Spreading of the 100 biggest Lemmy communities

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

https://media.gehirneimer.de/3f/93/3f93a1af4263b9bf619fdb8678fd0ab2e3df765c83e302fcacc479fb5fe11907.png

The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.

	beehaw.org	hexbear.net	lemdro.id	lemmy.blahaj.zone	lemmy.dbzer0.com	lemmy.ml	lemmy.one	lemmy.world	lemmynsfw.com	sh.itjust.works	sopuli.xyz
Community Count	6	33	1	1	1	14	1	39	2	1	1
Community Subscriber Count	133450	663204	17052	15907	53006	356460	16257	851950	33586	16006	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")

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Comments

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NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I knew hexbear was big but not that big

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- Emmie@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform
  
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  - NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah I can’t say I was bothered when LW defederated. I’ve gotten in way fewer stupid arguments since they did the same with Lemmygrad. IIRC LW didn’t even let hexbear federate in the first place.
    
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  - conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too.
    
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  - SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Join an instance that’s defederated from them. I haven’t seen their nonsense in months.
    
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  - OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I mean, I don’t know enough about North Korea here but Lenin decriminalized homosexuality in like 1920. Stalin recriminalized it in 1932-33 but for a bit there the Soviet Union was the most LGBT friendly country in the world.
    
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  - Sootius@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What’s your point?
    
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  - cows_are_underrated@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s why I’m glad my instance blocked them.
    
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- TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.
  
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Interesting, I expected them to be much larger
    
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- FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They’ve existed for a while. A lot of subscribers are inactive users. Kind of like reddit where a sub can have 5k people and still be inactive.
  
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- flamingos@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s less that they’re big, but old.
  
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- WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not really surprising. 10 out of the 10 most commented posts in the past year are on hexbear (the top 2 being the weekly trans mega threads). Granted, a lot of that is just the hyper-active posting of a few users. Regardless, if you want a trans community, there’s basically no active alternative to hexbear’s traaa here.
  
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  - NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What about blahaj?
    
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- Alk@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.
  
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  - sunglocto@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Your instance is defederated from them
    
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  - JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.
    
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  - NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.
    
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- ByteMe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I haven’t even heard of it xd
  
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  - 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.
    
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  - Kroxx@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    . world is defederated with hexbear iirc
    
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- kenkenken@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Gab also was big, but its role for the fediverse wasn’t.
  
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- cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  OFL, what is going on with this hexbear? And is there any reason behind the name?
  
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  - WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    And is there any reason behind the name? A bear, but hexagon shaped, is their mascot.
    
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FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
2 observations:

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

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.
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- ericjmorey@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  - JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Whole 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.
    
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- Monstrosity@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  When you enter “how to join Lemmy” in any search engine, one of the first results you get 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.
  
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- blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  - ngwoo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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
    
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  - Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Great to have you with us. 👍
    
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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  .ml and hexbear have been around much longer than the other instances so have built up more subscribers
  
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- HereIAm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  - Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
    
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  - voracread@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Haven’t heard anything so far, what are they?
    
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨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
    
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- goosehorse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  - Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Try searching for a local community, especially if English is not your first language.
    
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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Definitely
  
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- secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  that’s the main reason I moved away from lemmy.world
  
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wiki_me@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨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)

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- Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Always nice to see lemmynsfw doing well. Those guys are going to bring a lot of people here
  
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  - independantiste@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I couldn’t imagine being a moderator there, the amount of shit they must see uploaded has to be enormous. This would apply to every media-oriented instance but due to their nature I am guessing it’s worse
    
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  - umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    last i checked lemmynsfw just looks like r/gonemild though
    
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  - tacosanonymous@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It would be the hardest thing to moderate if lemmy blows up though.
    
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  - Linkerbaan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Do they even have original posters? I thought it was just onlyfans farmers reposting their Reddit content.
    
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  - ericjmorey@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Quality over quantity is what I would prefer. I think LemmyNSFW is a potential determent for other instances.
    
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- moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Image Image Image
  
  It’s a real mystery, where could these instances possibly be located?
  
  (apologies for derailing, I don’t know where else to post this)
  
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Pretty lemmy.ca is hosted in Canada
    
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Ategon@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨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)

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Image
  
  Manually counted communities in the top 100 per instance and threw it into another pie chart (for active users / month)
  
  This also seems to be different than the results gotten from lemmyverse as the lemmyverse data hasnt been updated in 11 days according to that site
  
  Major changes:
  
  programming.dev is there tied with a bunch of other instances for fourth most communities at 3 (its a 5 way tie)
  
  hexbear is no longer listed since the 1 community is no longer in the top 100
  
  A bunch of instances gained or lost some coms in teh top 100 from variance of things happening in the last week
  
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  - Liz@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Eyyyyy midwest.social!
    
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cron@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.

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Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Based on Monthly active users, the picture is different: lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month

You already see a 4 sh.itjust.works community, a lemmy.ca community, a lemmy.zip community just from the top 30

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db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You didn’t use a black color for us? Heresy!

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Moghul@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of weirdos.

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Resol@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I might as well leave lemmy.world

I’m only concerned about how to transfer all my stuff to the new account. Mastodon makes it super easy.

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- qaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can only export and import followed communities afaik
  
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Mastodon doesn’t allow to transfer posts either
    
    docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move
    
    Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.
    
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- Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Idk if you can transfer likes comments and posts, but you can go to your old account from a new one and star everything with the new account pretty easily. So that at least can transfer.
  
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Mastodon doesn’t allow to transfer posts either
    
    docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move
    
    Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.
    
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KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.

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- qaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lemmy.world has kept open signups open during every large Reddit exodus while many others didn’t. It’s also decently reliable, has decent moderation and is well known. The reason why people didn’t move after is probably because instance migration on Lemmy isn’t possible* so they just stick with what they use.
  
  *Yes I don’t consider exporting/importing followed communities a migration
  
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  - samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Open signups is the biggest reason. Pretty much every other instance wanted you to jump through hoops to sign up with them.
    
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- Eiri@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- Demdaru@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Defederating from Hexbear probably didn’t hurt. I remember when the users were literally flooding .world circlejerking about being the biggest and best instance and that any instance that defederated from them was full of transphobic Nazis.
  
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- Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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- return2ozma@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  During the Reddit API exodus I saw it in lots of comments. That’s how I ended up here.
  
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- voracread@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
  
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reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s very funny that despite most of you hating hexbear so much, they are still one of the biggest.

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tacosanonymous@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Poor lemm.ee

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meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Surprised to see my small instance mentioned here 😅

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NostraDavid@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Programming.dev represent! o7

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LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.

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repungnant_canary@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sorry mate, those figures with no meaningful captions are borderline incomprehensible. Like, what’s the difference between first and second figure?

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FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
suprised mander.xyz is so small

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recursive_recursion@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A barchart might be better however the comparison of instances with the most subscribed accounts doesn’t mean much I feel

we have some users that register but are inactive and/or are infrequently active which could be a sign of lurkers or bots but empty accounts don’t mean much when it comes to the health of an instance.

However; if we look at each community’s active monthly and daily users it can tell another story and that data compared against Reddit’s could be useful for anyone seeking alternatives

I’m rambling with little sleep but hopefully what I’ve said make a little bit of sense

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Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Damn, my hexbear filter is getting a real workout!

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Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Does anyone else just see pacman throwing up a rave?

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Der_Fossyler@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
hey, I see my instance in there 🤗

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Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
One amusing bit re: hexbear, it’s been around almost as long as lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, but it seems was only added to the tracker last year, as it shows up as 12 months old, I have to imagine it’s including posts/comments from before that timeframe because bozhe moi:

Image

Even if you divide the hexbear comments by 4 they’d still be in the top 3. Yappers.

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Dark_Dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Somebody did dirty for shitjustworks instance and that colour

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tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Did you graph these with a JS library? I’d love to improve the community stats page with some more cool graphs like these.

I had a crack at it on these pages, but didn’t dive into specific community info lemmyverse.net/inspect lemmyverse.net/inspect/versions

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My instance doesn’t even make the list. 🥲

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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
OP, you know you don’t have you use a table, right? You can make a bulleted list.

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MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m just happy that Lemmy.ca made the list.

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pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
*instances

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FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Wouldn’t comment or user count be a slightly better metric?

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LiveLM@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Lemmy.zip mentioned 🥳🥳🥳

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