Spreading of the 100 biggest Lemmy communities
Spreading of the 100 biggest Lemmy communities
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:
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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.
Lemmy.world has kept open signups open during every large Reddit exodus
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.
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.
Very interesting indeed. Thank you for letting us know.
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.
are my comments stored on their instance or on mine?
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 by default your instance respect mod removals.
You can change that as a server admin, so comments would remain visible to other users on your instance.
I think your instance is authoritative for content of comments, but the community hosting instance is authoritative for which comments are approved (other instances respect such removals by default)
That's a good way of putting it. While my instance holds my canonical comments and the communiy's instance holds the canonical list of comments on a post, if the community's instance isn't federated with my instance (or the pair temporarily cannot communicate) then my comments won't show in the list.
That's weird. @Natanael@slrpnk.net says the opposite is it a question of version?
Test comment. Verifying something. Will reply in a separate one instead of editing this.
If you want to run some more test, here a community dedidacted to that: !testfediverse@jlai.lu.
You can be as thorough as you want without worrying about spamming people (^_^)
Alright. I wanted to verify something to double check. Here is the flow of how my comment gets to your instance and is visible by you. It helps when you realize that all communications you do are with your instance. I might get inbox/outbox terminology reversed or wrong.
- I post a comment to !fediverse@lemmy.world, but it is done through https://programming.dev/c/fediverse@lemmy.world. this goes to programming.dev's inbox.
- Because lemmy.world is federated with programming.dev, they scoop up my comment from programming.dev's outbox
- Because jlau.lu is federated with lemmy.world, they get my comment from lemmy.world.
- When you view !fediverse@lemmy.world through jlau.lu/c/fediverse@lemmy.world you will see my comment from your server's copy of it.
I say the canonical copy is on my home instance because imagine a scenario where lemmy.world is NOT federated with programming.dev but for whatever reason programming.dev didn't defederate back. I could still see and comment on !fediverse@lemmy.world. Other users of programming.dev could see my comments and reply, but nobody else.
This is how I understand federation to work but it might be incorrect. It's a complicated topic. It might be that your instance directly gets the comment from mine.
I need to take time to read you comment quieltly. Honestly, I start to be confortable about how federation work from a user perspective but I have no technical knowledge about it.
Oops
I signed up at feddit.nl and I am not even from Netherlands.
Which feels a bit as a sleepy instance, but maybe I'm not in the right communities.
If you find yourself well were you are, then you are in the right place (^_^)
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.
Yes but not so much. The fediverse is a big place and everyone can open a community in the same topic in a instance that is not block. Look how many zero waste there is !zerowaste@lemmy.ml !zerowaste@slrpnk.net !zerowaste@lemm.ee !zerowaste@lemmy.world !zero_dechet@jlai.lu. And they may be more on instances I don't know.
For what I have witness instances blocked each other over divergence on political activism. If you don't plan to go discuss with people who really want to convince you to become communiste, you should be fine.
Go on [your.instance]/instances for the list of block instances.
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.
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.
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.
yeah that would explain ML
I believe .ml was the first lemmy instance - the one made by the developers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 .world 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
We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear
I remember when the users were literally flooding .world
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.