I don’t understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.
Lemmy.ml actively asked people to sign up elsewhere. They have a small server and aren’t meant to be a general instance.
Lemmy.world is run by people who have one of the larger Mastodon servers, and actively advertises to be open and neutral.
It’s also the devs server and they have Lemmy code to write. Can’t be spending time moderating.
And the other stuff
It’s also presented as the default on most apps, I believe
That’s a big one. People tend to go with the default
That’s why the apps on the official stores are so important. Convenience wins.
Rule of the defaults. Most people use whatever the default is. That’s why there is always a push to he the default thing. Microsoft pushes edge on their stuff, Google pushes chrome, apps pushes safari, etc.
That’s also why Google pays Apple $20 billion annually to be Safari’s default search engine. Most people can’t be bothered to change their defaults/don’t want to after having it as their default for so long.
That’s a problem that will reveal itself later. Decentralization goes away when everyone flocks to one server. Turns into Reddit 2.0
I’m not sure whether the issues plaguing Reddit really apply to lemmy, even with a single instance being disproportionately larger than the others, which makes “Reddit 2.0” a bit less derogatory to me. Reddit’s moderator tools were severely lacking for the required output (federation helps diffuse communities, and lemmy doesn’t encourage bots to swarm in order to increase apparent user numbers for investor satisfaction), every big anti-hate decision required a media spectacle to precede it (admins here aren’t free speech absolutists with authoritarian hard-ons), and staff retention at Reddit is an odd loop of promotion into managerial obsolescence which severely increases overhead (irrelevant to lemmy). Reddit 2.0 wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to me.
Not to mention that signups on .ml is closed so you can’t join anyway
This is the correct answer. The devs have been saying this for years but new users often weren’t aware of this and saw it as the default instance. It’s good to see that’s changed.
They’re not neutral though. They’ve already started defederating instances with users whose opinions they don’t like.
Well I said they advertise, not that they are.
I think most of it has to do with that lemmy.world has better hardware than other instances. The admin Rudd has a lot of experience running federated services as well. So it may be his first rodeo lemmy-wise but not hosting a federated service with a large user-base.
So when a lot of smaller instances started getting overwhelmed and stopping signups, lemmy.world was going strong without the performance issues that other instances might see.
That along with the fact that NSFW content is allowed makes lemmy.world a good alternative for Reddit refugees looking for something stable with a similar set of rules as well.
I myself joined lemmy.ml at first, then beehaw.org when lemmy.ml asked everyone to spread out, and finally found home on lemmy.world because I didn’t really like how downvotes are disabled on beehaw. Not to mention the defederation that beehaw has done recently. Although I can understand and appreciate why they’ve done that.
Indeed. Even though I’m using the Lemmy.ca instance to distribute the load, I use Ruud’s Mastodon instance.
I’ve signed up for a bunch of them and still haven’t decided where I want to make my main. I know that annoys some people but I love it because it means I get to have a choice! I think I’ll have a Lemmy world account since they’re big, buti also want to find a good smaller community to have slower more meaningful conversations. I hope the Lemmy protocol adds support for account linking some day.
I’ve signed up for a bunch of them and still haven’t decided where I want to make my main.
Same story for me, although I keep coming back to Lemmy.world in the first instance, at least for the Lemmy instances (also explored kbin, tildes and squabbles). Mixed feelings about Lemmy.ml as I think there’s virtue being on the instance the devs run as it seems unlikely to go away, although there has been the talks around political views. From the political side, I do hang out more often than not in tech spaces though so I doubt it’d actually impact anything I’d want to engage in discussion about.
Also have an account with Beehaw which was my first but silly as it may seem, the name of that one puts me off a bit. “Lemmy.world” sounds like something I can more easily communicate to a friend verbally, for whatever that is worth.
I have a world and an Australian account as I am in Australia.
I’ve moved once so far, but it wasn’t as straightforward forward as I’d hoped. Do you know of a simple way to migrate (export/import) communities and settings across instances?
There’s a userscript somewhere. Check !plugins
Interesting. I browse Lemmy exclusively on mobile, for a one time transfer of communities I guess I could set up greasemonkey and find that script. Thanks!
I signed up on the 12th, after spending a little time comparing with the information I had. My thought process was:
- I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
- I thought a larger instance might mean it sticks around longer, but didn’t really want to be on the largest (which .ml was)
- Beehaw seemed otherwise a good fit, but their policies seemed too restrictive
- .world seemed to have liberal policies, allowed NSFW, was large but not largest, and was hosted in a country that didn’t worry me
Why did I create a Lemmy world account as opposed to beehaw or ml? Because it’s the first one I saw. Because it doesn’t matter. Because I don’t know what ml stands for. Because Lenny world said “general use.” Because I didn’t have to fill out an application. Because I can still interact with everything else, and again, it doesn’t matter.
And ml is?
the national tld for Mali, but the lemmy ml owners chose it for a “Marxist-Leninist” reference. no kidding.
fun fact - they* also deny genocides committed by (even nominally) communist regimes.
*a lot of them, and even those who don’t actively, still stick with the goons who do.
Oh dear, and I thought it was somehow related to machine learning/AI stuff
Do you have a source for that?
The real answer here in the comments. Glad I went with world. Though I only did it because it seemed like more people would gravitate toward thag name than the others.
That’s awesome. I am also a Communist that denies genocides. I guess I better pop on over to lemmy.ml
The top level domain of the Metherlands
Motherland if I’m not mistaken.
Seconded
I joined because lemmy.sdf.org is often inaccessible. And also because lemmy.sdf.org blocked lemmy.world, so why not go straight to the source?
I left Beehaw because the defederated from instances where half my communities were at. Ended up on Lemmy world because they had my favorites.
I started at BeeHaw because they have a lot of cool communities. I didn’t want to write an essay (I’m exaggerating …a little) to sign up for an account so I ended up on sh.itjust.works.
Haha same. I started at beehaw but am having a hard time manually adding communities that I want to keep in that feed since they aren’t onfederated instances. So I moved to sh.ithust.works and reddthat.
I’ll probably keep beehaw, I like a lot of what it has to offer and it’s cool for it to be a specific corner for me. But one of the others will probably become my default home
Shit just works, yo.
At this point I don’t know how I got here and where I’m going and I’m too afraid to ask
I went for the most generic “official” sounding name.
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Fun fact: those tankies are also the developers of Lemmy overall… sigh
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Yeah, the fact that lemmy.world and many other instances exist with content that the devs might not like is proof that they wrote something where their own personal views don’t affect the independence of each instance to run the way it wants.
I mean… forbidding any discussion of unpopular actions taken by Russia is pretty much an example of promoting their own views.
Yep agreed.
The lemmy devs have said they dont bring politics into their dev work and are happy to work with anyone.
Lemmy is also an open source application that can be forked at anytime.
It’s also using the activity pub protocol which means that any application can interact with the entire fediverse.
You can use kbin if you are still uncomfortable with lemmy then you can sign up to a kbin instance and view all the content you would view from a lemmy instance.
Yeah I’m ok with it for now, and will chalk it up as some guys being young and idealistic with strange idiosyncratic or edgy views they might grow out of.
I’ve seen their statements trying to walk it back and they seem generally very well intentioned, I give it the benefit of doubt for now.
This is really seeming to look like “dev team was unclear that they didn’t want politics on their server. They removed comments critical of Russia. Group of people ran with this as evidence they are pro-Russia/Anti-Ukraine. dev team tried to clarify their policies but it’s too late and the PR Shitstorm already happened”.
Tough spot to be in as a “startup” FOSS platform but could totally infer that’s how it is playing out.
It was all their own words though, not just content on the server, but anyhow no worry.
Kbin is an alternative. Totally different software.
As long as it doesn’t influence how they build the platform, them having absurd opinions isn’t much of a problem for the users.
It’s the whole point of the Fediverse. If their absurd opinions don’t appeal to you, you can block them or defederate their instance and not have them affect you (or your instance if you’re an admin).
Hence why I’m on Kbin. Ernest is so much better as a dev.
kbin has been my favourite so far
Shitty people tend to clump together.
I see no political posts on that instance. Might be that politics are banned on the instance?
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When I first can to Lemmy there was a good bit of it, I think since then it’s been drowned out by all the less extreme folks.
I’m okay with the devs being communists as it means they aren’t likely to sell out to corporate interests!
As someone signing up for lemmy.world, my reasons were:
- It sounds official or at least less obscure than “.ml” or “sh.itjust.works”
- It sounded inclusive (we’re all part of the world, so to speak)
- It was in the list of default instances of Connect for Lemmy
Otherwise, I didn’t give much though to which instance to pick.
Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
Same - sounds better, like .com vs .io and similar.
Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
I am new like most of us. When I signed up I had no idea what an instance was. To me the name Lemmy.world sounded like it was more general and therefore would have more content so I picked that one.
The developer for RIF told me to come here. I figured that I should trust the person that created the app that I’ve used for hundreds of hours.
Same. Like the parent of a child grown up, RIF has been forced to let us go, but not without influencing our direction lol
My exact reason. Had the popup show.
Then I created my own instance
I was already playing around with Lemmy, and after a few weeks I checked back into RIF and saw his post, so I came over to .World.
Mainly because signups were closed on Lemmy.ml and they were not on Lemmy.world.
Ya, I applied for beehaw.org and didn’t get access after a few days and lemmy.world was open so made an account there. Not much else to it.
This is pretty much the answer. The number of people who actually made the decision based on “reasons” is very few.
Exactly this. I tried numerous times on lemmy.ml and never got an email back for the verification, so I just gave up. World is the next logical choice. Since beehaw is already defederating, if you’re coming to the fediverse, joining an instance that’s already isolating itself, even if it has good reasons, doesn’t seem appealing. So lemmy.world it is. Tho here I am using my kbin mostly because then I have kbin, mastodon, and Lemmy integration all in one.
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Same here!
I was overwhelmed by the options of instances. Then Reddit is Fun had a pop up message suggesting to go to lemmy.world. I trusted Reddit is Fun so I followed its suggestion.
Lemmy.ml are tankies anyway so, good
Regardless of the how, I think it’s really cool that the top instance isn’t run by the devs. Really shows off the power and appeal of decentralized services.
