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An exploration of the Lemmys, for discussion - PerthChat
lemmy.perthchat.org##### What is this post? A quick and dirty look into Lemmy instances, their size
and interactions, and some insights. ##### Disclaimers * I AM NOT AN EXPERT OR
WITNESS: I only started using Lemmy in March 2022. Lemmy was around for around 3
years before that. I am not a developer or instance owner. * I DID NOT GO AND
TALK TO PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF: This is just me exploring for fun and
starting a conversation. This is not a proper study. Consider telling any one
who links you to this page as if it’s an expert historical account that I called
them an idiot. * This is limited by my experience and my searching, it’s not
comprehensive. If someone made a dark instance, I probably won’t find it. If
there’s some deep lore, I probably don’t know it. Thanks to
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list [https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list]
for many of these stats. ##### Alright, Now for the casual rambling. Organic
posting started on lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] from April 2019 so I will consider
that the start of Lemmy as a service (my understanding is that lemmy.ml
[http://lemmy.ml] is the oldest non-dev instance) As of now (May 2022) AFAIK,
the Lemmy-based sites with the most total user comments are: - hexbear.net
[http://hexbear.net] (2.5M) - lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] (114K) - lemmygrad.ml
[http://lemmygrad.ml] (105K) - bakchodi.org [http://bakchodi.org] (42K) -
wolfballs.com [http://wolfballs.com] (15K) - szmer.info [http://szmer.info]
(15K) - feddit.de [http://feddit.de] (3K) - [dev instances ignored] - sopuli.xyz
(1504) - lemmy.eus (1262) - lemmy.ca [http://lemmy.ca] (974) The count of users
active in the last month is similar: - hexbear.net [http://hexbear.net]
(unlisted, approx. 1.3K in the last 14 days
[https://www.hexbear.net/post/195720]) - lemmygrad.ml [http://lemmygrad.ml]
(508) - lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] (474) - bakchodi.org [http://bakchodi.org]
(286) - szmer.info [http://szmer.info] (65) - feddit.it [http://feddit.it] (51)
- sopuli.xyz (31) - wolfballs.com [http://wolfballs.com] (29) - feddit.de
[http://feddit.de] (29) - lemmy.ca [http://lemmy.ca] (17) My guess is that the
difference at the bottom of the list is due to highly federated instances
spreading their user comments over many instances with more activity, and also
due to some instances peaking a few months ago and then declining. For those new
to user statistics, you’ll notice that popularity usually tends to be
exponential: more popular things get more popular. ### What was that first one?
Hexbear? Two of the sites listed there, Hexbear (aka. chapo.chat) and Bakchodi,
do not federate. They are not part of the Fediverse, but they are using Lemmy.
Hexbear is actually running their own fork of Lemmy. In that sense it reminds me
of Gab, another huge island fork, but only due to size and isolation. While I
can’t find an admin statement, various Hexbear Gitea issues from 2020 and this
comment from December 2021 “We’re working on bringing Lemmy up to speed with
some of the features our “fork” (it’s more of a rewrite) has. When that’s ready
we’ll switch to that which will already have federation ready for us.”
[https://www.hexbear.net/post/163415/comment/2003658] and this from Feb 2022
“The only issue is that [Hexbear] doesn’t support federation for semi-technical
reasons (happy to explain), but that’s going to be fixed (later this year
maybe)?” [https://www.hexbear.net/post/174049/comment/2150060] indicate Hexbear
is open to the idea but unready (this 2020 comment
[https://www.hexbear.net/post/23488/comment/175031] even states they chose Lemmy
precisely because of its federation goal), and Bakchodi appear to have just not
set any up (the admin states “Federation is not functional as of now.” in a post
and nothing more). Contrast both against Gab who cited abuse/security issues and
lack of local federation users for their voluntary removal of existing
federation. Another point regarding Hexbear and Bakchodi is that they are
continuations of existing popular communities: I believe that Hexbear is a
continuation of reddit’s banned subreddit /r/ChapoTrapHouse, and Bakchodi is a
continuation of the banned /r/chodi (which I believe was banned around the same
time as /r/GenZedong’s quarantining caused a mass exodus to
https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong [https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong] ). To the
best of my knowledge, lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml], most of lemmygrad, wolfballs
and szmer are new original sites rather than an existing active community
migrating as a mass. ### Connections Most instances are connected into the
Fediverse. Hexbear and Bakchodi appears to be the only active non-trivial
instances that don’t federate. Due to the political environment of the internet
today and the content currently on Lemmy, I personally think it makes sense to
classify the current federation networks of Lemmy instances into four loose
groups: - socialist ‘left’: Primarily value socialism and/or anarchism, and
related topics. Generally explicit about their instance’s political alignment.
The largest group. Examples are lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml], lemmygrad.ml
[http://lemmygrad.ml], midwest.social, and would include hexbear.net
[http://hexbear.net] if it were connected. - liberalist ‘right’: Primarily value
freedom of speech and other liberty. While none yet are explicitly
politically-biased through administration[correction]
[https://lemmy.ml/post/287918/comment/193438], they do overwhelmingly have users
with views typical of the American ‘right-wing’ as an inevitable result of where
they are promoted, the ideas only they tolerate and the existing posts. Examples
are wolfballs.com [http://wolfballs.com] and exploding-heads.com
[http://exploding-heads.com]. - general open: Overall mainstream OR diverse
political views, will generally tolerate political instances on both sides of
the above divide. Often national instances or ‘general-purpose’. mander.xyz is
an overt example, gtio.io [http://gtio.io] is also an example. lotide.fbxl.net
[http://lotide.fbxl.net] would be an example, but it’s a lotide instance rather
than Lemmy. - anti-intolerant: Primarily value friendliness and inclusivity, and
so will readily block instances that tolerate intolerance, such as those in the
liberalist ‘right’ category and potentially those further in the socialist
‘left’ category. An example might be sopuli.xyz. These are all politically
determined, as unlike Mastodon and Pleroma there don’t tend to be any instances
based around controversial single topics or around graphic content that causes
instances to defederate. I thought there were more instances that blocked both
sides of the ‘left’/‘right’ divide, but they don’t seem to exist yet (which is a
good sign) beyond lemmy.rollenspiel.monster. It is also worth mentioning that
lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml] has blocked some instances due to abuse rather than
any cultural disagreement. The first two of the four categories are by far the
most popular, even if not the most numerous in instances, probably due to them
picking up users being kicked out of reddit and reddit alternatives as they
block more and more political subreddits or become unsavory. The earlier kicking
of many ‘harassment’ subreddits from reddit around 2015 lead to many
‘right-wing’ users to populate Voat and then later bannings lead to
communities.win becoming popular, which I believe explains why Lemmy doesn’t yet
have a strong influx of users who align politically with those banned subreddits
and more-so with recently-banned communist subreddits (the core developers’
political views and lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml]’s reputation may have impacted
people moving to instances named after Lemmy or considering hosting new
instances, but I suspect it wouldn’t affect people who were invited to a place
called Wolfballs). Interestingly, there is already a mirror instance that
reposts from reddit: goldandblack.us.to [http://goldandblack.us.to] ##### Growth
fediverse.observer [https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats] has some stats.
Ignoring the huge outliers in the middle, there has been a jump in growth in the
past two months which I would mostly attribute to the influx to lemmygrad.ml wow
look at that second graph [https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/lemmygrad.ml] and
the launch of unfederated-but-included bakchodi. Apart from that, there has been
a remarkably consistent growth in all the active instances. That’s a good sign
that this group of communities could last a while. ##### Some concluding
thoughts, with regards to reddit As someone who hasn’t really used reddit in
many years, I like to promote the view of us being independent, growing our own
culture, our own norms and not merely aiming to mirror the same shallow
emptiness. The bottom line is, we grow a lot when reddit shuts a place down, and
as you can see in some of those stats, growth creates more potential for growth.
I think it’s important to think about what habits we see now both here and there
that we want to encourage, and which habits we don’t. Think about what should
each community tolerate and reject and enforce (and make no mistake, that answer
differs depending on purpose and audience!) and how do we redirect people in the
wrong places or teach those who are mistaken? (protip: typing these things out
each time is very dumb! That’s why we invented FAQ pages!) What struggles did
Mastodon face as they started to grow more and more? Parts of reddit and similar
groups will continue to arrive. Look at this list of communities that used to be
allowed [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities]: it
started off with the very blatant controversies like sexualizing minors, moved
on to open blatant racism-focused places that conducted raids, and now they’re
at banning subreddits about a US (former) president and pro-China memes. Now
that Lemmy has established itself as the home of some of the most recently
banned communities, I personally think it’s only a matter of time before reddit
pops off a few more communities as they face pressure from media flak, investors
or other major influences, and we should prepare for how to handle this: make
potentially targeted communities aware that we exist before an incident, and
make sure communities have a clear set of rules and guidelines written for the
people that come in expecting this to be reddit again. I think this is an
opportunity to fix the things we don’t want repeated.
national geographic look at lemmy instances
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