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:

  • nutsack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    everyone goes to the most popular one because they think that’s the one with all the things on it that’s how the internet works that’s what everyone’s doing

    • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      Everyone goes to Lemmy.world because unlike most instances it has (effectively) open registration and some popular Lemmy apps use it in their signup flow so new users don’t have to understand the intricacies of the fediverse they can just hop straight in.

      • Persen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        And this is making a lemmy.world monopoly, which is bad for the fediverse (still better, than reddit).

        • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
          9·
          3 months ago

          I think it would definitely be nice to spread users (and communities) across more instances. Doubly so since I’m on an instance that is struggling with the volume of content from Lemmy.world because of what is effectively a limit of how much you can get from one instance at a time.

          But if we want people on Lemmy who don’t know what Linux is, then we need to avoid that massive barrier of asking users to pick an instance. And the second massive barrier of registration applications.

          A good compromise I think would be to have multiple trusted servers with open registrations that the app randomly defaults them to when they go to sign up for an account.

          • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            4·
            3 months ago

            Doubly so since I’m on an instance that is struggling with the volume of content from Lemmy.world because of what is effectively a limit of how much you can get from one instance at a time.

            Are you okay lately? I had a look the other day, seems almost fixed:

            https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/bdid38k9p0t1cf/federation-health-single-instance-overview?orgId=1&var-instance=lemmy.world&var-remote_instance=lemmy.nz

            Aussie.zone on the other is almost a week behind: https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/bdid38k9p0t1cf/federation-health-single-instance-overview?orgId=1&var-instance=lemmy.world&var-remote_instance=aussie.zone

            • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              We are fine, but it’s not fixed. I have a second VPS running in Finland, using this queue batcher. The Lemmy.world team kindly set up their server to point to this VPS instead of the actual Lemmy.nz server, then the VPS collects all the events and sends them to the Lemmy.nz server in batches of 100.

              It keeps us up to date, but it’s cheating 😆

              Last I heard Aussie.zone doesn’t have this setup, but they do have a prefetcher (or rather, Nothing4You, who made the queue batcher, is running a prefetcher for them). This basically takes the new comments and posts from Lemmy.world, and sends a request to Aussie.zone to fetch that post. Because this happens outside the normal federation queue it can be done in parallel. It means when Aussie.zone receives the federated activity from Lemmy.world, it already has it, so it can reply quicker and process more events per second. Lemmy clears out activities older than a week in a weekly scheduled job, which is why you will see Aussie.zone’s backlog drop a bit once a week. They won’t get that content from Lemmy.world, it’s just lost. Because of the prefetcher, it’s likely just up/down votes (which can’t be prefetched).

            • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              Doesn’t that say they default new users to a server owned by them? That’s the same kind of thing as defaulting to Lemmy.world for Lemmy apps.

              What I mean is a larger list of trusted instances. Including ones outside the control of one organisation, though I get that this is risky for Mastodon because they don’t want to default people to somewhere that’s going to shut down or have some drama and ruin a hard earned brand.

              We probably have more leeway to do it in Lemmy apps since (with the exception of Jerboa) they aren’t developed by “Lemmy”, and Lemmy.world is also not run by “Lemmy”. But for this same reason, " Lemmy" has no control over what these apps default to.

              • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
                2·
                3 months ago

                You have the “easy” buttons for users that just want to sign in and don’t think about it and then you have the “choose your own” button underneath it. I still am not a fan of this design, but I really care for decentralization and they want to attract “normal” people as well

          • Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
            22·
            3 months ago

            But if we want people on Lemmy who don’t know what Linux is, then we need to avoid that massive barrier of asking users to pick an instance. And the second massive barrier of registration applications.

            How so? Those things do not have anything to do with each other. The concept of Lemmy instances can literally be explained in less than a minute.

            • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
              5·
              3 months ago

              When a user (say, my mother) gets to a page that says pick a server, she would immediately close the page and go do something else. How do you even begin to choose a server? What if you get it wrong? What should you consider when picking a server?

              Its a simple concept that can be explained in a minute. But if you don’t have someone sitting next to you that understands it and can explain it, that user is gone.

              Registration applications are an unrelated barrier but a barrier none the less. You don’t have to apply to Facebook and wait to be approved. People expect to just be able to sign up and immediately go.

              For anyone familiar with the fediverse both of these things seem like non-issues. But for your average Facebook user. Hell, even your average reddit user, they will take one look at either a page telling them to pick a server or a page telling them they have to apply and wait, and unless they are familiar with the Fediverse already then they will back away slowly (or quickly).

              When my instance turned on registration applications, there was a 10x drop in the number of registrations, and I’ve heard similar numbers from others.

              • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
                3·
                3 months ago

                When my instance turned on registration applications, there was a 10x drop in the number of registrations, and I’ve heard similar numbers from others.

                The question is how much of these registrations are spam accounts. I have open registrations on my mastodon instance and ~70% are spam accounts that I delete within the first day…

                • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  Oh definitely some. At the time we were still in the tail of the reddit surge, we were getting plenty of valid registrations and spam was only starting to take off (which was the reason for closing registrations).

                  But to my point, I think back to my first Lemmy experience and remember trying to work out which server I should join even though I already had a basic idea about the Fediverse from Mastodon. And I just chose the biggest in the end bpecause how do you choose? Even today I would be wary about joining any server that didn’t have lots of people.

                  And later I remember hearing about Beehaw then finding a registration application page and not creating an account.

                  These happened well before the reddit exodus, and I never really got into Lemmy until that happened and I joined Beehaw.

              • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                3·
                3 months ago

                I usually just mentioned lemm.ee nowadays.

                It’s solidly managed, and the second largest instance, so All feed is going to be as populated as the LW one. Also, neutral name (sorry sh.itjust.works)

                • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  Yes they are a good candidate I think. Curious about their sign ups though. Lemmy.world asks people to write “I agree to the TOS” in the answer box. If you do, a bot automatically approves you, if you don’t, a bot automatically declines you. There’s no waiting time.

                  Lemm.ee states In the “Answer” box below, please state that you agree to follow the lemm.ee instance rules (found in the sidebar of our front page), which has no specific phrase you need to answer, so I’m guessing they manually approve them?

                  I honestly think registration applications are a huge barrier to anyone not already on the fediverse.

          • Persen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            I made the account here, when it wasn’t as popular and I’m way too lazy to migrate.

      • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Everyone goes to Lemmy.world because unlike most instances it has (effectively) open registration

        The registration page does not look different really to the lemmy.nz one, same for lemm.ee, sopuli.xyz, sh.itjust.works has even one less tiny hurdle to jump to register. Didn’t bother to check others. Or i am missing something here?

        • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          I explained in another comment to someone else, but to recap Lemmy.world has lemmy’s registration applications feature turned on, but behind the scenes they run a bot to approve everyone who types the requested thing in the box. You sign up, type the thing in the box, and you get immediate access.

          Compare this sign up process to the instance that the Lemmy devs run on Lemmy.ml.

          Now to be clear, I’m not saying it’s unjustified. Trolls and spammers are a problem on Lemmy and we need more tools to help. Most instances require registration applications and I think that’s necessary for anyone without a team of admins across the world.

          But that doesn’t change that it’s a big barrier to entry. Facebook has thousands of people able to respond to reports in a short period of time. Decentralised non-commercial Lemmy instances can never meet this, so we have a problem that needs a solution.

      • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        I’m curious what this looks like for Mastodon. Of the top X accounts listed by followers, what proportion are on instances run by the Mastodon organisation?

    • Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      As a user, I really rally don’t want to start “instanse hoping” for lemmy. I just want to sign in and that’s it. Fediverse decentralized nature is also it’s drawback