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Spreading of the 100 biggest Lemmy communities

https://gehirneimer.de/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/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")

EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:

awful.systems feddit.org feddit.uk hexbear.net lemdro.id lemm.ee lemmy.blahaj.zone lemmy.ca lemmy.dbzer0.com lemmy.ml lemmy.world lemmy.wtf lemmy.zip mander.xyz sh.itjust.works slrpnk.net sopuli.xyz ttrpg.network
Community Count 1 2 2 1 1 3 1 3 3 10 57 1 3 1 5 3 2 1
Community Active Month Count 2616 7363 5289 2952 2898 8898 11422 14910 13752 54949 338384 3602 12020 11469 37365 10897 10070 4107

Community Count:

https://media.gehirneimer.de/21/cd/21cdd1045eb39e2ce9ab01a4b3f70d7dfed9f930a3a40016a62cfe43cad4a991.png

Community Users:

https://media.gehirneimer.de/3c/bb/3cbb159daffa604ec792892381cb0ad6bb41822b9f8fa3f5a113ea5bb96c36be.png

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar
Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar
BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

Nearly but not exactly :D

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar
Blaze ,

Could you please do it based on monthly active users?

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

Oh that would be interesting as well. I will do that. Checking back in 2h :D

Blaze ,

Thanks!

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

I will add both pictures to the main post as well. Here is the Pie chart for community count:

https://media.gehirneimer.de/21/cd/21cdd1045eb39e2ce9ab01a4b3f70d7dfed9f930a3a40016a62cfe43cad4a991.png

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar
Blaze ,

Great !

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

Lemmy.world gets A LOT bigger this way XD

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I knew hexbear was big but not that big

ByteMe ,
@ByteMe@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t even heard of it xd

7U5K3N ,

I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.

DarkThoughts ,

Most instances block them so most communities on those instances won't see them either. Once you find certain communities on instances that don't block them you suddenly see half the comments being from hexbear, which likely quickly makes you block those communities fairly quickly.

Kroxx ,

. world is defederated with hexbear iirc

ByteMe ,
@ByteMe@lemmy.world avatar

Oh. Why?

moody ,

You could go visit hexbear and you’d find out pretty quickly. It’s definitely not for everyone.

TachyonTele ,

It’s an entire instance of teenage trolls

Kroxx ,

Other comments hit on this but I’ll add a little more. There is a good bit of trolls/trolling, some extreme views, and authoritarian government praise. Things like that.

Lemm.ee (my instance) is still federated so I see hexbear post/ comments. It’s definitely a more problematic instance imo.

ByteMe ,
@ByteMe@lemmy.world avatar

Oh okay, got it

Alk ,

What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

I only know it because it is often mentioned when talking about trolling

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

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.

cows_are_underrated ,

Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.

sunglocto ,

Your instance is defederated from them

JohnDClay ,

It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.

Skua ,

It's essentially where reddit's old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it

DarkThoughts ,

Think of it as the Tankie version of The Donald.

Sharkwellington ,

Horseshoe theory strikes again.

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

My guess is that they just needed to have their own community for a lot of stuff because so many instances are defederated from them. Though I am not sure...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I guess it's also natural that subcultures that tend to be banned elsewhere are early adaptors of alternative platforms.

We're lucky we didn't exist when the Trump extremists on Reddit went looking for a new home, or they would probably have been one of the biggest fields in this figure. Hopefully when the right wing extremists arrive instance admins will have the good sense to defederate.

Blaze ,

That’s probably it

goferking0 ,

Or because it’s older than most of the other instances

FundMECFSResearch ,

like Beehaw

KryptonNerd ,

Is there something wrong with beehaw?

FundMECFSResearch ,

No. Just that they’re defederated from lots of big instances so they tend to gave their own communities, which increases their size on chart.

Unlike Hexbear, they chose to be defederated

KryptonNerd ,

Ah that makes sense

synapse1278 ,
@synapse1278@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing wrong with beehaw as far as I know, but a while ago they defederated lemmy.world because the instance is to big and not moderated enough, or something like that.

Binette ,

If I remember correctly, Hexbear was there before the exodus. So that wouldn’t make sense.

kenkenken ,
@kenkenken@sh.itjust.works avatar

Gab also was big, but its role for the fediverse wasn’t.

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

Who or what is/was Gab? 😅

Quill7513 ,

Its like truth social

Emmie ,

It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform unfortunately

I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt ppl who praise Soviets or North Korea

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Emmie , (edited )

I don’t like defederations. I prefer to see everything, every post and comment and then block users/instances on my own if it becomes too much.

Literally a second ago I blocked another tankie, from LW this time. Before I even managed to type this comment fully. But then I don’t shy from making comments that attract them if I disagree with something. So inbox always busy

TomSelleck ,

Same here. I’ll curate my personal feed but I’ll occasionally scroll everything just to see what random new instance I’ll find, and to keep myself aware of what the current rhetoric is with the various groups.

knatschus ,

Sounds like you waste alot of time with people who don’t deserve it

Emmie , (edited )

Yes but this may be a side effect of turning off the points experiment. Instead of getting dopamine from points I only get replies. So it could be that I subconsciously make my comments in a way that is more likely to attract some kind of response.

My main goal for Lemmy was to break Reddit addiction and I feel gaining likes plays a big part in staying glued to the screen

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

Seems like a good strategy would be to not have every post and comment shown to you if your goal is to break your habit of spending too much time on your phone or PC.

li10 ,

I would much rather signup to an instance that handles that for me.

As long as the instance is clear about what they defederate from and their reasons, then I’m happy with that. And if I wasn’t, I could choose a different instance.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

Isn’t your instance federated with hexbear? Seems like it hardly blocks any lemmy instances.

li10 ,

lol, forgot I was even on my feddit.uk account.

I’d already gone through blocking all of that stuff via my app before the defederation stuff happened, but if I were signing up to a new instance I’d appreciate it being blocked by default.

blackn1ght ,

Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).

I did end up blocking the lemmy.ml instance though, fuck that place. I haven’t even blocked hexbear or lemmygrad.

Blackmist ,

I think ideally a Lemmy client could connect to a number of instances, and you could add the more contentious ones yourself.

Some of these places are literally hosting child porn. You don’t want that mirrored to a server that you’re responsible for.

conditional_soup ,

You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it’s exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.

Transporter_Room_3 ,
@Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website avatar

Can you truly say you’ve had the HB experience if you haven’t recieved emoji/sticker/gif spam from people who weren’t alive for 9/11, have never been outside their country, and refuse to listen to opposing views, but know with full certainty that all western countries are 100% full of genociders and colonial rapists who all deserve the glorious death the super benign, extremely peaceful and misunderstood countries of North Korea, China, and Russia who have never once been correctly accused of human rights violations…

And of course, if they point out that your country has dipped into those things in the past, well your entire worldview is shattered and their whataboutism has solved everything and proves you deserve the death they crave for you.

Emmie ,

I am genuinely sad for HB. There are lgbt ppl there, generally dear to me. Seeing them enjoy such cesspit lured in by cultish atmosphere, supporting the very forces that can only destroy but not build anything. It is personal.

geneva_convenience ,

On the flipside there is the .World experience. Where Julian Assagne is a war criminal. And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

Blaze ,

And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

Would you have link to such statements? Seems wild

SteveFromMySpace ,

Join an instance that’s defederated from them. I haven’t seen their nonsense in months.

cows_are_underrated ,

That’s why I’m glad my instance blocked them.

OprahsedCreature ,

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.

Emmie , (edited )

Lemme rest, my palm is all sore

What’s going on with ppl that won’t even do simple google check before commenting something. I for example would be ashamed to peddle some bullshit that is one top search click to disprove or even common sense

OprahsedCreature ,

So do your googling on this. I’ll wait.

Emmie , (edited )

I already did. It took me 5 seconds and even before that I facepalmed hard just from grade school knowledge of the “world”

OprahsedCreature ,

Well don’t be too hard on yourself, you tried your best and that’s all Jesus asks of you

TexMexBazooka ,

They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.

Blaze ,

Interesting, I expected them to be much larger

TexMexBazooka ,

Yeah I was surprised too, but if you go by MAU hexbear and Lemmy.Ml combined are just under 3k last I checked.

Lemm.ee alone has about that many, and Lemmy.world has many times that

FundMECFSResearch ,

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.

flamingos ,

It’s less that they’re big, but old.

cmgvd3lw ,

OFL, what is going on with this hexbear? And is there any reason behind the name?

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

And is there any reason behind the name? A bear, but hexagon shaped, is their mascot.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

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.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

What about blahaj?

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

I’m subscribed to pretty much all the trans coms I know of and traa is 90% of the trans content that shows up. Another 5% are other hexbear trans subs. Traa has as many comments in half a month as mtf@blajah has had in its entire existance and as many in a week as trans@blahaj has made in total (the two largest non-hexbear trans subs afaik).

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

This reads like someone telling me that the nazi bar is the only place to go because the nazi bar has people there all the time and the other bars are mostly empty.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

Cool. Being trans, not tolerating transphobia, and having emotes is comparable to being nazis?

Also, not suggesting people need to go there because its active. I could go to traa, egg, mtf, agender, enby, etc on reddit, but I don’t want to use reddit and a lot of those communities make hexbear look tame in terms of spamminess and immaturity.

finickydesert ,
@finickydesert@lemmy.ml avatar

Is there a way to create a pie like this but on an individual basis?

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

You mean the spread of the communities you are subscribed to? If so: probably yes, but not an easy one as you have to have access to the data (or more easily: the database)

onlinepersona ,

I thought they were blocked everywhere. What’s going on? Bunch of bots or something?

Anti Commercial-AI license

WaterSword ,
@WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

No, it’s just a big community by itself already. So while some big instances have it blocked, they have enough users to just have activity from their own instance.

TexMexBazooka ,

It isn’t big though. They just get kicked out of everywhere else they go for being disruptive assholes, so for every community there’s a hexbear duplicate

ZeroHora ,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

Duplicate with half the posts and a third of comments.

TexMexBazooka ,

All of which are super politically charged

ZeroHora ,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

Depends, the /c/[email protected] is politically charged as expect at any game community, what I found more interesting is the hatred for gamers(this one is deserved).

WaterSword ,
@WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Hexbear (if you disagree with their politics) is basically like a white american from the deep south. They’re perfectly reasonable to talk to as long as it isn’t politics

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

Games is the largest games com by far in terms of posts and comments (150k comments and 15k post vs 71k comments and 3k posts on lemmy world…

News has most posts than any other news and about as many comments as lemmyworld.

Politics has the most posts of any politics coms, but far less comments than lemmyworld’s.

History basically has no competitors (150k comments vs 7k for the next largest)

Movies also has no competitors (75k comments vs 9k for the next largest).

Videos has 56k comments vs lemmyworld’s 13k

Music has 45k comments vs lemmyworld’s 6k

Urbanism has 44k comments vs fuckcar’s 19k

Granted, given Hexbear has been around for 4 years, the number of comments/posts is largely a side effect of age. But it also means calling them duplicates is probably misleading. OTOH, the main trans community there has been very active recently, dwarfing all other trans communities combined.

ZeroHora ,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

They are more “community” than the ex-redditor secluded island that is most of the others instances, that’s definitely the side effect of age.

Binette ,

Hexbear was there before the reddit exodus, so this make no sense.

Please verify your claims before saying nonsense.

TexMexBazooka ,

Because they - specifically Chapo trap house-got all of their communities banned from Reddit years before.

You are not making the argument you think you are

morrowind ,
@morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

Is that table going under the sidebar and off the page for anyone else or just me? (on web)

nokturne213 ,

On mobile I was able to scroll it horizontally.

threelonmusketeers ,

On Thunder, everything (just) fits horizontally:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/67c218d0-1d00-4601-a507-28d268e1e155.jpeg

I might have preferred to scroll horizontally a bit.

Blaze ,

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

Moghul ,

Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of weirdos.

cron ,

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.

tacosanonymous ,

Poor lemm.ee

TexMexBazooka ,

Nah I’d say this is right on par with the philosophy of the instance. Lemm.ee is moreso infrastructure for interacting with the fediverse than a specific community

Blaze ,

Yes, the most active communities (lemm.ee/communities) are

All started by different people than the admin, who is indeed quite hands back regarding communities

tacosanonymous ,

We are small af. I think we are mostly just overflow .world users.

recursive_recursion ,
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

A barchart might be better as 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

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

I added charts that use the monthy active users

wiki_me ,

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)

Blaze ,

Always nice to see lemmynsfw doing well. Those guys are going to bring a lot of people here

independantiste ,
@independantiste@sh.itjust.works avatar

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

Blaze ,

Oh definitely

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

I think it is odd that they have no community in the top 100 anymore when sorted by active users

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

I think it’s good.

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

Quality over quantity is what I would prefer. I think LemmyNSFW is a potential determent for other instances.

tacosanonymous ,

It would be the hardest thing to moderate if lemmy blows up though.

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

Hehehe hardest hehehe

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

I added it to the main post :)
And yeah should have done so in the initial post as well...

Blaze ,

Thanks!

moosetwin ,
@moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar
Blaze , (edited )

Pretty sure lemmy.ca is hosted in Canada

FundMECFSResearch ,

suprised mander.xyz is so small

Blaze ,

!science_memes is the 9th most monthly active community

lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month

FeelzGoodMan420 ,

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.
Blaze ,

Definitely

blackn1ght ,

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.

BentiGorlich OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

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 ,

As someone out of the loop, why is hexbear bad? Alternatively, what is hexbear about?

CentauriBeau ,

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.

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar
ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

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 OP ,
@BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de avatar

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)

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@discuss.online avatar

That’s just how federation works out in every federated service ever.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

I agree in principle that .world containing most of the fediverse’s activity kinda isn’t great for the idea of the democratic nature of the fediverse. However, the point of the ‘verse is that anyone can spool up an instance if they dislike it, or start more communities on existing instances. If .world were to disappear it would suck, but that’s part of the problem with any instance in an informal community. Any of them can disappear.

Ategon ,
@Ategon@programming.dev avatar

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

Monstrosity , (edited )

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.

HereIAm ,

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.

reagansrottencorpse ,

It’s very funny that despite most of you hating hexbear so much, they are still one of the biggest.

OprahsedCreature ,

Turns out Blue MAGA can’t suppress the left. Sad face.

Fitik ,
@Fitik@fedia.io avatar

"Truth social" has more monthly active users than all Lemmy instances combined, does it make it better?

Feathercrown ,

That contrast makes it impossible to read some labels

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