Okay, it’s actually 18955 at the time of this post. I’m looking at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and lemmy.world has already passed beehaw.org by a large margin for second place.
Can’t wait for this place to start filling out!
UPDATE: 5 minutes after the post, it’s now 19061. Officially more than 19000!
I think the federated nature of the platform may help to reinforce those positive attributes. Unmoderated instances with low quality content are at risk of being defederated, and as evident by the mod log, the mods do enforce rules on inflammatory and low quality content.
Does lemmy.world have any unfederated instances? I was preferring the freedom of chosing to block communities myself but I started running into some very toxic posts that make me feel like I took a wrong turn and I’m gonna get stabbed in a dark alley lol! I’d rather stick to the friendly, positive and useful posts. I would rather avoid that aspect of Reddit here.
See https://lemmy.world/instances. This information is public; there’s a link at the bottom of every page (at least on the desktop view).