The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.
| Community Count | Community Subscriber Count | |
|---|---|---|
| beehaw.org | 6 | 133450 |
| hexbear.net | 33 | 663204 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 17052 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 15907 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 1 | 53006 |
| lemmy.ml | 14 | 356460 |
| lemmy.one | 1 | 16257 |
| lemmy.world | 39 | 851950 |
| lemmynsfw.com | 2 | 33586 |
| sh.itjust.works | 1 | 16006 |
| sopuli.xyz | 1 | 14093 |
The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as “suspicious”)
EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:
| Community Count | Community Active Month Count | |
|---|---|---|
| awful.systems | 1 | 2616 |
| feddit.org | 2 | 7363 |
| feddit.uk | 2 | 5289 |
| hexbear.net | 1 | 2952 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 2898 |
| lemm.ee | 3 | 8898 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 11422 |
| lemmy.ca | 3 | 14910 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 3 | 13752 |
| lemmy.ml | 10 | 54949 |
| lemmy.world | 57 | 338384 |
| lemmy.wtf | 1 | 3602 |
| lemmy.zip | 3 | 12020 |
| mander.xyz | 1 | 11469 |
| sh.itjust.works | 5 | 37365 |
| slrpnk.net | 3 | 10897 |
| sopuli.xyz | 2 | 10070 |
| ttrpg.network | 1 | 4107 |
Community Count:
Community Users:
anyone have any guesses as to why lemmy.world is so big? Scale/size advantage? Reliability advantage? Name recognition? What do we think is the culprit here.
And whilst i’m here, anybody want to explain the source of lemmy.ml to me? I only know it as the instance where mad people yell at me from lol.
perhaps a more “ambiguous” federation system would be better. having community instances is nice and all, but having one literally just be lemmy.world seems a little bit antithetical to me.
Lemmy.world has kept open signups open during every large Reddit exodus while many others didn’t. It’s also decently reliable, has decent moderation and is well known. The reason why people didn’t move after is probably because instance migration on Lemmy isn’t possible* so they just stick with what they use.
*Yes I don’t consider exporting/importing followed communities a migration
Open signups is the biggest reason. Pretty much every other instance wanted you to jump through hoops to sign up with them.
I don’t think I needed to for https://programming.dev.
I’m pretty sure they put up some hurdles during the Reddit APIcalypse. I think that’s in part how I ended up on sh.itjust.works.
I heard what lemmy is. I googled Lemmy. I downloaded an app. I pressed sign up. I ended up on Lemmy.world.
I’ll be honest I don’t even really understand what different instances do.
Yeah I actually tried beehaw initially but they never dealt with my application, so after a whole I just went with Lemmy.world.
an instance can be thought of like a reigonal server for a game, but for a community interest instead. dbzer0 is more on the fringes partaking more actively in piracy and AI shit, as well as other shit like anarchy and personal liberty/freedoms at a more broad scale.
Sometimes they’re regionally specific, like the midwest instance, other times they’re global like the .world instance.
you do have instance specific communities, and users obviously, but it’s also open to the broader “fediverse” as well. The only technicality is that i’m tied to dbzer0 since that’s where my acc sits, though i can still poke around outside of it.
About lemmy.world - when running from reddit, it was literally first on the list of advised ones everywhere. Also, biggest, so it had most communities. I am actually pretty much only aware of .world, .dbzer0 and sh.itjust.works. From the normal ones anyway.
lemmy.ml is basically an instance made by creators of lemmy from what I know.
If I am not mistaken, ML was made by a couple of Fediverse Developers, but their moderation policies are comparable to Elon Musk so nobody goes there.
World has good branding, will moderate, and has some of the best uptime stats.
I believe .ml was the first lemmy instance - the one made by the developers.
yeah that would explain ML
I bounced between a few instances and .world seemed to always be up and available. Not to mention all the communities on .world.
I don’t have an allegiance. Open more communities in other instances or migrate the .world ones there.
I just want to post.
yeah, personally i’m a user of dbzer0 because i prefer the more back alley stuff (it also bans porn so that shit doesnt show up in my feed)
It’s up most of the time, there are a few instances where it’s slow or doesn’t want to load, but that’s usually resolved quickly enough, just internet instability i think, reddit has the same issues for me.
I see all the .world shit anyway, so it makes little difference to me at the end of the day lol.
When I first got on Lemmy I signed up for a small instance my friend was on. Mostly ended up lurking. Before ditching that account, because I forgot the password, and was looking to go to a different instance anyway, I looked up what instances had the most federations. world had a lot, and no hexbear. It also has a old style interface, and blocks NSFW content, so I can more safely browse in public/at work. So I switched to it with my main and then separately logged into places with open NSFW content.
During the Reddit API exodus I saw it in lots of comments. That’s how I ended up here.
yeah that makes sense, i never went there because i didn’t want to move to a community specific instance only to join a globally federated instance anyway lol.
No gatekeeping. We did not have to answer any question, write any essay showing we were worthy etc.
Reddit refugees were welcome no question asked.
Once were in, we found the admin/founder to be cool, open and reasonable.
We stayed.
checks out i suppose, dbzer0 does have a pretty minor registration check, but it’s not super overwhelming, and it aligns with my interests so meh.
In my case, I went to the biggest one after leaving beehaw.
I left beehaw because it was clear there was a double standard for one admin between minorities and the rest of us where an admin overlooked someone from a minority acting like a total ass and starting a fight… and blamed me simply because my opinion half agreed with an article that was posted.
Which was such a pity because they other admin there is awesome (and I loved the idea of the instance), but I’m worried it will become a echo chamber eventually unfortunately where you simply can’t discuss things, but only agree with people
yeah this is definitely a big concern with smaller instances, there are a couple of tricks to this general problem from what i’ve thought/seen of over time.
The obvious one is a democratic vote, literally just ask people in the instance, the second obvious one is to vet people in that instance specifically and personally. And if they cause problems just yeet em. You’re the dictator after all. The most common option is to have a decentralized moderation team made up from the general community, which is extremely common and generally works, though suffers from the opposite problem, ironically.
I think if i had to moderate a lemmy instance i’d probably do a mix of heavier vetting (although most of it would likely be after they initially joined, a vibe check i suppose. As well as just being a literal direct dictator, depending on the size i might have “chaos control” mods, just to keep goofy shit from happening while i’m away, or to provide some support, who knows. And naturally, i’d focus on community votes, i’d be curious what the community instance itself had to say.
I remember I picked Lemmy.world to create an account only because I had no idea what I was doing and it seemed like the only one which had merit at the time (I know how things work better now.) Now that I know how decentralization works I’ll probably open a new account on another server when I get time.
I was a reddit Sync user and was super bummed when (large scale) API access was shut off, so I jumped on the chance to use Sync for Lemmy. It defaulted to world for signups, presumably for ease of use for migrating reddit users. Knowing that Sync already had a loyal audience that was willing to put in a little effort to migrate, it seems the dev opted to make everything as similar to the reddit UX as possible, including registration.
Now that I’m more familiar with the fediverse, I’ve been considering migrating to a more specialized instance that matches my interests. Truthfully, though, it seems unlikely that much of anything would change if I did since I’m going to keep using the same app, so I’ve been slow to move.
To compare this with my experience with Mastodon, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the idea of instances and really had no idea which to join, nor did I have a familiar app to work with. I figured it out eventually, but a lot of the artists I follow didn’t or didn’t have time to, so overall I haven’t spent much time on it. I’ve spent way too much time on Lemmy so far.
yeah that makes sense, i think the problem with migrating normie users is that there isn’t quote the comprehensive explanation of things needed. A more thorough and complete overview would be required i think.
Defederating from Hexbear probably didn’t hurt. I remember when the users were literally flooding
.worldmy inbox circlejerking about being the biggest and best instance and that any instance that defederated from them was full of transphobic Nazis.Edit: I have a shit memory. I don’t remember what instance it was, but the circlejerking and the defederation slander definitely happened.
https://lemmy.world/post/2498330
ok
Are you from another dimension as everyone else where this happened? Because they never federated in the dimension I live in. Very interesting you’re able to cross this gap, does the name Nelson Mandella mean anything to you?
Yeah, it must have been on a different instance. I have a terrible memory for places, which probably bleeds over. I distinctly remember the circlejerking and getting lots of messages about how people who don’t like Hexbear are transphobic, though.
.world pre-emptively defederated from hexbear before hexbear ever entered federation. you are making things up wholecloth.
dbzer0 had a few issues with hexbear and i believe we defederated from hexbear? I honestly cant remember, i blocked that instance a while ago.
It was probably every instance, ML included.
It may have been after someone proposed defederating from them, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen because I’ve seen users around recently. I have the instance filtered, but I still need to block the users, same with ML.
at the very least there was discussion around it, like i said i ended up blocking that instance at some point.