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The Mastodon network - currently 4.4 million active accounts on +4000 servers - is regarded as the most successful alternative online social network yet:

https://joinmastodon.org

Unlike Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok - this service is NOT based on manipulative strategies like targeted advertising and algorithmic outrage maximisation - which are posing imminent threats to democracies worldwide - and for this reason, the network keeps evolving rapidly.

→ However, its decentralized nature creates exciting challenges for monitoring "network health".

Your task is to:

1. Conduct research on the current state-of-the-art in monitoring of federated network statistics (e.g. nr. of posts per instance over time, blocking events, outages...)
2. Apply your insights and ingenuity to help improving the situation, e.g.
   
   1. Aggregation of publicly available statistical data (via mastodon server APIs)
   2. Setup a public monitoring service directory - similar to https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/instance-monitoring-sites
   3. Propose new ideas on "how to measure network health" of a federated online social network

Further reading: https://fediverse.party/en/mastodon

Further watching: https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-857362-die_rosarote_brille_des_fediversePS: Network health monitoring always needs to be done with ethical considerations in mind.

If you are interested in the future of online social networking systems (democratically legitimised moderation and algorithms + resistance against spam, censorship, denial-of-service...) then this topic may be something for you