Wow, things have changed since I last posted in /c/fediverse. Here are the top five most active instances based on monthly active users:
- lemmy.world: 19516
- lemm.ee: 3779
- lemmy.ml: 2970
- sh.itjust.works: 2355
- feddit.de: 2293
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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People seem to only want their accounts on "general use" instances that are already pretty popular.
Which is... bizarre. There is no downside to having your account on a more niche instance (as long as it isn't so niche that it gets turned off), and there are arguably disadvantages to having your account on a more popular instance.
People want to be where people are. My guess is we’ll end up with a bunch of super instances eventually.
This logic only applies in centralized platforms. In the case of the Fediverse, people are everywhere and anywhere.
But here on lemmy itself we can see people gathering in just a few instances
Not everything happens for a logical reason. It's human nature to get together in tribes, and the majority of people are okay with just following the pack.
I just hope that eventually more people figure out that there is no significant advantage in being in the largest instances, and that it can be actually harmful (too many resources, potential drama because too much power is given to the admins, etc)
One big thing that hasn't changed from reddit is that lemmy instances are still based on an autocratic power structure. Whether or not your content gets seen or you get to see other content depends on the relationships between those leaders. That means choosing your leadership is of utmost importance, and I eventually settled on lemm.ee because it was the first instance I came across that both a) seemed like it had actual adults running the show, and b) was large enough for that leadership have already faced some challenges and have an established track record.
That's the downside to a niche instance.
That's the core of every problem that's occurred to every massive human social structure we've ever created in history.
We create systems, the systems become powerful, a small group of autocratic people naturally gravitate towards wanting to lead, the system is taken over by this small group, the system is corrupted, the system fails, the system ends .... then we start over again.
It keeps happening over and over again and the common denominator is human greed (either in the need to gain money and wealth ... or in the need to just want to gain power over everyone)
The only systems that last are the ones where everyone has an equal stake and a shared power structure. But it's a balancing game that constantly has to be monitored ... because once we stop being vigilant, some greedy idiots will naturally start taking over.
A slight advantage to big servers is the increase in anonymity on the backend. Given the server admins can do what ever that want. An admin on small server would no doubt be looking into who and where their individual users are. Big severs are more likely to become more population based. Doesn't really matter though I suppose.
Yeah no exact opposite for me: Big server means lots of user data making abuse of it more appealing and impactful. While an admin of a small instance having some fun digging through user internals would really do no harm (I don't believe that's a particularly typical hobby of small instance admins though xD ).
I wouldn't say no doubt. Some certainly would do that, others could have more integrity.
A good 40% of users are spread out on servers with less then 5% of the overall user base, but that is still a good 60% in the top 5 instances, considering how laggy lemmy.ml and lemmy.world are, I am surprised anyone stays on them.
Smaller instances take longer to load content from bigger instances.
I have a kbin account and a lemmy account, but I find myself more active on lemmy because it's faster to load new content.
hate to say it, but looks better too
It's because instances are defederating from each other.
It's not easy to see the list of all communities in an instance you don't have an account. If I login and federate as user@example.com, I can see all the local communities inside example.com, but not others like lemmy.world. I don't mean individual posts or an individual community, I mean list of all instance communities. I think this is one of high priority issues to be patched.
it's not that bizarre; people want easy and people don't seem to really understand how it works so they'd rather go where the most people are or the one that is "trending".
The disadvantage of being on a small instance is that you could have an admin who is a fucking moron and ends up breaking stuff because they don't know what they are doing.
Sauce: am admin. am fucking moron.