EDIT: Just crossed 26000!

Almost! At the time of this post, lemmy.world has a whopping 25733 users and is growing fast.

Since my last post yesterday, it has added 4000 new users, making it the clear second-largest lemmy instance out there. Also quickly catching up to lemmy.ml’s 36000 (not taking new signups).

beehaw.org (3rd largest) sits at 12500 users, partly because of more restrictive registration requirements.

Source: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

Exciting to see all this growth!

  • Danny M@lemmy.escapebigtech.infoEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    While this is indeed awesome remember that the whole point in federation is having a lot of small communities rather than one or two huge ones.

    In large part the same also happened on mastodon where mastodon.social has 200k people. This is not the way that ti’s supposed to work; no single instance should have this many users, in fact often it’s better to have instances for maybe 50 users at most

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      Anyone who is really hoping for the “fediverse” (fuck me I hate that name) to actually play out that way is delusional. 99.9% of casual users don’t care about federation, they care about convenience. They want to go where the people are. This was always going to happen to federated sites as they get big, one will win out as the most popular. As you said, happened with mastodon, will happen here, will happen on any other federated service like peer tube or whatever it’s called.

      • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        I’m mostly focused on going to a place and seeing lots of posts and comments. Behind the scenes, the tech that powers it? While I’m interested in it from a tech stand point, most regular people just don’t care.

      • lich_hegemon@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        Email works, or used to until giant corporations consolidated hundreds of small providers into a handful. I don’t know why it wouldn’t work for this.

        Sure, the average user doesn’t care how it works. That doesn’t mean they can’t use it as intended anyway.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
        0·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, combine that with folks not understanding while registering that you can still see things from other servers while registering. They may kick the big one thinking it means they’ll see the most content.

      • Danny M@lemmy.escapebigtech.info
        0·
        2 years ago

        you’re right that a large majority of people do not care, but this mentality will begin to change at some point. Also, the entire point of this is that it doesn’t matter where the users are, because they can still join the same communities. Now, there are obviously a lot of things that need to improve in lemmy to make it more usable, but federation isn’t one of them. The ActivityPub protocol is simple, yet powerful and relatively scalable.

  • MadCybertist@kbin.social
    0·
    2 years ago

    Except BeeHaw as defederated lemmy.world - which is a shame. Step in the wrong direction IMO. That’s going to be a huge problem because now if you’re a BeeHaw member you no longer see anything lemmy.world related - you’re suddenly, overnight, cut off from thousands of people and posts.

    Having these larger instances owned by 1 person like they all are now is a shame, but unavoidable at the beginning I suppose. One of them gets bitter and you have thousands defederated. I guess over time as things splinter up more it may get better.

    I’ll likely just spin up my own instance so I can federate with everyone and never be dropped (at least from my side).

    • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      It seems beehaw doesn’t have enough mod power to deal with the current influx of trolls, I don’t agree with what they did but I do understand why they did it.

    • SeatBeeSate@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      I kinda understand beehaws stance. Lemmy.world is very lightly moderated right now, allowing a huge influx of problems, questionable posts, NSFW in wrong sections, tons of racism and bigotry flowing out the walls. Maybe if more people get that shit under control they will reconsider.

        • minimar@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 years ago

          They’ve been primarily targeting minority communities, not just dumping shit into random posts.

        • Aer@lemmy.world
          01·
          2 years ago

          We do need better tools don’t get me wrong! That said… Admining for some bigger communities I have had a total of 3 reports, only needed to act on 1. Banned 1 person, from a small asexual community I run for bigotry but outside of that… It has been pretty quiet. Not to down play it beehaw probably deal with a lot of shitty people too. Especially in the bigger LGBT+ community.

          There are some really toxic instances out there, but as far as they go. I don’t think Lemmy.World is anything worse than what you see in Reddit on a good day.

    • CascadingSymmetry@mander.xyz
      0·
      2 years ago

      This is why you choose not to have an account on beehaw or lemmy.world and still interact with both. Picking and lemmey instance to live on should be taking everyone some time until you see how the they function. You can even host your own lemmy instance.

      • dingus@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        The problem is when you’ve already been participating and growing your sub list on a lemmy.world account and then beehaw pulls this shit. Suddenly half my subs are taken away without warning.

    • seacocker@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      I’m hoping we’ll see no code online hosting options one day, would make single user instances a lot easier.

      I was on Beehaw up until they announced the defederation, switch here straight after.

    • 3melvi@feddit.it
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, defederation is not the answer. We are few and we need to stick together. That’s the whole point of the fediverse after all, many connected together.

    • sanjosanjo@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      I’m thinking about self-hosting an instance, but I’m not clear if these bigger instances would block me because I’m some little unknown server. Would they have to manually give me access to interact (federate?) with them if I self-host? Or would I automatically be able to post on their server?

      • pleasemakesense@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        Think they would have to defederate manually, I’ve seen people running instances with only themselves as members with no complaints

      • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        Probably the integration of modding tools like AutoMod would be heaps handy here, it could automatically flag potentially troublesome posts and help cut back on spam / bad actors.

        From memory Reddit uses automod and so does twitch / discord. Though I’m not sure if they actively let you integrate with it directly on third party sites

        • Bardak@lemmy.ca
          0·
          2 years ago

          I think I would be helpful for instances to have more control over federation than turning on or of for there instances. Ideally I think giving lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works read only access to Beehaw would have been the best option while we wait for better moderation tools. Until those options exist though they didn’t really have much other choice.

        • Jamie@jamie.moe
          0·
          2 years ago

          There is an advantage that Lemmy’s backend is entirely an API with a detached frontend. There are already API wrappers for Rust and Typescript that are officially supported, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone writes a robust automod that can be implemented for communities that desire one.

          I have a bit of interest in doing it, but I know nothing about the API itself, so I’m not sure how easy it would be to grab every new thing submitted to a community or instance for moderation.

          • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
            0·
            2 years ago

            Yeah I’m also interested in seeing how all of these sites work and looking at ways I can help improve it. The whole positing process / propagation process seems pretty complex though so I’ll probably let the more familiar devs work on it for now.

            From what I understand though, each admin (for example kbin.social) is maintaining a fork of their project so they could implement automod on their own local content, but that wouldn’t stop propagated content (e.g from Lemmy) coming in that’s spam.

            Seems like the issue might need to be fixed on a site by site basis.

      • GreenPlasticSushiGrass@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        It’s a shame that beehaw had to use a “nuke” because other moderation tools weren’t available, but I think it makes for a great natural experiment in the early fediverse. Beehaw wants to build an instance with higher community standards, as is their right. Will defederation of lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works lead to fewer sign-ups at beehaw? Will members leave? Will they just make accounts at other instances and keep their beehaw account? Will this help spread membership to smaller instances? It should be interesting.

        • JanoRis@kbin.social
          0·
          2 years ago

          isn’t it the best to use another instance than beehive, lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works in that case? you will still have access to all other communities. Been thinking of creating another account on feddit, since it is probably too local to get on beehives shitlist and other instances might be reluctant to just block out a whole country community

            • bob@lemmy.havocperil.uk
              0·
              2 years ago

              that nutscrape gif really takes me back. I miss the 90s when all of the internet felt like Lemmy does today

              • JackbyDev@programming.dev
                0·
                2 years ago

                Yeah, I was looking for a profile picture to upload. I found this in my pictures folder. No idea where I got it from. Probably just downloaded it because I thought it looked cool. I’m surprised it is animated in browsers.

                After I uploaded it I did notice the feeling of the early internet. I was born in 1991 so I wasn’t really using the internet back then but I imagine this might be what it felt like to an extent. :)

  • INeedMana@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I love .world and I’m happy to see it grow. But at the same time I think such disproportion is not great and userbase should be more spread out.

    There should be some kind of “tumbler” on join-lemmy

    • CascadingSymmetry@mander.xyzEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yes they seriously should. I get the people don’t like the hassle of making multiple accounts or spending too long choosing where to live. I think with these early days though it is a wise thing to do. You don’t have to live on the most popular server to enjoy the experience and talk to everyone.

  • MBM@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Man, when I joined this was a brand new instance with only few users. That wasn’t even that long ago.

  • yacht_boy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Gotta admit, a week ago when people were posting about Lemmy I didn’t see it working. There were something like 500 active users when I checked join-lemmy.org. That was just not enough of a crictical mass to make it work.

    Now I’ve been here a few days (with another login at kbin) and if this volume of traffic keeps up (i.e., there’s enough happening to be interesting and make it worth coming back), I think I can live without reddit. I’m happyt to be wrong!

  • Phil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    We’re here! 10 year reddit user, deleted my account last week. Forcing myself to post and not just lurk. Fellow lurkers please comment a bit. Once traffic is decent you may resume your lurking. Thank you

    • Kettlepants@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Similar. About seven years? Deleted and moved to lemm.ee and frankly I think it’s good that we’re having to learn about federation etc. An appropriate barrier to participation that is easily overcome if you just give it a little bit of your time. Reddit can go insert itself into the anus of the wicked witch of the west. And Spez can do the same.

    • 3melvi@feddit.itEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Hi, fellow lurker! I’ve being doing my part commenting here and there. I’m loving this place!

    • DevilsVice@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      This is for sure a good thing to note. While bits of potential advertisement can be made by lurking, new users will be more inclined to join and stay if they see people.

    • tallwookie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      15 years for me, ditched reddit a few days ago. platform is toxic, management doesnt care about the userbase at all.

      fuck em

    • FearTheCron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I am a long time lurker from Reddit as well. Now I started a community for back country skiing !backcountry@lemmy.world . Feel free to come watch me awkwardly post trip pictures trying to get the community going :-)

      • Phil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Subscribed! I’ve only been once and it ended with a concussion so I’ll vicariously live through you guys

    • Resonosity@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Crawling out of lurking to show support. Using Jerboa right now, but I keep getting timeouts and it’s making browsing clunky since all my upvotes/comments are being undone.

      But otherwise I love the concept of the fediverse so I’m here to stay

      • UnicornKitty@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I’m getting that problem too. I saw that word - fediverse - a lot recently and it seemed like a concept that would be beyond me so I didn’t even look. Now that I have, my mind is blown and technology continues to amaze me. The networks just get larger and I love it.

  • Pekka@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I would not be surprised if lemmy.world will outgrow lemmy.ml this month. Lemmy.world has a lot of active communities and meanwhile lemmy.ml. is not allowing new registrations and many of the existing communities look like they are no longer maintained or used.

  • Soullioness@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    If you’re having a hard time seeing all the columns on mobile, use “view as desktop” in your browser settings. It’s the only way I can see all the columns. (Android / Opera)

  • DopaDodge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    We out here!

    I’ve been a full-time lurker only at Reddit for over 10 years, never made a single comment there. Never even created an account. I suppose I don’t have any interesting reasons other than I never really had a desire to engage in those communities but did like it as a lookup resource. I’m an ‘internet old-fart’ that has always preferred forums and even ran a few back in the day.

    The fediverse is the first ‘newer’ social system that gives me those old-school forum vibes while at the same time being fresh and more connected. It feels like this is one of those ‘shifts’ in internet history and is a good time to hop back on the internet social train.

    • tobor@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It really does feel like a shift. Of course it doesn’t have to be anything near as big as Reddit and that’s alright. This can be its own thing, which I’m pretty happy to be a part of.

      Definitely know what you mean on the old school vibes though, I wonder if part of it is because “reddiquite” feels so unnecessary here, you don’t have to post in fear of a slew of downvotes.

      • DopaDodge@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Agreed.

        I’ve never really experienced that so much since I didn’t actually engage with Reddit but I understand what you mean. In the forum days, we used to do ‘Post Exchanges’ or other events with other communities (shout-out to ye old: https://www.theadminzone.com) to try and increase engagement. This federation system is the perfect evolution of that, its like having all of these forum communities but we can all see and interact with each other.

        My only concern is that like most things, if/once it gets popular it will start attracting more of the worst of the internet (and humanity). Right now people flocking here are usually more technically inclined or those willing to put more effort into trying something new. But hopefully this is were federation can help some as its much easier to have separate communities that make it less effective for bots, trolls and other degenerates to overtake, thus keeping the content appealing and interesting to engage with.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    We’re coming over from Reddit. The damage their CEO is doing is becoming permanent.