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:

    • Emmie@lemm.ee
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      29 days ago

      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

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        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.

        • Emmie@lemm.ee
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          29 days ago

          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

            • Emmie@lemm.ee
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              29 days ago

              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

              • ericjmorey@discuss.online
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                29 days ago

                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.

          • li10@feddit.uk
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            29 days ago

            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.

            • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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              29 days ago

              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.

              • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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                28 days ago

                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.

              • li10@feddit.uk
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                29 days ago

                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.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            29 days ago

            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.

          • TomSelleck@lemm.ee
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            29 days ago

            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.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        29 days ago

        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.

        • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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          29 days ago

          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.

          • Emmie@lemm.ee
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            29 days ago

            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.

          • joyhunter@lemmy.zip
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            28 days ago

            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.

            • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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              28 days ago

              come off as leftist 4chan

              has the largest weekly trans megathread in the entire fediverse, a supermajority of non-cishet users, aggressively bans racism, bigotry and transphobia on sight, has hard-coded mandatory pronoun tags

              make it make sense

              • joyhunter@lemmy.zip
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                28 days ago

                Didn’t mean it literally, only that it’s so shitposty that it can overshadow most serious conversations. It is a far better moderated and accepting community. It’s mainly their trans posts that made me better accept trans individuals. And I discourage writing them off like most should with 4chan.

          • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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            29 days ago

            On the flipside there is the .World experience. Where Julian Assagne is a war criminal. And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

            • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyz
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              29 days ago

              And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

              Would you have link to such statements? Seems wild

              • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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                28 days ago

                Yeah, I’ve never once seen anything but criticism over the US’s involvement in the middle east.

                The most I’ve seen is a couple people saying the equivalent of “well SOMEONE had to do something about X” And a bunch of others jumping on them to clarify that X either never existed, or was massively exaggerated and the US isn’t the World Police.

                Genuinely would love to see someone link a good faith comment trying to argue the above, so I can tell them all about how they’re a fucknut

            • btaf45@lemmy.world
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              28 days ago

              Julian Assange is a bootlicker and Kremlin stooge who sold us out to the American and Russian billionaires. The Mueller Report proved he was explicitly trying to get Treason Trump elected and working with Putin to push disinformation to that end.

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            28 days ago

            Yep, that’s me. You could probably find a few more good examples of me stepping in shit on Hexbear, that’s hardly the first.

          • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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            27 days ago

            I disagree with those comments, but they seem pretty mild to have been banned. I just don’t see how it’s productive to ban all liberals the moment they try to explain their views. All that does is push people away who could potentially have been a future ally.

            • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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              27 days ago

              For starters, all liberals have Reddit and Lemmy.world, which are large. Where do leftists have?

              Secondly, this comment is indistinguishable from concern-trolling. I’d have to read through your post history or go back and forth with you to know if you were an honest actor or just a troll.

              Thirdly, most of us know your views, and have rejected them. Why would we care to hear them? Ask the homeless people in any major city how important discussions of freedom are. So fuck your so-called “productivity.” If you were an ally you’d listen and be an ally.

              • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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                27 days ago

                For starters, all liberals have Reddit and Lemmy.world, which are large. Where do leftists have?

                I agree that lemmy.world is a primarily liberal instance, but I haven’t seen the same level of censorship on lemmy.world as I have on hexbear, though I’m open to evidence to the contrary. You can create a space for a specific ideology without resorting to such an extreme level of censorship and lemmy.world is proof of that. Also see my home instance slrpnk.net, we’re a primarily anarchist instance and we haven’t had to resort to extreme censorship to achieve that.

                Secondly, this comment is indistinguishable from concern-trolling. I’d have to read through your post history or go back and forth with you to know if you were an honest actor or just a troll.

                By what method do you distinguish concern-trolling from legitimate concern? Concern-trolls generally want to shut down discussion, and the whole reason for my concern is that censorship shuts down discussion.

                Thirdly, most of us know your views, and have rejected them.

                They’re not my views, did you miss the part of my comment where I said I disagree with the comments that got them banned?

            • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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              27 days ago

              if people steer clear of our buses and trains because they’re busy doubling as psych wards and homeless shelters.

              is not tame at all it dehumanizes some of societies most vulnerable. Imagine someone who has been in a psych ward or a homeless person reads this, and keep in mind both can be found posting on hexbear.

              • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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                27 days ago

                We don’t live in a tame world, lots of people have deeply problematic viewpoints. When someone who expresses such viewpoints is otherwise well-intentioned it’s better to address them directly and potentially change some minds (or at least plant the seed) than to shun them and further entrench them into a problematic worldview.

                • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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                  27 days ago

                  Depends on the environment you want to foster. There are already lotsa places where these kinds of “debates” are had (lemmy.world for instance) but really no place where the people that are being debated about can relax and not have to be confronted with the dehumanization they already are confronted with in their daily lives.

                  Hexbear prioritizes the latter.

        • muix@lemmy.sdf.org
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          28 days ago

          You can block instances yourself, I personally don’t like when an instance makes that decision for me.

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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            28 days ago

            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.

            • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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              27 days ago

              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.

      • Sootius@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What’s your point?

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          28 days ago

          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!”

          • Sootius@lemmy.world
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            I didn’t realise committing genocide made people look good, I guess. You know those militaries kill lgbt people too right?

      • timestatic@feddit.org
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        27 days ago

        Bro my instance just defederated them. Happy to say I’ve never seen their shit

      • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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        29 days ago

        I mean, I don’t know enough about North Korea here but Lenin decriminalized homosexuality in like 1920. Stalin recriminalized it in 1932-33 but for a bit there the Soviet Union was the most LGBT friendly country in the world.

        • Emmie@lemm.ee
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          Lemme rest, my palm is all sore

          What’s going on with ppl that won’t even do simple google check before commenting something. I for example would be ashamed to peddle some bullshit that is one top search click to disprove or even common sense

            • Emmie@lemm.ee
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              I already did. It took me 5 seconds and even before that I facepalmed hard just from grade school knowledge of the “world”

        • jumjummy@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          What is the point of this, uh, argument? Since then it’s illegal to be LGBT in Russia, so you’re admitting that Russia sucks now? Agreed!

          • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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            28 days ago

            Russia began to suck hardest when the US succeeded in turning it into a supercharged version of itself. Every bad bit about Russia you don’t like? It’s where the US is headed, thanks to its own imperialism. “Rainbow Capitalism” is as unsustainable as Rainbow Slavery or Rainbow Fascism.

            • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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              28 days ago

              Lmao, .ml really is on a roll with the whole “we love LGBT rights but hate every country which actually has LGBT rights” cognitive dissonance lately.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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      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.

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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      29 days ago

      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…

      • Binette@lemmy.ml
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        29 days ago

        If I remember correctly, Hexbear was there before the exodus. So that wouldn’t make sense.

        • BlackDragon@slrpnk.net
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          27 days ago

          Hexbear is older than most of the fediverse, and didn’t have federation enabled for years. It’s a very self-sufficient community.

      • aasatru@kbin.earth
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        29 days ago

        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.

          • Synapse@lemmy.world
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            29 days ago

            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.

          • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            29 days ago

            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

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      29 days ago

      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.

      • 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        29 days ago

        I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.

      • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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        29 days ago

        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.

          • moody@lemmings.world
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            29 days ago

            You could go visit hexbear and you’d find out pretty quickly. It’s definitely not for everyone.

          • Kroxx@lemm.ee
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            29 days ago

            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.

              • BlackDragon@slrpnk.net
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                27 days ago

                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

              • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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                28 days ago

                Horseshoe theory is essentially Latte-Flavored horseshit

                The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.[6][8]

                Wikipedia: Horseshoe Theory

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        29 days ago

        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

        • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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          28 days ago

          To be fair, that’s because liberalism is closer to fascism than any sort of leftism, and many of these instances have a strongly liberal user base because many were with Reddit longer than most leftists were.

          • Skua@kbin.earth
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            28 days ago

            I really don’t think the specific date of reddit departure is what shaped the politics of either community, especially not when the one you’re saying was less shaped by reddit was born out of a political subreddit

            Hexbear’s site culture is full of in jokes and big on dunking. That’s always going to be abrasive to outsiders, even without the whole thing where all of their many emojis were enormous on other instances

      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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        29 days ago

        It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        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.

        • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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          29 days ago

          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.

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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            29 days ago

            I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.

        • thoro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          28 days ago

          .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.

          • Pandantic@midwest.social
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            28 days ago

            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.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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      29 days ago

      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.

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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          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).

          • ericjmorey@discuss.online
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            29 days ago

            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.

            • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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              28 days ago

              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.

            • Ambii [She/They]@lemmy.ml
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              28 days ago

              Did you know: you know you can just say you didn’t read the comment?

              It’d be much faster and way easier on everyone else to know to discard your input!

  • wiki_me@lemmy.ml
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    29 days 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)

  • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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    29 days 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.

    • ericjmorey@discuss.online
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      29 days 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.

      • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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        29 days 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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          29 days 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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            28 days 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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            28 days 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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          29 days 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.

          • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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            28 days ago

            How many instances federate by default? It may be difficult to get your new solo instance into the others.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        28 days 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.

    • Monstrosity@lemm.ee
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      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.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      29 days 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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        28 days 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.

    • Ategon@programming.dev
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      29 days ago

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

    • goosehorse@lemmy.world
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      28 days 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.

      • Scrollone@feddit.it
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        28 days ago

        Try searching for a local community, especially if English is not your first language.

    • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee
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        28 days ago

        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.

        • Scrollone@feddit.it
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          28 days ago

          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.

      • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyz
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        28 days ago

        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

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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      29 days 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

        • CentauriBeau@lemmy.world
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          29 days 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.

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          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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          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.

  • Ategon@programming.dev
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    29 days ago

    Surprised I dont see programming.dev in the data, we definitely have at least 3 communities in the top 100 (programmer_humor, programming, linux)

  • cron@feddit.org
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    29 days ago

    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.

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    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.

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    28 days ago

    Probably unintended side-effect of this post: A few people like me discovering new communities to follow. Thank you!

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    28 days 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.

    • qaz@lemmy.world
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      28 days 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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      28 days 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.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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      28 days 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.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      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.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      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.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • return2ozma@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      During the Reddit API exodus I saw it in lots of comments. That’s how I ended up here.

    • voracread@lemmy.world
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      28 days 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.

    • Kaiyoto@lemmy.world
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      27 days 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.

    • auzy@lemmy.world
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      28 days 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

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.

      • IceHouse@lemmy.zip
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        28 days 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?

      • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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        28 days ago

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

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        28 days 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.