, ldap and amavis. There are preconfigured docker containers which make setup easier than a couple of years ago but if your use case is even just slightly different than the maintainers’, you’ll have to dive deep into a few dozen different config files. And of course, you’ll have to find out how to configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC to have even a remote chance of your mails getting through to the big providers. I’d probably give email somewhere in the range of 8-12 points in that category.

Other than that, great summary!

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 09:34 next collapse

The scoring system is basically there to put a number on “How free are users and hosts of a platform to move around?” Or “How much power is in the hands of the people and not a few companies?”

For me Email scores very high in this regard.

As far as I know most Lemmy instances leverages paid-for or freemium services to have their instances work easily/properly

dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de on 23 Apr 09:55 collapse

Then please update your category name to reflect that. Right now it says “Self-Hosting” which to the majority of readers means hosting it yourself, whatever the reason may be: privacy, configurability or just being safe from future enshittification.

As far as I know most Lemmy instances leverages paid-for or freemium services to have their instances work easily/properly

Yes but you can’t compare a whole lemmy instance to an account on an email server that you share with others. The fair comparison would be hosting a lemmy instance to hosting your own email server and creating an account on Proton Mail to creating an account (or a community) on lemmy.world.

This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server)

Edit: also the description text “This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server)”. Relying on Proton Mail or similar free services is not running your own backend.

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 12:29 collapse

You’re right, thanks for the input. I’ll make adjustments to take care of these flaws in the scoring system.

Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 02:48 collapse

Agreed, email hosting is a pain. Also don’t get me started on just how unfriendly large email providers are to self-hosted email. Typically always false flagging it as spam and sometimes bouncing or dropping it instead of even sending to spam folder. People downplay this problem but it’s a serious problem when it comes to self-hosted or non-corporate email services.

the_abecedarian@piefed.social on 22 Apr 14:58 next collapse

Very cool! For the user scores, are you using monthly active users, total registered users, or something else?

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 22 Apr 15:27 collapse

I used MAU where possible

Ulrich@feddit.org on 22 Apr 15:51 next collapse

PeerTube Top Provider User Share: wirtube.de ≈ 14% → Score: 30/30

This is great. PeerTube has a flagship instance but it’s not open registration. My only complaint is that I wish they were blacklist instead of whitelist by default.

Top Provider User Share: Google ≈ 17% → Score: 30/30

I sure as shit wouldn’t have guess Gmail was only 17%. Do you have a source for this?

Bluesky Top Provider User Share: bsky.social ≈ 99% → Score: 0/30

Where’s the other 1%?

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 22 Apr 16:15 next collapse

Jip check the Email under the Sources section.

The best source I could find for Bluesky is also linked under sources, there aren’t any real numbers but they explain that it’s probably less than 1%

yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 22 Apr 16:30 collapse

Is it counting Wafrn?

lung@lemmy.world on 22 Apr 17:15 next collapse

Well…

If you follow the link to fedidb, refer to the “mau” monthly active users. Do some brief math and realize that lemmy.world accounts for about 50% of all active users

Email market share is harder, but many estimate that Gmail accounts for over 40%. Many many orgs use Google apps to make custom branded gmails with their own domains too

This is the typical “business power law” that states that the top player should control about 50%, the second player about 25%, etc. This is just kinda how the world works

pcouy@lemmy.pierre-couy.fr on 22 Apr 18:31 next collapse

There are a few things I don’t like about this scoring system :

  • Why is there a “Top Provider Content Share” metric if its gonna score the same as the “Top Provider User Share” every time ?
  • Why is the Top Provider Content Share not higher than the user share ? For instance, emails usually have at least one sender and one recipient, making it twice as likely that at least one of them is using gmail. If an email has 10 recipients across 10 different providers, each provider has a copy of the data
  • Why is ease of hosting a mail server rated so well ? How is “leveraging email hosting services” decentralized in any way ?
  • Why are we using a random repo created a few hours ago by a random github user as a reference ?
dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de on 23 Apr 07:33 next collapse

Why are we using a random repo created a few hours ago by a random github user as a reference ?

They aren’t. That’s the repo that has the latest version of the survey. The actual references are one section up.

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 08:59 collapse

Why is there a “Top Provider Content Share” metric if its gonna score the same as the “Top Provider User Share” every time ?

As said in the footer, this is a work in progress, I’m posting it to get input and still refining sources

Why is the Top Provider Content Share not higher than the user share ? For instance, emails usually have at least one sender and one recipient, making it twice as likely that at least one of them is using gmail. If an email has 10 recipients across 10 different providers, each provider has a copy of the data

I’d love to get better data on this, I’ve looked but not yet found better data than what I included in the source

Why is ease of hosting a mail server rated so well ? How is “leveraging email hosting services” decentralized in any way ?

Here I’m a bit in two minds, sure it’s difficult to SELF host email, but in practice it isn’t because there are hundreds (Thousands?) of hosting options to choose from where you can choose your own domain etc. for the low price of basically-free

Why are we using a random repo created a few hours ago by a random github user as a reference ?

It’s my repo, it’s to keep track of the versions and so that others can copy, edit and share it if they like.

dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de on 23 Apr 09:26 collapse

Here I’m a bit in two minds, sure it’s difficult to SELF host email, but in practice it isn’t because there are hundreds (Thousands?) of hosting options to choose from where you can choose your own domain etc. for the low price of basically-free

I would prefer to limit this to actually hosting it on a machine you control. We don’t consider redirecting a custom domain to a subreddit “self-hosting”, do we? Yes, there are many email providers out there but that’s more like existing lemmy or mastodon instances and not like hosting your own where you have full control over your data.

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 09:36 collapse

I would argue that is two different issues

“Are you free to easily move around and control your data” = High decentralization score

“do you have full control over your data?” = A different question

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 22 Apr 19:11 next collapse

The fact that email is at the top here is clear evidence this is not a good metric dude. Email is not decentralized these days

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 09:03 collapse

Here I’m a bit in two minds, sure it’s difficult to SELF host email, but in practice it isn’t because there are hundreds (Thousands?) of hosting options to choose from where you can choose your own domain etc. for the low price of basically-free

The scoreing system is basically there to put a number on “How free are users and hosts of a platform to move around?”

Or “How much power is in the hands of the people and not a few companies?”

For me Email scores very high in this regard.

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 23 Apr 16:33 collapse

How much power is in the hands of the people and not a few companies?

That’s exactly what I’m talking about though. Google, microsoft, and kinda yahoo basically control the entire market. A few providers like fastmail fight over fractions of percent. Email today feel much worse than lemmy

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 23 Apr 22:05 collapse

Do you have any source for that?

The sources I’ve found doesn’t show they have that big a market share

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 23 Apr 23:34 collapse

Well, my experience is the with the US market, it may be worse here idk, but here you go statista.com/…/share-of-us-respondents-use-email-…

Also I forgot apple

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 24 Apr 06:20 collapse

That data comes from a survey of only 1250 people.

That’s a really small sample size considering there is likely 10 billion+ active email addresses.

I’m currently using 5 email address weekly (2 for work and 3 for personal use)

Two of those are gmail (trying to move away)

But you have a really good point, I’ll look for data on this

Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 02:46 collapse

This is amazing, it’s nice to have a scoring system to be able to rate how decentralized and also how active the different services are.

AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee on 26 Apr 09:10 collapse

Thank you, I’ll keep working to make it better