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:

  • @Serinus
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    2128 days ago

    There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little centralization in your federation. It works well enough for email. The point is that you have the option, not that you have to use it.

    You don’t have to trade one extreme for the other. In fact, I think this is the perfect example of that. Lemmy.ml is the developers’ instance, and by default would likely be the largest. Except… you know. Many, many people started there before going to other instances, especially the largest competitor.

    • @[email protected]
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      728 days ago

      The issue is that the kid that owns the ball sets the rules. LW could do something heinous, and the only choices would be to cope or lose half the Fediverse.

      • @[email protected]
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        528 days ago

        The thing is that the value is in the communities and not in the old content. So most likely the mods would just post we move to a new instance and a lot of users would follow. We just saw that on the German speakin lemmy instance feddit.de, which was abandoned and now most of the users and communities moved to feddit.org, which is already one of the larger ones.

        What lemmy really needs is the ability to easily move accounts and communities. Mastodon has that for users already.

        • @[email protected]
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          828 days ago

          The lack of migration is what kept me on ml for several days after I found out what they consider ml stands for.

          One click migration to a different instance would be a huge benefit to the decentralisation effort.

          • threelonmusketeers
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            328 days ago

            what they consider ml stands for

            It’s Mali, right? Right? Not some reference to communism?

          • @[email protected]
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            228 days ago

            The problem with this is trust. If you could seamlessly migrate like this, there’s nothing to stop someone faking a long post/comment on their own instance, making them look very legitimate and then migrating that account to a trusted/legitimate instance.

            Then using that for spam/selling block chain etc.

            People are the reason we can’t have nice things.

          • Blaze (he/him)
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            128 days ago

            Isn’t that much easier nowadays with the one click settings export-import?

        • Blaze (he/him)
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          128 days ago

          What lemmy really needs is the ability to easily move accounts and communities. Mastodon has that for users already.

          Mastodon still doesn’t allow to move posts and comments

          Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media due to technical limitations

          https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

      • @Serinus
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        328 days ago

        You mean like if they went all tankie? Or like AOL email? This has already happened several times before and it’s fine. Google could kill gmail in six months and we’d all move on.

        • @[email protected]
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          28 days ago

          I’ve run into issues where information I want access to just doesn’t exist anymore because of the Reddit fiasco. The people that did that were a small minority of Reddit, and Reddit as a whole was basically unaffected by the protest after it was quashed.

          Imagine the type of chaos it would cause if it came out that the LW admins were getting a corporate kickback to destabilize the Fediverse, or that they were involved in some other equally shady enterprise. It would probably be the end of the Fediverse, either through the created schisms or the lack of will to stop the corporate meddling. It would at least cause massive instability and make us look bad to users who would otherwise think of joining. A lot of information would probably be lost as people tried to push back. I’m sure a lot of people just wouldn’t have the willpower to move their communities elsewhere and there would be a significant number of people supporting the admins’ actions through apathetic inaction.

          • Blaze (he/him)
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            -228 days ago

            Imagine the type of chaos it would cause if it came out that the LW admins were getting a corporate kickback to destabilize the Fediverse, or that they were involved in some other equally shady enterprise. It would probably be the end of the Fediverse, either through the created schisms or the lack of will to stop the corporate meddling

            I agree that LW centralization isn’t good, but I’m not sure such event would be the end of the Fediverse, or Lemmy.

            People would just massively move to other instances. LW communities usually have a non-LW non-lemm.ml alternative (such as [email protected] for [email protected] ), so that should be doable. A bit painful, but manageable.

            • @[email protected]
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              28 days ago

              Imagine my surprise to see you in here talking about LW centralization isn’t good. You came onto a support question (link) for a community I had started with one of my concerns being the LW centralization and you quickly told me to abandon my community. Extremely weird considering you run a generic fantasy community which already exists in many places so felt a little kettle/pot.