The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.
| beehaw.org | hexbear.net | lemdro.id | lemmy.blahaj.zone | lemmy.dbzer0.com | lemmy.ml | lemmy.one | lemmy.world | lemmynsfw.com | sh.itjust.works | sopuli.xyz | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Count | 6 | 33 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 1 | 39 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Community Subscriber Count | 133450 | 663204 | 17052 | 15907 | 53006 | 356460 | 16257 | 851950 | 33586 | 16006 | 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:
| awful.systems | feddit.org | feddit.uk | hexbear.net | lemdro.id | lemm.ee | lemmy.blahaj.zone | lemmy.ca | lemmy.dbzer0.com | lemmy.ml | lemmy.world | lemmy.wtf | lemmy.zip | mander.xyz | sh.itjust.works | slrpnk.net | sopuli.xyz | ttrpg.network | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Count | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 57 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Community Active Month Count | 2616 | 7363 | 5289 | 2952 | 2898 | 8898 | 11422 | 14910 | 13752 | 54949 | 338384 | 3602 | 12020 | 11469 | 37365 | 10897 | 10070 | 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 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.
They can be oriented to some type of content: For example, the many feddit.something are targetting people by countries or langages (.it, .uk, etc.). slrpnk.net is solarpunk oriented, mander.xyz science oriented. Litterature.cafe is books, reading and writing oriented.
And they can offer different moderation policies: People on lemmynsfw.com probably want to see NSFW content. lemmy.world has a policy against it. lemmy.dbzer0.com allow for open discussion about piracy that many instances forbid and so on.
It you don't see the difference in instances, it is probably that you are about fine on your local instance. But if one day, you hear about a community you can't access, maybe that is because it is blocked by lemmy.word and you could access it from another instance
If the dbzer0 instance allows piracy talk but I'm signed up to an instance that doesn't allow it, can I talk in their community or do I risk being banned from mine?
In other words, are my comments stored on their instance or on mine?
Lemmy stores your posts and replies on both your host server and on the server of the community.
One interesting behavior to note here that is different from reddit is that while comments on reddit belong to the profile of the person commenting and is then imported to view in the subreddit (this is why you can edit comments after being banned, and why there visible in your profile even if removed from a subreddit), on lemmy the target community is instead authoritative and your host server will by default respect a deletion by community mods on different servers by also removing that comment from your profile.
You can talk on their instance. If the moderator of your instance dis not wanted you to interact with this other instance they would have block it.
That I'm not sure. But I think there is a copy of the content you accessed on your instance. Maybe someone administrating an instance could answer you better than I did.
Your comments are stored on both. The "canonical" version would be on your home instance but every instance that is federated with your instance would get a copy of your comments. I think it's even possible to have your content removed from one instance but not another. One of my posts shows as removed in the mod log but isn't actually removed.
So which instance an account is from matters regarding which communities you can join? Huh.
Only insofar as some instances block communication from some other instances. Not mine though, that's actually one of the reasons I picked it. That and it being by an org that's older than the web and runs a public unix server and a bunch of retrocomputing type services as well as fediverse stuff. They started out as a dialup anime BBS.
Yeah I actually tried beehaw initially but they never dealt with my application, so after a whole I just went with Lemmy.world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Defederating from Hexbear probably didn't hurt. I remember when the users were literally flooding ~~.world~~ my 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.
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
During the Reddit API exodus I saw it in lots of comments. That's how I ended up here.