EDIT: we just crossed 30K 🥳
We are now at 28.5K users (see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list). The top 10 instances also got a decent boost in user count. With the exception of beehaw.org which defederated, the Fediverse is thriving 🔥
2nd place!!
@AlmightySnoo
I’d rather not see one instance become overly dominant, it just acts to centralize content and puts undue strain on that instance.Thing is, as long as it’s not possible to merge similar communities from different instances, large instances are actually preferable from a User uxperience point of view.
@hardypart
Agreed; I was more concerned with the possibility of the vast bulk of communities ending up on a couple instances rather than having major communities spread out. Having some way to keep similar communities connected and effectively moderated would be a great boon for us. How we best go about that, I’m not sure.
We are also the biggest lemmy instance that still accepts signups ATM
I’ve been unable to get the sign up process to finish on Lenny.world. Fill out the fields and the submit button just spins forever.
There is already a user named Teh in lemmy.world so maybe that’s why You are unable to create an account
Time to divide methinks
i’d rather have a mesh of small-ish instances instead of several huge ones, that aside the more people the better.
I think that will be a lot more feasible if the capability to migrate user accounts between instances is added.
Right now for a new user joining the fediverse, the largest instances are the best option since they are the most likely to remain up and federated with most other instances. Why would you join some random smaller instance when there’s a clearly established one already there?
Making it possible to change instances would remove some of this friction - then your choice of initial instance isn’t important.
Right. There are a bunch of instances being created by people leaving reddit. A lot of them are not likely to survive. And if that’s where I created my account, it’s just gone. I can’t even access it from elsewhere in the fediverse.
Yeah, and I moderate a few communities. If an instance disappears so do my communities.
LOL let’s hope it is one of the big servers. Need to spread users around.
check https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse instead, we have MUCH more users than you think.
Edit: also note that beehaw isn’t completely defederated. They only defederated from sh.itjust.works and Lemmy.world.
They defederated from dozens of instances actually
Holy cow! It would probably be easier do just allow those they want to see lol (whitelist instead of blacklist)
Obviously censorship of any variety is a slippery slope, but holy hell some of what’s listed there is problematic. If I joined Beehaw in the hopes of enjoying a safe community for various minority groups like they are trying to promote, I’d feel decidedly un-safe seeing posts from skinhead instances and others with outright racial slurs in the names.
The world is varied. It’s probably better to accept it and start living in it, instead of hiding in a corner.
They already have to do that in the real world. There is no reason they need to put up with it online too.
And to think I made this account because it was a nice small instance with only 100 active users. That worked out well.
I enjoy everything being in one place but it seems to defeat the purpose of the fediverse.
It’s gotta start somewhere though. It makes sense that as refugees flock over they’ll gravitate towards the largest instance, because the expectation is that’s where the usage is and they don’t yet grok how the Fediverse works. As they settle in, I’d expect a number of them to spread out a bit. Once we can migrate accounts I’d expect the load to be distributed even better.
Load would not be distributed though right? Because all the user data / activity would just be copied to every federating instance. Fediverse is more about redundancy & lack of centralized control, rather than load balancing.
Yes and no? Maybe? I’m still figuring out how all this works lol. I know that instances take on the load of their users and communities.
As I understand it the federation protocol is copying all the data from instance to instance. I think data is probably going to be the most taxing part of running a social media site, but since all the data is replicated, there wont be much load sharing there. Each instance will be taking care of the cpu/load requirements of rendering/serving the pages for their users, so there is some scaling benefits there to distribution. Anyway, I’m also still learning as well! I think we all are lol
When I signed up to lemmy.world, I thought I was choosing one instance to use. I didn’t intially realize they were ALL available from RVERY instance.
Since then I’ve joined Lemmy.ca, lemmynsfw, and beehaw.
But then you’re still not getting it? You don’t need to join other instances, you can subscribe to communities from any instances in the Fediverse without joining another instance.
That’s what I’m saying, when I joined I thought I HAD to, since I didn’t understand federation.
Now I know how it works
I like lemmy.world because it seems to be neutral and doesn’t have heavy handed moderators. Communities are allowed to bloom and grow. It’s scalable.
I respect what Beehaw wants to do, but their goals are not realistic if they want to be a platform of any significant size.
So far I also like the communities I’ve seen on Lemmy.ml, but there have been a lot of technical/server issues.
deleted by creator
seemed like a genuine nice guy
He indeed is, on top of truly knowing what he’s doing.
My reason for being here is, while checking other instances, I saw a post by lemmy.ml admins saying they were overloaded by the influx of new people.
Since they had 1k people, I thought max 500 could be a good number (lemmy.world was a bit less than 500 when I joined).
I checked small instances and this one gave me really good vibes, more than the others, so here I am and I couldn’t be happier about it :)
There were only 500 people on lemmy.world when you started? How long ago if you don’t mind me asking?
I joined only 10 days ago, growth has been crazy :D
Holy moly, it really is taking off fast.
He started lemmy.world on June 1st
but their goals are not realistic if they want to be a platform of any significant size.
As I understand it, they don’t care about being big, they care about having a community of people that align to their principles.
Problem is, if you don’t pay too much attention to their server description, you might not realize what their principles are.
I think they got so big because many people were just trying to join any instance under the massive influx, without thinking much about it, and beehaw became much bigger than they intended to be (or expected).
Now that they have defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, people “not intended” to be there are leaving, that should bring them “more down” than they currently are, I think that’s what they actually want.
Beehaw controls their sign-ups. What they don’t like are people they have not vetted commenting on posts in their communities. They don’t like it because some people were ‘trolling and spamming’ and they can’t keep up with the moderation.
They have 4 admin ls trying to do everything and they are not going to open up until they get moderation tools that make it possible to run a large site with just those 4 people.
Basically, they don’t have a philosophy of running a server that is compatible with being in a federated environment.
They are not intended to be a large site, at all.
Whether that’s compatible with federation or not, I don’t know, but I honestly couldn’t care less and I don’t get why some people still think it’s a big deal.
There were 2 big communities of value on their server but there are already growing alternatives elsewhere, so everything is fine in my book, that’s the beauty of the fediverse IMO.
It is only a big deal if new people.sign up there, get a poor impression of what lemmy is, and never try any other lemmy experience again.
That is what the big deal is. People want lemmy to be successful and to grow into a network of servers with good participation.
I dont care what beehaw does, I just feel they should not be listed on discovery sites while they are not sanely federated.
You’re right, it’s a problem for new users unfortunately, beehaw should be quite more explicit on their server descriptions and rules.
Not sure about delisting them, that would be detrimental to those actually looking for a place like that, but they surely shouldn’t recommend people to go there as a general instance, it’s not just about federation, even if they were federated, that place is not for everyone.
I signed up for both kbin.social and Lemmy.world as I’m figuring things out. So I’m sure there’s plenty of cross over between the members of each community. I just wonder how much.
What does it mean that beehaw.ord is defederated?
It stopped receiving posts or comments from other instances like lemmy.world. Their reasoning is that they want a highly moderated “safe” instance, but since moderation tools are still very primitive, they decided to defederate, it was easier than trying to moderate posts from the big instances. They said they will re-federate once mod tools improve.
They only defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works (don’t remember where the dots were in that). If you look at their blocklist they’re also defederated from a shitload of other instances, but most of those are some combination of spam, illegal content, and/or Nazis, which is fair.
I like the small instance I belong to. It’s represented by one or two of those buildings in that picture and that’s okay.
We are all in this together.
@AlmightySnoo fediverse is supposed to scale with more servers, not bigger servers
Rather, more instances, not servers. An instance can scale out using as many servers as the owner can tolerate.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one managing a horizontally scaled fediverse instance on a cloud platform though, that shit adds up fast, and no way in hell is anyone going to donate here.
I honestly don’t get how that’s supposed to work indefinitely, that’s usually where ad money comes in and… god dammit we’re back to square one lol. I’m here for a good time, not a long time 😎
I definitely think that ads will start appearing on the bigger instances especially since the overhead will most likely outpace donations. I could also see a lot of super small instances pop up just for people to host for their friends. I’m thinking about creating an instance just for me and a few friends but I’ll definitely have to deviate from my standard Reddiy username, can’t let that cat out of the bag.
I’ve said it before, but I really think that “Reddit Gold” was an excellent non-invasive monetization strategy.
Gold didn’t really do much but put a little coin above a comment, and it supported the site for a long time without having to pump in advertising, which many people would block anyway.
I gilded a total of 3 times maybe, over the years. And that $12 or whatever was way more than Reddit ever got out of me from ads, since I block them all.
There will be both. I think many will appreciate the simplicity of large instances.
Funny thing for me, is that Beehaw was the first bit of the Fediverse I ever came across. Tried to sign up, twice, didn’t work. So that’s how I ended up on .world, the first group I found that didn’t want an essay to sign up.
I was on beehaw until they defederated, just seemed like the wrong answer to me and one that will just end up being damaging to Lemmy, especially the way they went about it.
Defederation is kind of a core concept of Lemmy isn’t it?
Yeah. People struggle with the idea of “independent websites” when you can view posts from them on other websites.
And when there isn’t a hedge fund backing them.
Are you originally from beehaw? I’ve seen you defending them many times and I almost always agree with your points. Keep up the good work 🫡
This exchange right here, sir.
Wholesome. Thank you.
Nope. I’ve never actually directly been to the site.
I just stumbled into Mastodon last April to watch people flee Twitter, and fell in love with the whole distributed social concept.
The Internet was a digital anarchist space when I first encountered it in the 90s, and that’s what I want it to be again. And the right to disengage is tied up in that.
Cool. You’re a valuable contributor and I hope you stick around. I was also hoping for an opportunity to apologize to beehaw on behalf of my server 🤷
But they do want your email address. Even Reddit didn’t require that.
I don’t think so. I’ve signed up on beehaw without an email address.
