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:
I knew hexbear was big but not that big
It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform unfortunately
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt ppl who praise Soviets or North Korea
Yeah I can’t say I was bothered when LW defederated. I’ve gotten in way fewer stupid arguments since they did the same with Lemmygrad. IIRC LW didn’t even let hexbear federate in the first place.
I don’t like defederations. I prefer to see everything, every post and comment and then block users/instances on my own if it becomes too much.
Literally a second ago I blocked another tankie, from LW this time. Before I even managed to type this comment fully. But then I don’t shy from making comments that attract them if I disagree with something. So inbox always busy
Sounds like you waste alot of time with people who don’t deserve it
Yes but this may be a side effect of turning off the points experiment. Instead of getting dopamine from points I only get replies. So it could be that I subconsciously make my comments in a way that is more likely to attract some kind of response.
My main goal for Lemmy was to break Reddit addiction and I feel gaining likes plays a big part in staying glued to the screen
Seems like a good strategy would be to not have every post and comment shown to you if your goal is to break your habit of spending too much time on your phone or PC.
I would much rather signup to an instance that handles that for me.
As long as the instance is clear about what they defederate from and their reasons, then I’m happy with that. And if I wasn’t, I could choose a different instance.
Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).
I did end up blocking the lemmy.ml instance though, fuck that place. I haven’t even blocked hexbear or lemmygrad.
Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).
Yes, that’s pretty much our take on it: we’ll defederate CSAM (and nonce-adjacent) instances asap, those with lax registration tend to become havens for spammers and trolls, so there is usually a wave of defederating, then someone reaches out to them, it gets sorted and we allow them back in. That tends to be the regular defederation and isn’t controversial. Defederating, for example, Hexbear over, for example, trolling would be a bigger deal and we’d try and speak to the other Admins about it before any permanent banning.
Isn’t your instance federated with hexbear? Seems like it hardly blocks any lemmy instances.
lol, forgot I was even on my feddit.uk account.
I’d already gone through blocking all of that stuff via my app before the defederation stuff happened, but if I were signing up to a new instance I’d appreciate it being blocked by default.
I think ideally a Lemmy client could connect to a number of instances, and you could add the more contentious ones yourself.
Some of these places are literally hosting child porn. You don’t want that mirrored to a server that you’re responsible for.
Same here. I’ll curate my personal feed but I’ll occasionally scroll everything just to see what random new instance I’ll find, and to keep myself aware of what the current rhetoric is with the various groups.
You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it’s exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.
Can you truly say you’ve had the HB experience if you haven’t recieved emoji/sticker/gif spam from people who weren’t alive for 9/11, have never been outside their country, and refuse to listen to opposing views, but know with full certainty that all western countries are 100% full of genociders and colonial rapists who all deserve the glorious death the super benign, extremely peaceful and misunderstood countries of North Korea, China, and Russia who have never once been correctly accused of human rights violations…
And of course, if they point out that your country has dipped into those things in the past, well your entire worldview is shattered and their whataboutism has solved everything and proves you deserve the death they crave for you.
I am genuinely sad for HB. There are lgbt ppl there, generally dear to me. Seeing them enjoy such cesspit lured in by cultish atmosphere, supporting the very forces that can only destroy but not build anything. It is personal.
I can see why folk don’t like hexbear as they come off as leftist 4chan, but you don’t need to make things up. They often talk about traveling. I agree with a lot of their content and disagree with some, I’ve been to 10 countries. In the plane to France, an African told me how their country is still enslaved to France. Personally I don’t see the value in the immediate destruction of the west, but with their leaderships ardent support for Nazi Germany, Apartheid, the Climate Crisis and assassination of climate activists, others, and now Zionism, they should lose influence through any means necessary.
deleted by creator
You can block instances yourself, I personally don’t like when an instance makes that decision for me.
Blocking an instance is just equivalent to blocking all the communities on that instance. You’ll still see the blocked instance’s posts and comments in other instances and (maybe more importantly) the instance will still influence your feed via voting. So if hexbear collectively upvotes or downvotes some post, that will influence your feed. Defederation is the only way to prevent that kind of influence.
Downvotes are disabled on hexbear just fyi. One of the reason people leave a comment with stuff they disagree with. But upvoting yeah, very active userbase very actively upvoting means a lot of my feed on lemm.ee is from hexbear.
deleted by creator
That’s why I’m glad my instance blocked them.
Bro my instance just defederated them. Happy to say I’ve never seen their shit
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What’s your point?
Western alliances which are the only places in the world with a robust LGBT rights framework?
“Nooooo you can’t just give people rights because it makes you look good!”
I didn’t realise committing genocide made people look good, I guess. You know those militaries kill lgbt people too right?
They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.Correction, updated data is actually closer to 2k MAU. They are the 4th most active instance, topped by lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and Lemmy.world.
Interesting, I expected them to be much larger
My guess is that they just needed to have their own community for a lot of stuff because so many instances are defederated from them. Though I am not sure…
Or because it’s older than most of the other instances
I guess it’s also natural that subcultures that tend to be banned elsewhere are early adaptors of alternative platforms.
We’re lucky we didn’t exist when the Trump extremists on Reddit went looking for a new home, or they would probably have been one of the biggest fields in this figure. Hopefully when the right wing extremists arrive instance admins will have the good sense to defederate.
That’s probably it
like Beehaw
Is there something wrong with beehaw?
No. Just that they’re defederated from lots of big instances so they tend to gave their own communities, which increases their size on chart.
Unlike Hexbear, they chose to be defederated
Ah that makes sense
Nothing wrong with beehaw as far as I know, but a while ago they defederated lemmy.world because the instance is to big and not moderated enough, or something like that.
They’ve existed for a while. A lot of subscribers are inactive users. Kind of like reddit where a sub can have 5k people and still be inactive.
It’s less that they’re big, but old.
I haven’t even heard of it xd
Most instances block them so most communities on those instances won’t see them either. Once you find certain communities on instances that don’t block them you suddenly see half the comments being from hexbear, which likely quickly makes you block those communities fairly quickly.
I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.
. world is defederated with hexbear iirc
Oh. Why?
You could go visit hexbear and you’d find out pretty quickly. It’s definitely not for everyone.
Other comments hit on this but I’ll add a little more. There is a good bit of trolls/trolling, some extreme views, and authoritarian government praise. Things like that.
Lemm.ee (my instance) is still federated so I see hexbear post/ comments. It’s definitely a more problematic instance imo.
Oh okay, got it
You only got replies from hexbear haters so let me balance it out a bit. Hexbear is by far the most LGBT+ friendly instance in the fediverse and has a supermajority of queer users. They’re aggressively anti-bigotry in all its forms and are extremely happy to educate and engage in discussions as long as you approach them in good faith.
Most people who go out of their way to shit talk them in the wild are just mad hexbear banned them for saying some racist or homophobic shit
Okay. Then why is almost every instance defederating?
It’s an entire instance of teenage trolls
Gab also was big, but its role for the fediverse wasn’t.
Who or what is/was Gab? 😅
Its like truth social
What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.
Think of it as the Tankie version of The Donald.
Horseshoe theory strikes again.
Political illiteracy strikes again
Yeah, I’m doing my best to learn the concepts but I have a ways to go.
Your instance is defederated from them
I only know it because it is often mentioned when talking about trolling
It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.
It’s essentially where reddit’s old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it
It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.
Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.
I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.
.world never federated with Hexbear from what I remember. I’m pretty sure they were on the block list before Hexbear got federation completed. There was no single incident as far as I know.
Wrong. They federated with them then had a big discussion on if they should defederate (you can probably still find it in meta). It’s why I left - I prefer to make my own defederation decisions (and I like Hexbear, and Piracy too).
Source: I was there.
OFL, what is going on with this hexbear? And is there any reason behind the name?
And is there any reason behind the name? A bear, but hexagon shaped, is their mascot.
Not really surprising. 10 out of the 10 most commented posts in the past year are on hexbear (the top 2 being the weekly trans mega threads). Granted, a lot of that is just the hyper-active posting of a few users. Regardless, if you want a trans community, there’s basically no active alternative to hexbear’s traaa here.
What about blahaj?
I’m subscribed to pretty much all the trans coms I know of and traa is 90% of the trans content that shows up. Another 5% are other hexbear trans subs. Traa has as many comments in half a month as mtf@blajah has had in its entire existance and as many in a week as trans@blahaj has made in total (the two largest non-hexbear trans subs afaik).
This reads like someone telling me that the nazi bar is the only place to go because the nazi bar has people there all the time and the other bars are mostly empty.
Cool. Being trans, not tolerating transphobia, and having emotes is comparable to being nazis?
Also, not suggesting people need to go there because its active. I could go to traa, egg, mtf, agender, enby, etc on reddit, but I don’t want to use reddit and a lot of those communities make hexbear look tame in terms of spamminess and immaturity.
Not at all what I wrote.
2 observations:
-
Wow I didn’t think hexbear was that large. That’s unfortunate…
-
The fact that Lemmyworld is like 40% of the pie is NOT good. People are clearly not understanding or not caring thay the point of the fediverse is to prevent any one instance from having too much power. People need to leave lemmy world and join other smaller instances. If lemmy world were to shut down, imagine how many of the most popular communities would be gone.
Lemmy.world has no lock in on their “power”. They have the most volunteer labor, money, and infrastructure. That’s makes them stable, so people aren’t worried about their data suddenly going offline (like kbin) and they don’t worry about the service being flaky.
The same can be said about gmail and it is the same kind of problem here. Yes lemmy.world is not a profit orient it giant, but it is still a problem when one actor has this power over a federated network. (the scale of the problem is of course a lot larger with gmail)
Technical issues with Lemmy are, I think, still driving people to larger instances.
The big one is that if I make a community on a smaller instance, and gain ANY amount of volume and traction (which is not all that easy to do in the first place) and that server vanishes, shit’s just… dead. It’s gone and not coming back, because you can’t move a community from a dead server to a live server.
Which means using one of the big, established, funded, stable, working instances is the only rational choice, but that also means I’ll probably just make an account and post exclusively from there, and thus you end up in this cycle of everyone just going to one of the larger instances in preference to any of the smaller ones.
Everyone goes on and on and on about account portability being very important (which, I suppose it is: I don’t think we need account portability but rather distributed identity independent of the specific platform you’re using, but that’s a whole different technical mess) but for something like Lemmy, being assured that the community you’re working on will survive servers vanishing and a means to “take ownership” in a way that lets you port it to another home if and when your instance dies - because, for the most part, it’s going to at some point - is far far more needed.
Which means using one of the big, established, funded, stable, working instances is the only rational choice, but that also means I’ll probably just make an account and post exclusively from there, and thus you end up in this cycle of everyone just going to one of the larger instances in preference to any of the smaller ones.
The size difference between Lemmy.world and lemm.ee could still be improved
It’s that, plus the next largest instance being practically unusable due to hyper aggressive tankie censorship. Getting banned from .ml for not sucking Stalin’s boot hard enough is practically a rite of passage at this point.
Is it good or bad that I had to think if you meant hexbear or lemmy.ml, and even after doing so I’m still not sure?
I agree in principle that .world containing most of the fediverse’s activity kinda isn’t great for the idea of the democratic nature of the fediverse. However, the point of the ‘verse is that anyone can spool up an instance if they dislike it, or start more communities on existing instances. If .world were to disappear it would suck, but that’s part of the problem with any instance in an informal community. Any of them can disappear.
How many instances federate by default? It may be difficult to get your new solo instance into the others.
That’s just how federation works out in every federated service ever.
While spreading out is good, this isn’t something like cryptocurrency where it’s specifically bad if you have over 50% share. Each instance is the source of truth for their users and communities hosted there. It’s not like a block chain where something with over half can suddenly define their own truth for everyone. So it’s not necessarily a massive cause for alarm.
The problem is most likely people that are new to the fediverse/lemmy just not understanding it and choosing a “default”, popular instance. I was going to pick it as a safe option when I first came here but it was under load and wasn’t accepting new users, where I then had to find another instance and settled on feddit.uk.
It would be good if lemmy instances could have the option of “load balancing” new users, so if the current instance has way more active users than it’s federated wtih then it disables registration but recommends other, smaller instances to the user.
We just need a way to make it easy to seamlessly transfer both users and communities to another instance then it really won’t matter if one gets disproportionately large because a shutdown won’t affect anything. Ideally the inner workings should be as invisible to the end user as possible.
Great to have you with us. 👍
♥️ glad to be part of our community!
When you enter “how to join Lemmy” in search engines one of the first results is this Reddit thread, which explicitly suggests people join Lemmyworld.
In fact, when I point people to Lemmy via Reddit, I use that post also because that suggestion actually makes it way more approachable. I think most people, myself included, are intimidated by multiple servers and feel like they’re “intruding” into private spaces. The size of Lemmyworld might help people feel like it’s more anonymous and a little easier to join as a result, especially since they are being asked to wait for “approval”, which is pretty unusual on the modern Net, let’s be honest.
.ml and hexbear have been around much longer than the other instances so have built up more subscribers
I started on a small instance that fortunately gave a heads up when they decided to shut down. When I moved to a second, small instance where I ported all my community subscriptions, it shut down with no warning. It’s a shame, because both instances were topically-focused and small enough to avoid defederation drama.
I love the idea of decentralized infrastructure, but now I’m on .world because I just don’t have the time or willpower to move every few months, and I definitely don’t have the wherewithal to run my own instance.
Try searching for a local community, especially if English is not your first language.
There’s a bit of choice paralasys when joining Lemmy. Even if you know how the fediverse works you won’t have knowledge of the culture and relationships of different instances.
I joined Lemmy.world because it advertises itself as the vanilla flavour of the fediverse, so it makes it an easy pick for someone like me who didn’t quite understand how it all hangs together.
But I do agree with you, and I’m looking to migrate
after some concerning things have come up about the lemmy.world owner.Edit: confused the owner of lemmy.world and lemmy.ml.
The choice paralysis is real. I chose lemm.ee because it was easy to type into the address bar, and I’ve stuck around because the admin seems pretty level-headed.
I agree on the choice paralysis. I ended up with Feddit.it because my native language is Italian and that’s the biggest instance in my language.
Haven’t heard anything so far, what are they?
Thank you for editing your original comment to reflect that 😎
But I do agree with you, and I’m looking to migrate after some concerning things have come up about the lemmy.world owner.
Lemm.ee should fit your bill
Definitely
I mean the first problem went away when I sorted the communities by active users, though the second one got way worse with it XD
As someone out of the loop, why is hexbear bad? Alternatively, what is hexbear about?
Please disregard, after reading further in the comments I get the gist. I guess as I use LemmyWorld I don’t have to deal with them.
They openly state that their primarily goals in federation is to be obnoxious trolls, and boy howdy do they put a lot of energy into it. They are first and foremost, just obnoxious. It’s like 20% teenagers going through their edgy anti establishment phase, and then the rest are right wing, Russian, and Chinese trolls playing soggy waffle with each other. They pretend to be super serious about LGBT issues but then simp for Hamas, Iran and Russia. And one of their tankie leaders just got caught calling trans issues “western pink washing.”
It’s just a mess. It’s probably a bit overblown, but the community is legitimately annoying if nothing else.
one of their tankie leaders just got caught calling trans issues “western pink washing.”
Your whole post is made up, but this is at least a specific claim that also didn’t happen. Pics or you’re talking shit.
Thats a .ml admin
https://lemmy.ml/post/18761554
see the link to “kristinas post” for The hexbear take on the situation (nutomic is banned from hexbear afaik)
They’re an explicitly leftist comm, a lot of people take offense to being called out on right-wing assertions, and the .world’ers whip up myths without having ever seen or federated with Hexbear themselves.
That’s all really - Take a glance at the site if you want to know what it’s about, rather than take people at their word on it.
that’s the main reason I moved away from lemmy.world
-
Surprised I dont see programming.dev in the data, we definitely have at least 3 communities in the top 100 (programmer_humor, programming, linux)
Manually counted communities in the top 100 per instance and threw it into another pie chart (for active users / month)
This also seems to be different than the results gotten from lemmyverse as the lemmyverse data hasnt been updated in 11 days according to that site
A bunch of instances gained or lost some coms in the top 100 from variance of things happening in the last week
(the eight instances that it decided to not give labels to that have 1 community are feddit.uk, lemmy.zip, beehaw.org, lemdro.id, ttrpg.network, lemmy.wtf, lemmy.blahaj.zone, mander.xyz)
edit: updated graph to be more accurate users/month counts
What do you mean by “manually counted”? And what did you use to generate the chart? Is that a Google API?
I looked at the community list in programming.dev (from https://programming.dev/communities) sorted by active users per month and noted down the instances for the top 100 communities
its using google sheets
going to recount with lemm.ees community list in a sec since theyre federated with hexbear
I hate that their libraries are so good sometimes :D Mine uses recharts with suboptimal configuration
There’s always LibreOffice…
I used that to filter the data, but it wouldn’t generate a pie chart for it XD
Weird, that’s one of its basic functions. Oh well.
Eyyyyy midwest.social!
In this list it doesn’t seem like it: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month
Seems like lemmyverse doesnt have the instance listed at all for some reason, assuming a crawling issue. I reported it on their repository. Would be new since I remember it showing the instance before
You can check in https://programming.dev/communities that programmer humor has way more active users than most communities here
And I’ve fixed it now :D Sorry for the delay and thx for reporting <3
Oh that is unfortunate
Paging @tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net
I’m here now, thanks for the ping :)
Thanks for maintaining lemmyverse :)
Thank YOU for being the MVP that let me know it was broken! 🤣 🔥
Their deploy pipeline is broken as well. So I think that is the reason for the old crawl date
It sometimes does that when the crawler hasn’t had time to fetch a large proportion of the instances in the last 4 hours. the data should be pretty recent still. I’ll check on it now :)
I think it is 12 old by now
Yeah it is, docker stopped loading the redis DB 🤣
https://github.com/tgxn/lemmy-explorer/pull/189
looks like it’s fixed it https://develop.lemmyverse.net/will be in prod shortly :)
Thank you!
And here the diagram by community subscriber count:
Nearly but not exactly :D
Could you please do it based on monthly active users?
Oh that would be interesting as well. I will do that. Checking back in 2h :D
Thanks!
I will add both pictures to the main post as well. Here is the Pie chart for community count:
And here is the pie chart for community users:
Great !
Lemmy.world gets A LOT bigger this way XD
I think subscriber count is probably not ideal. I’ve seen communities where the number subscribers is 10x the number of active monthly users.
For other communities, subscribers is about equal to active users.
Based on Monthly active users, the picture is different: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month
You already see a 4 sh.itjust.works community, a lemmy.ca community, a lemmy.zip community just from the top 30
You didn’t use a black color for us? Heresy!
My deepest apologies milord 🙏 I promise to do better next time * leaves the throne room backwarss while bowing *
You must be confused, we don’t have a king, just pirates and anarchists 😁
Sorry milord captain 🙏
We’re anarchists, we don’t have a king, we strongly oppose centralized power in the hands of one powerful leader
I might as well leave lemmy.world
I’m only concerned about how to transfer all my stuff to the new account. Mastodon makes it super easy.
You can only export and import followed communities afaik
Mastodon doesn’t allow to transfer posts either
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move
Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.
Got it.
Idk if you can transfer likes comments and posts, but you can go to your old account from a new one and star everything with the new account pretty easily. So that at least can transfer.
Mastodon doesn’t allow to transfer posts either
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move
Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.
Probably unintended side-effect of this post: A few people like me discovering new communities to follow. Thank you!
Poor lemm.ee
Nah I’d say this is right on par with the philosophy of the instance. Lemm.ee is moreso infrastructure for interacting with the fediverse than a specific community
Yes, the most active communities (https://lemm.ee/communities) are
All started by different people than the admin, who is indeed quite hands back regarding communities
We are small af. I think we are mostly just overflow .world users.
We’re currently the 2nd most active instance measured by MAU, only lead by Lemmy.world
Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of weirdos.
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?
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.
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 (^_^)
deleted by creator
I signed up at feddit.nl and I am not even from Netherlands.
If you find yourself well were you are, then you are in the right place (^_^)
Which feels a bit as a sleepy instance, but maybe I’m not in the right communities.
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.
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.
I believe .ml was the first lemmy instance - the one made by the developers.
yeah that would explain ML
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Programming.dev represent! o7
suprised mander.xyz is so small
!science_memes@mander.xyz is the 9th most monthly active community
A barchart might be better as the comparison of instances with the most subscribed accounts doesn’t mean much I feel
we have some users that register but are inactive and/or are infrequently active which could be a sign of lurkers or bots but empty accounts don’t mean much when it comes to the health of an instance.
However; if we look at each community’s active monthly and daily users it can tell another story and that data compared against Reddit’s could be useful for anyone seeking alternatives
I’m rambling with little sleep but hopefully what I’ve said make a little bit of sense
I added charts that use the monthy active users
