It needs a lot more people and lines connecting to the centralize services, like 6+. You have 14 dudes in the fediverse, you should have a similar number of dudes in the traditional centralized social media things. You need to make it clear that every connection between two people goes through that central server. With only 3 or 4 it looks like it’s some kind of small community there, like you’re just saying “communities exist on Facebook” rather than “on Facebook everybody connects to one central Facebook service”. It would also be good to draw a black line around the edge of the bubble to indicate it’s a walled garden rather than an open system.

For the Fediverse example, it would be good to have a slightly darker shaded bubble with people around their local fediverse instance. That would indicate that there are local communities, but that they can still communicate with all the other communities. And, maybe show that people can be part of different communities, show one person connected both to a mastodon instance and a Lemmy instance.

Edit: I just thought of something else to make it clearer. On the centralized networks you could also make a darker group of people who are a community on say Facebook, but show that that community has to connect to each-other through the central server.

I believe this is what they call “preaching to the choir”.

No, I don’t know how to script to test it, sorry. But, if you do test it let me know what you find.

Part of the problem is that people who hit some massive share ratio are doing it at the expense of people who are simply trying to hit 1.0.

My guess is that most of the people with really high ratios aren’t even aware of how much they’re sharing. They just set the things to seed and then forget them. Some people do treat it like a competition, but for many it isn’t. Most are probably just trying to be nice and make sure that something stays available.

What’s really needed is some seeding priority thing so that someone who is trying to prove they’re not a leech is given top priority to seed things, and someone who has already established their credentials is put at the back of the queue.

I may be wrong, but I think you can even game the system a bit. I think the way the torrent protocol works, it prefers to trade packets between people who don’t have a complete download before it requests missing bits from seeders. So, if you restrict your download bandwidth so you avoid becoming a seeder for as long as possible, you’ll upload more stuff. If I’m right, then the ultimate way to do things would be to grab as much of the content as quickly as possible, but slow way down when you’re at 99% complete. That way you have the chunks that everyone else wants but you don’t get counted as a seeder.

I haven’t bothered looking into the protocol to verify this, but it always seems that I upload less when something’s complete vs. when it’s in progress. But, that could just be an illusion.

You’re basically never going to hit a positive ratio if you do things that way. Other people are using RSS feeds to know when something becomes available, then grabbing it on a seedbox. They get the entire thing instantly, then they start seeding to everyone else.

It is possible (but slow) to get a positive ratio if you don’t have a seedbox, as long as you grab new things instantly. But, while it will take maybe 20 minutes to download, it will often take days of continuously seeding to hit 1.0.

If your goal is to hit a positive ratio, either get a seedbox or grab things immediately via a feed. If you’re grabbing using a feed, you could theoretically grab popular shows even if you’re not interested in them. But, it’s a bit of a waste of bandwidth to grab something and seed it if you never intend to look at it. Your best bet, if you’re trying not to be wasteful, is figure out a show you actually want to watch that’s still releasing new episodes. Grab new episodes immediately and seed them.

Even if it’s a show where you’re still on season 1 and currently season 4 is airing, as long as you’ll eventually get to season 4, you’re not wasting bandwidth that way.

If you don’t have a seedbox you’re basically “competing” against people who do. So, even if you’re willing to seed to a ratio of 2.0 and keep things around for months or years, the requests that go to seedboxes get fulfilled at an insane bandwidth and nobody needs the content you’re serving up using your 2400 baud modem.

There’s a private sports tracker I’ve heard of that rewards long-term seeding. What’s cool about that is that most sports events are only relevant for a few days and then people move on, this is especially true for big fans of certain teams who want the latest event. But, if you reward people for seeding, they’ll just keep some random game or event around for months. That means that if something suddenly becomes relevant months later, you can probably still find it.

The world got essentially all classical music, the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, etc. without the need for copyright. Shakespeare’s work wasn’t protected by copyrights either. So, it’s not like amazing works of art require copyright. They’ll happen regardless. It’s more about how artists are incentivized to create and who profits.