Central hub

I think this is not the correct way to proceed. While I agree there is a need to show statistics to prospective and current users, this is not the way to do it. We must continue to decentralise our network. Not centralise it. Step in the wrong dir.

since this vote is NOT about whether it is central or distributed type of information gathering I do agree that there is a genral need for gathering this information with opt-in basis to show that diaspora* is alive and growing.

I don't think statistics are at all important. Pod-local stats are important for the pod admin; since there is no "network admin" in a decentralised network I don't see the need for stats at that level. Email didn't need usage stats either.

opt-in statistics (default being not participating) - seems like a good enough compromise between privacy and interest for information about the diaspora network.

I like that publishing your pod in a list is an action you need to take rather than something you need to turn off.

+1 on anonymous statistics about users and maybe known pods, but those shouldn't be linked to the submitter in any way.

I think it is important to push forward to a path where everyone has its own pod (1 seed/pod), where nobody should care about others' pod TOS or stats. Also I don't believe that by saying "we have a million users" will bring more awarenes..

As I noted in my comments above, this would not be useful without 100% participation, and information collected is likely to gradually expand over time.

A federated, decentralized network should avoid dependencies on centralized services.

Gathering statistics about the diaspora network does not have to be done by the project itself. It can be done by a third party. I think diaspora should focus on building the core of distributed/de-centralized social network.

IMO, a central hub run by the project in its current volunteer non-profit infrastructure could actually be a good thing, especially if it's only opt-in, doesn't show personal analytics of users, and respects privacy.