Not to be the fly in the ointment, but you can’t really just add those up and expect that number to be accurate if we’re trying to look at unique users within the fediverse. If I had to hazard a guess, a not-so-insignificant chunk of those probably overlap (i.e. users who have made multiple accounts across several instances). I have made an account across lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, kbin and fedia just as backups in case one instance fails. I might be an extreme case having 4, but pretty sure it’s becoming increasingly common for people to have at least 2 accounts (1 on a different instance).
Yeah I have two accounts. But that’s when lemme.world was kind of crashing because of that update, and I thought I was doing something wrong. So I went to a different instance.
I made a bunch of accounts on a bunch of instances when I first started because I didn’t understand how they were connected. Even now, I’d suggest having one or two on the instances you like and decide which ones work best
Yeah, you’re not wrong. Too bad we don’t have unique user data to know for sure.
That’s why I sorted by active users (users who comment or post, not just lurking) instead to get a more accurate picture with the given data. For example, sh.itjust.works has more users than beehaw.org, but it’s ranked below beehaw because of fewer active users.
I think eventually instances with a lot of duplicate accounts will slowly fall out of the top rankings due to inactivity. That’s why I chose to look at just the top 10.
To be fair, I am sure many people also have multiple accounts on the same instance. I am not sure what is the proportion between people opening accounts for backup like you and people just wanting alt accounts.
With this same logic in mind, I’d assume almost the entire population of lemmynsfw should be disregarded from this count, which is almost certainly majority comprised of people’s porn alts that they want to keep separate from their main accounts.
If anything, I’m betting the population of lemmynsfw is more representative of the number of unique accounts across all instances since there’s really no point in creating more than one porn account.
I don’t know if this is counted but it’s also perfectly reasonable to have accounts on defederated instances. So if this is counted that might inflate the numbers a bit.
yeah same, i made an account on 3 instances, since i see some instances being trigger happy with defederating, its just not clear yet which instances will be the most free.
A quarter million users and that’s not even with all the different instances.
Very cool. Just remember folks, don’t forget to diversify and decentralize! These other instances have some interesting posts and conversations, and by spreading out we make sure no single instance or community can break the fediverse.
A lot of them also restrict content. There are disadvantages to joining smaller instances, depending on the philosophy of the person who runs the instance. There’s even an instance that does not allow communities to be created on its own instance. It will accept applications from people who wish to create one, but they mostly reject applications on their own whim. I think the future of Lemmy as a Reddit alternative will rely on larger, freer instances to be supported well so they have room for growth and change. I have my personal preferences. I don’t want content from exploding-heads, but I also want to see the content I want to see. Some smaller instances are restricting that content, almost seeming to be like cults in the making. There are small instances from which it is impossible to find and subscribe to communities from lemmy.world. You have to search for them on a larger instance, then copy and paste in the address bar in your browser. I imagine on a dedicated phone app that would not be possible. So, you can advocate for “spreading out” all you want. In the end, if the goal is to have a strong alternative to Reddit, spreading out is kind of pointless for a lot of users.
I think there are some good reasons for servers restricting content. programming.dev is one of the biggest examples of this by not allowing users to create communities, however if you wish to moderate a community or ask for someone else to moderate one, and it falls within the interests of the server, there is a good chance it will be created. It might be obvious with that server, but it is almost all content relating to software development. It doesn’t really make sense to create a community of cooking recipes there, especially since several others exist within other servers. The biggest advantage to this in my opinion is that there aren’t dozens of empty communities. If you look at some of the bigger servers that allow users to create their own, there are tons of communities with 0 posts. I think its good that some servers out there allow users to create any community, but it makes sense for many servers to not.
I wasn’t trying to create an argument, just pointing out not all of those instances are bad. No I didn’t assume that was all of what you meant. To me, it seemed like you didn’t understand the goal of instances like programming.dev. I try to keep in mind that many people are still brand new to Lemmy and wanted to offer counterpoints to your original comment. I wasn’t trying to nitpick your comment, sorry if you got the wrong idea.
I think, because it’s a new platform that most of us want to see succeed, everyone is far more active to ensure the communities get established. If there’s a couple of days without a post in one of the 3d printing communities I subscribe to, someone will post a random print they find useful or ask a question about a new filament to keep it active. This low stress discussion is great.
The 3d printing community on that other site ais great, but sometimes it feels like posts don’t gain traction unless it’s on a 1 cubic meter Voron that can print PEEK (translation: very expensive/unique). On the Lemmy communities, there’s more discussions on Enders and Anycubics (translation: most common budget printers).
Yeah I’ve genuinely not missed it, been just over two weeks and I’ve been having so much fun here I haven’t once found myself at a loose end wondering whats happening on Reddit
Which is surprising considering i still run quite a few subs I started and mod a few medium sized ones, when I get back home in a couple of weeks I’ll convert my bots to message me via lemmy instead and I really don’t think I’ll be going back
I took note of it before I left. Other people mentioned it. I didn’t think it would be as big as it was. Kinda cool. Never cared about it enough to check.
I think that Lemmy does need more of the right exposure.
If you search for any Lemmy content on Google or Duck-Duck-Go, you don’t get any good results. This is probably because most people use Apps or secure browsers that don’t allow tracking.
Maybe Duck-Duck-Go need to have a !bang search modifier for Lemmy. duckduckgo.com/bangs
Maybe Duck-Duck-Go need to have a !bang search modifier for Lemmy. duckduckgo.com/bangs
Most likely not feasible, because what the bangs do is passing site:domain.com to the search result. As you know, Lemmy does not have a singular domain name so this won’t work for it. As a matter of fact, there is a bang for Mastodon, but it only searches the biggest instance, mastodon.social.
lemmy.world
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