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:

    • Omniraptor@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      How are they awful? I’ve had one bad and cringy interaction with them but nothing too out of the ordinary

      • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        i was more referring to the fact that as a snark community they don’t necessarily represent the best of us

  • recursive_recursion [they/them]@programming.devEnglish
    18·
    4 months ago

    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

  • Ategon@programming.devEnglish
    51·
    4 months 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)

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    272·
    4 months 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.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netEnglish
      20·
      4 months 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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      88·
      4 months ago

      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.zipEnglish
        83·
        4 months 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.comEnglish
          34·
          4 months 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.

      • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.mlEnglish
        54·
        4 months ago

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

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        21·
        4 months 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.comEnglish
          11·
          4 months 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.

    • auzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      4 months 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

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.worldEnglish
      91·
      4 months 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.

    • voracread@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      4 months 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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • return2ozma@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      4 months ago

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

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Kaiyoto@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 months 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.

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 months 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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      4 months 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.worldEnglish
      403·
      4 months 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

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
      201·
      4 months 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.

    • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      4 months 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.luEnglish
        15·
        4 months 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

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            If you find yourself well were you are, then you are in the right place (^_^)

          • madjo@feddit.nlEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            Which feels a bit as a sleepy instance, but maybe I’m not in the right communities.

        • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
          5·
          4 months ago

          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?

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            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.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
            7·
            4 months ago

            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.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            4 months ago

            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.

              • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
                2·
                4 months ago

                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.

                1. 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.
                2. Because lemmy.world is federated with programming.dev, they scoop up my comment from programming.dev’s outbox
                3. Because jlau.lu is federated with lemmy.world, they get my comment from lemmy.world.
                4. 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.

                • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  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.

            • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
              2·
              4 months ago

              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)

              • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
                2·
                4 months ago

                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.

        • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          So which instance an account is from matters regarding which communities you can join? Huh.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            5·
            4 months ago

            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.

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            3·
            4 months ago

            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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    31·
    4 months 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.

  • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    114·
    4 months ago

    One amusing bit re: hexbear, it’s been around almost as long as lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, but it seems was only added to the tracker last year, as it shows up as 12 months old, I have to imagine it’s including posts/comments from before that timeframe because bozhe moi:

    Even if you divide the hexbear comments by 4 they’d still be in the top 3 2 excluding the reddit repost bot. Yappers.

  • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1021·
    4 months 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)