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:

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Duplicate instances are a problem imho. You can see the network effect synergy working by how many communities flock to the biggest instance lemmy.world.

    There also need to be tools to merge two communities on separate instances, or move them.

    Two of my niche instances tried to leave reddit, but then there were two versions, one on .ml and one on .world. Confusing. Maybe there need to be reviews for communities or instances.

  • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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    1 year ago

    2 observations:

    1. Wow I didn’t think hexbear was that large. That’s unfortunate…

    2. 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.

    • goosehorse@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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      1 year ago

      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

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • Sootius@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • CentauriBeau@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • ericjmorey@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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        1 year ago

        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)

        • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            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

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            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.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Monstrosity@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Ategon@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      .ml and hexbear have been around much longer than the other instances so have built up more subscribers

    • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • wiki_me@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Active users is the standard metric used to check how much a service is used (at least as far as i know. its what i see when i look at stuff published for investors).

    hexbar is on the sixth place in term of number of active users with 1.8K , lemmy.world is 18K (enable the “active users” column and sort by it to see the full list)

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        .world pre-emptively defederated from hexbear before hexbear ever entered federation. you are making things up wholecloth.

      • IceHouse@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        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?

        • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • voracread@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • auzy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • qaz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

    • Eiri@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • pseudo@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        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

    • Kaiyoto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    Wouldn’t comment or user count be a slightly better metric? Oh oh, do all 3 sode by side please!

  • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    If i’m understanding the last graph right, it’s showing the total number of active monthly users per instance’s top communities, filtered by the overall top 100 communities?

    So if an instance has activity spread out over many niche communities, that activity isn’t represented on this graph?

    I would think having a diversity of smaller communities is more in-line with the spirit of the fediverse, I’m not sure of the value in slicing the data in this way.

  • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Is that table going under the sidebar and off the page for anyone else or just me? (on web)

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Your data quality is questionable. You list only 2 communities for feddit.org. Lemmy Explorer has 148. I doubt that they’re all ‘suspicious’. And if they are, then that flag is itself suspicious.