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Populate usage section in either nodeinfo or mastodon instance API (or both)

Open markrprior opened this issue 2 years ago • 4 comments

At the moment it is easy to believe that most wildebeest instances are dead because they don't report activity or even basic user numbers (even if there is only one). For example from wildebeest.social:

$VAR1 = { 'version' => '2.1', 'metadata' => {}, 'protocols' => [ 'activitypub' ], 'openRegistrations' => bless( do{(my $o = 0)}, 'JSON::PP::Boolean' ), 'software' => { 'name' => 'wildebeest', 'repository' => 'https://github.com/cloudflare/wildebeest', 'version' => '0.0.1' }, 'usage' => { 'users' => {} }, 'services' => { 'inbound' => [], 'outbound' => [] } };

and

$VAR1 = { 'description' => 'Wildebeest Social', 'title' => 'Wildebeest Social', 'version' => '4.0.2 (compatible; Wildebeest 0.0.1)', 'uri' => 'wildebeest.social', 'email' => '[email protected]', 'thumbnail' => 'https://imagedelivery.net/NkfPDviynOyTAOI79ar_GQ/b24caf12-5230-48c4-0bf7-2f40063bd400/thumbnail', 'short_description' => 'Wildebeest Social', 'rules' => [], 'registrations' => bless( do{(my $o = 0)}, 'JSON::PP::Boolean' ) };

   Info on the usage part of the Mastodon instance API [https://docs.joinmastodon.org/entities/Instance/#usage](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/entities/Instance/#usage)

markrprior avatar Feb 22 '23 04:02 markrprior

We are hesitant to expose instance usage as it might reveal informations by accident.

xtuc avatar Mar 01 '23 15:03 xtuc

@xtuc seems hard to identify what additional information it might reveal by accident given that the data is just numeric values that every other instance type I have seen reports.

markrprior avatar Mar 02 '23 04:03 markrprior

Number of employees for an company instance for example.

xtuc avatar Mar 03 '23 17:03 xtuc

@xtuc that might be a reason to have a knob to turn it off but that doesn't seem like a reasonable default action. I would imagine that the sort of company that would want to have their own Internet reachable instance would already publish workforce numbers and are unlikely to have all of their employees registered on it or using it (and thus appear to be active).

markrprior avatar Mar 06 '23 07:03 markrprior