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:

  • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
    71·
    3 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)

  • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    739·
    3 months ago

    2 observations:

    1. Wow I didn’t think hexbear was that large. That’s unfortunate…

    2. The fact that Lemmyworld is like 40% of the pie is NOT good. People are clearly not understanding or not caring thay the point of the fediverse is to prevent any one instance from having too much power. People need to leave lemmy world and join other smaller instances. If lemmy world were to shut down, imagine how many of the most popular communities would be gone.

    • ericjmorey@discuss.onlineEnglish
      294·
      3 months ago

      Lemmy.world has no lock in on their “power”. They have the most volunteer labor, money, and infrastructure. That’s makes them stable, so people aren’t worried about their data suddenly going offline (like kbin) and they don’t worry about the service being flaky.

      • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
        171·
        3 months ago

        The same can be said about gmail and it is the same kind of problem here. Yes lemmy.world is not a profit orient it giant, but it is still a problem when one actor has this power over a federated network. (the scale of the problem is of course a lot larger with gmail)

        • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
          21·
          3 months ago

          Technical issues with Lemmy are, I think, still driving people to larger instances.

          The big one is that if I make a community on a smaller instance, and gain ANY amount of volume and traction (which is not all that easy to do in the first place) and that server vanishes, shit’s just… dead. It’s gone and not coming back, because you can’t move a community from a dead server to a live server.

          Which means using one of the big, established, funded, stable, working instances is the only rational choice, but that also means I’ll probably just make an account and post exclusively from there, and thus you end up in this cycle of everyone just going to one of the larger instances in preference to any of the smaller ones.

          Everyone goes on and on and on about account portability being very important (which, I suppose it is: I don’t think we need account portability but rather distributed identity independent of the specific platform you’re using, but that’s a whole different technical mess) but for something like Lemmy, being assured that the community you’re working on will survive servers vanishing and a means to “take ownership” in a way that lets you port it to another home if and when your instance dies - because, for the most part, it’s going to at some point - is far far more needed.

          • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            7·
            3 months ago

            Which means using one of the big, established, funded, stable, working instances is the only rational choice, but that also means I’ll probably just make an account and post exclusively from there, and thus you end up in this cycle of everyone just going to one of the larger instances in preference to any of the smaller ones.

            The size difference between Lemmy.world and lemm.ee could still be improved

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            52·
            3 months ago

            It’s that, plus the next largest instance being practically unusable due to hyper aggressive tankie censorship. Getting banned from .ml for not sucking Stalin’s boot hard enough is practically a rite of passage at this point.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        While spreading out is good, this isn’t something like cryptocurrency where it’s specifically bad if you have over 50% share. Each instance is the source of truth for their users and communities hosted there. It’s not like a block chain where something with over half can suddenly define their own truth for everyone. So it’s not necessarily a massive cause for alarm.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.ukEnglish
      16·
      3 months ago

      The problem is most likely people that are new to the fediverse/lemmy just not understanding it and choosing a “default”, popular instance. I was going to pick it as a safe option when I first came here but it was under load and wasn’t accepting new users, where I then had to find another instance and settled on feddit.uk.

      It would be good if lemmy instances could have the option of “load balancing” new users, so if the current instance has way more active users than it’s federated wtih then it disables registration but recommends other, smaller instances to the user.

      • ngwoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        We just need a way to make it easy to seamlessly transfer both users and communities to another instance then it really won’t matter if one gets disproportionately large because a shutdown won’t affect anything. Ideally the inner workings should be as invisible to the end user as possible.

    • Monstrosity@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      When you enter “how to join Lemmy” in search engines one of the first results is this Reddit thread, which explicitly suggests people join Lemmyworld.

      In fact, when I point people to Lemmy via Reddit, I use that post also because that suggestion actually makes it way more approachable. I think most people, myself included, are intimidated by multiple servers and feel like they’re “intruding” into private spaces. The size of Lemmyworld might help people feel like it’s more anonymous and a little easier to join as a result, especially since they are being asked to wait for “approval”, which is pretty unusual on the modern Net, let’s be honest.

    • goosehorse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      I started on a small instance that fortunately gave a heads up when they decided to shut down. When I moved to a second, small instance where I ported all my community subscriptions, it shut down with no warning. It’s a shame, because both instances were topically-focused and small enough to avoid defederation drama.

      I love the idea of decentralized infrastructure, but now I’m on .world because I just don’t have the time or willpower to move every few months, and I definitely don’t have the wherewithal to run my own instance.

      • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Try searching for a local community, especially if English is not your first language.

    • Ategon@programming.devEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      .ml and hexbear have been around much longer than the other instances so have built up more subscribers

    • HereIAm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      There’s a bit of choice paralasys when joining Lemmy. Even if you know how the fediverse works you won’t have knowledge of the culture and relationships of different instances.

      I joined Lemmy.world because it advertises itself as the vanilla flavour of the fediverse, so it makes it an easy pick for someone like me who didn’t quite understand how it all hangs together.

      But I do agree with you, and I’m looking to migrate after some concerning things have come up about the lemmy.world owner.

      Edit: confused the owner of lemmy.world and lemmy.ml.

      • Preflight_Tomato@lemm.eeEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        The choice paralysis is real. I chose lemm.ee because it was easy to type into the address bar, and I’ve stuck around because the admin seems pretty level-headed.

        • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I agree on the choice paralysis. I ended up with Feddit.it because my native language is Italian and that’s the biggest instance in my language.

      • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        41·
        3 months ago

        But I do agree with you, and I’m looking to migrate after some concerning things have come up about the lemmy.world owner.

        Lemm.ee should fit your bill

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
      5·
      3 months ago

      I mean the first problem went away when I sorted the communities by active users, though the second one got way worse with it XD

        • CentauriBeau@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          Please disregard, after reading further in the comments I get the gist. I guess as I use LemmyWorld I don’t have to deal with them.

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          52·
          3 months ago

          They openly state that their primarily goals in federation is to be obnoxious trolls, and boy howdy do they put a lot of energy into it. They are first and foremost, just obnoxious. It’s like 20% teenagers going through their edgy anti establishment phase, and then the rest are right wing, Russian, and Chinese trolls playing soggy waffle with each other. They pretend to be super serious about LGBT issues but then simp for Hamas, Iran and Russia. And one of their tankie leaders just got caught calling trans issues “western pink washing.”

          It’s just a mess. It’s probably a bit overblown, but the community is legitimately annoying if nothing else.

  • Ategon@programming.devEnglish
    36·
    3 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)

  • cron@feddit.orgEnglish
    28·
    3 months ago

    I think subscriber count is probably not ideal. I’ve seen communities where the number subscribers is 10x the number of active monthly users.

    For other communities, subscribers is about equal to active users.

  • jay@mbin.zerojay.com
    22·
    3 months ago

    Probably unintended side-effect of this post: A few people like me discovering new communities to follow. Thank you!

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    211·
    3 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.

    • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      3 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
        11·
        3 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

        • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
          4·
          3 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?

          • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
            4·
            3 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·
            3 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.

            • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
              2·
              3 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·
                3 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.

              • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
                2·
                3 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·
                  3 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.

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            2·
            3 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.

          • madjo@feddit.nlEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

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

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

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

        • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

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

          • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
            3·
            3 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·
        3 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.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      3 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.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netEnglish
      14·
      3 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
        3·
        3 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.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.todayEnglish
      141·
      3 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.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      3 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.

    • auzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      3 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·
        3 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.

    • voracread@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 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·
        3 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.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      86·
      3 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.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        21·
        3 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·
          3 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.

      • IceHouse@lemmy.zipEnglish
        43·
        3 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
          33·
          3 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.

    • Kaiyoto@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 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.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.eeEnglish
    172·
    3 months ago

    Duplicate instances are a problem imho. You can see the network effect synergy working by how many communities flock to the biggest instance lemmy.world.

    There also need to be tools to merge two communities on separate instances, or move them.

    Two of my niche instances tried to leave reddit, but then there were two versions, one on .ml and one on .world. Confusing. Maybe there need to be reviews for communities or instances.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      I wouldn’t mind so much if there were a way to see duplicate posts across instances. I guess it’d be hard to implement but as it stands unless it’s specifically a crosspost you can’t find other discussions of the same media

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        3 months ago

        Oh yeah absolutely, lemmy definitely needs better cross posting. Currently crossposts are kinda yanky with quote blocks. I’d also love to see reposts that are detected automatically.

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

          I’d also love to see reposts that are detected automatically.

          Reposts are based on the URL linked in the post. If it’s the same URL, both posts will display as crossposts.

    • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      !fedigrow@lemm.ee is a community dedicated to this.

      There also need to be tools to merge two communities on separate instances, or move them.

      The issue is not the tools, more the people. I contacted mods of !android@lemmy.world and !askandroid@lemdro.id a while ago to see if they wanted to merge, both sides wanted to stay on their own communities.

      There are plenty of other examples, usually a large LW community, but with a more active non-LW alternative. LW wants to keep their community open, and the non-LW doesn’t have much power besides showing they are more active.

    • blue_berry@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Piefed has topics, so different fediverse communities can be viewed through the Fediverse-topic for example