In the graph above I’ve arranged the 28 Threadiverse instances with at least 200 monthly active users (MAU)—orange instances running Lemmy, green Piefed, and red Mbin—on the basis of which instances they defederate.
Each instance has its MAU count listed below it, sourced from the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).
After adjustments, there are an estimated 43,287 monthly active Threadiverse users (35,184+7,200+903), of whom 87.84% are on the 28 largest instances. The percentages listed alongside the MAU figures correspond to each instance’s share of the total MAU count.
Defederation data was sourced from Federation Checker. The tool doesn’t support Mbin instances, so I left fedia.io in its own category. If any defederations are missing, feel free to let me know. Ideally such a chart should also include community blocks to better illustrate which instances block what, but that data doesn’t appear to be as easily searchable.
I also noticed cases of some instances being listed as being defederated by another instance, despite not appearing on the defederation list for that instance (i.e. reddthat.com and lemmygrad.ml are listed as being mutually blocked, despite neither having the other on their block lists). In testing that federation, I noticed that !wholesome@reddthat.com did not federate to Lemmygrad while !memes@reddthat.com did, so clarification on that matter would be helpful.
While I’ll update my generalized chart as needed to correct errors, perhaps at some point an automated federation mapping tool similar to the one feddit.de formerly hosted could be developed to more completely illustrate instance federation.
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dbzer0 refuses to put their “old” interface back up, which I could get around with opnxng - but it keeps going down anyway, so I have switched to lemmy.today thanks to this thread! I prefer less defederation rather than more. I’ll opt out of what I want to opt out of.
The instance I’m in is definitely the odd ones out, we got no one here😅
102 monthly active users, so if I expand the limit to 100 next time it would be included. Ideally all instances would be represented, but when doing it manually in a chart like this, at some point I have to draw a line.
OK I think I get how to read this, once I understood the concept. Very nice work.
Maybe it would be a little clearer if the lines where boxes overlap were just slightly offset – it would help see and distinguish them. For example if the blue box was moved down by just a little more than the width of the red lines, instead of being directly on top of them. If that makes sense.
I’ll consider doing that for the revision; thanks for the feedback!
am I reading this right, that blahaj blocks federation from pawb?? that doesn’t seem right
blahaj is in the black box (has defederated fedinsfw.app), in the blue box (has defederated Lemmygrad) and in the red box (has defederated Hexbear). No one on this graph has defederated pawb. The graph is a bit confusing on the first look.
No; the instances in the black box defederate fedinsfw.app, not pawb.
Well that’s a confusing graph.
Yeah I cant understand it at all.
Since defederating is essentially an explicit block list and is directional, my assumption is that the groups that are circled have defederated from the things they’re pointing at. I could be wrong.
Map needs a key/legend.
The red circled stuff seems to be only one possible option, but isn’t visually very distinct, and the red circle shouldn’t be broken like that, just make sure the lines are all visible.
Apologies for the confusion; didn’t want to make it overly cluttered, but in retrospect I see that a legend would have been useful. I’ll incorporate suggestions in a revision.
Yeah, as someone who is struggling to understand the concept of federation…this doesn’t help me at all.
I guess what its saying, if you’re on lemmy.world, you can’t access content on lemmy.zip?
If I’m reading it correctly, lemmy.world cut ties from lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net while hexbear.net and beehaw.org cut ties with lemmy.world. lemmy.zip appears to be connected to everyone.
Why would they do that? I’m unaware of internal issues in Lemmy at this point?
Ideological differences. Lemmy.world is liberal, while lemmygrad and hexbear are hardcore communists (aka tankies).
I believe its not the hardcore communism but the style of users on those instances. hexbear users were brigading communities of other instances, and their moderators did nothing. they earned it.
The ones at the bottom that are below the None category aren’t defederated from anyone, so they can access every instance.
Very proud of lemmy.zip! Joined very early on cause the name sounded cool lol, and apparently a lot of others also did. If i remember right we had a vote on defederations and the only major one to happen(or maybe the only one, idk) was exploding heads which was a nazi instance with CSAM on it so that was obvious, even that was mainly cause of the CSAM. I really like the approach of users being able to block instances and communities rather than the instance deciding for me. I still have ml and hexbear blocked tho cause they banned me after i stood up for trans rights or something lol
You got temporary banned from the lemmy.ml memes community and permanently banned from the hexbear vegan community and divisionsbyzero mycology community.
I’m feeling the same way. I’ve bounced around a few places since joining. I started on midwest.social which was great for a while, but I think the instance grew more than the dev could keep up with. I started seeing connectivity issues and problems displaying content so I reluctantly migrated to .world to see what joining the largest instance would be like. The technical issues went away but I couldn’t figure out why I could no longer see /c/piracy until I realized that they’re a bunch of pushovers that defederated from dbzer0 based on some liability bogeyman. So I found myself on Lemmy.zip where I can police my own content and have no technical issues.
.zip and Demogodrick definitely cool.
I also lucked out by joining here just because I couldnt join more popular instances at the time. Happy that I landed here
What’s with feddit.org?
There are a lot of threads here about this. Feddit.org wants to keep in line with local laws in their jurisdiction, dbzero thinks that this is a pro-zionist stand and genocide-denial.
If feddit.org was not Zionist they would remove justification for Zionism a genocidal supremacist ideology
The admins of feddit.org are afraid of german police coming for their servers and therefore ban content that is possibly illegal in germany quite liberally. Since german courts are sometimes weird this includes some Pro-Palestine content that could be interpreted as Anti-Israel (e.g. the chant “From the river to the sea…”). That topic in particular pissed of the dbzero community which then defereated feddit.org for being “Zionists”.
DACH under feddit.org removed my German news article on Israel. Apparently even German state media is anti-semitic.
When I posted the same article on German language reddit I got a message that my content had been deemed inapropriate at least.
so ban all discussions about palestine then instead of policing Palestinians voice while letting zionists spread all kind of propaganda in your instance
I mean, it is kinda. Anticipatory obedience makes you complicit.
Yup. Anticipatory obedience isn’t the way to go!
Well, if you have to personally liable for the shit a bunch of internet strangers say, you might think differently. That is one boon of being a mega-corp. You are somewhat immune to SLAPP-lawsuits and the like.
Uhm, this was translated right? “vorauseilender Gehorsam”
I really like this but I can not figure it out. Would you be willing to make the data available?
The MAU numbers for instances were sourced from Fediverse Observer and calculated as a percentage of 43,287 for the percentages, but here’s a table of the defederation data:
Lemmy Instance Defederates lemmy.world Hexbear, Lemmygrad sh.itjust.works Beehaw, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.zip N/A lemmy.ml fedinsfw.app feddit.org fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad hexbear.net lemmy.world lemmy.dbzer0.com Lemmygrad, Feddit.org lemmy.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.blahaj.zone fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad programming.dev Hexbear discuss.tchncs.de Lemmygrad sopuli.xyz fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmygrad.ml fedinsfw.app lemmy.today N/A slrpnk.net Hexbear, Lemmygrad feddit.uk N/A infosec.pub fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml reddthat.com N/A jlai.lu Lemmygrad beehaw.org sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world, Lemmygrad, Hexbear pawb.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad thelemmy.club N/A feddit.nl N/A Piefed Instance Defederates fedinsfw.app Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.zip N/A Mbin Instance Defederates fedia.io ? Can someone give me the gossip on fedinsfw.app and feddit.org? What are they? Why is db0zer defederated from feddit.org?
FediNSFW is a Piefed instance dedicated to NSFW content. Some instances defederate it due to that, while (as @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net mentioned) Multiverse and apparently Blahaj defederate it due to it hosting a ‘Fautbait’ community over CP concerns.
Feddit.org strictly enforces German anti-semitism laws on criticizing Israel. As a result, dbzer0 accused it of being Zionist and defederated it. I don’t think criticism of Israel should be removed, but I also prefer to be on an instance with wider federation, which is why I switched my main account from dbzer0 to Sopuli.
Cool, thank you for the explanations!
What the hell are Hexbear and Lemmygrad and what did they do that everyone’s blocking them?
Lemmygrad and Hexbear (I think) are instances filled with “tankies”, which means that they can’t shut up about how awesome authoritarian regimes that present themselves as communist, like China, and some others, like Russia, are, despite all the crimes against human rights those countries’ governments keep committing (according to tankies, the governments they support don’t actually commit any atrocities, it’s just “lies spread via anti-communist propaganda”, which they also use as a excuse for silencing anyone presenting criticism about their favourite regimes). Please keep in mind that lots of communists don’t see countries like China as communist, despite the countries calling themselves that.
As these instances have lots of tankies, they tend to have toxic communities. Their users also tend to hate trans people for some reason, and sometines try to harass people because of it, which is a big no-no to instances that want their trans users to feel safe, such as Blåhaj Zone.
To add an annecdote, hexbear has this handy link to an image: (nsfw) https://hexbear.net/PPB
Ask yourself why a discussion platform might keep this image quick-link and you may understand why everyone defederates from them.
Lammygrad are Marxist Leninist, Hexbear are dirtbag leftists. That makes them the natural enemies of center-left and centrist instances like .world.
In my opinion it comes down to a disagreement over capitalism. One side wants to destroy it, the other side wants to moderate it.
also worth noting that I’d have all the data in the Lemmyverse.net data, I could probably build a page that shows something similar to this graph.
The beehaw.org/sh.itjust.works defederation is really one-way. Beehaw defederated from us after some exceptionally bad trolls were operating from sh.itjust.works in 2023. IIRC, they requested that we also defederate from them to really make sure the split was made. We honored their request.
We would happily reconnect if Beehaw decided they want to federate with us again. If not, then that’s fine; they have a right to associate with whomever they like.
I believe infosec.pub temporarily defederated from us around the same time for the same reason. It was a rough time.
I’ll adjust the graph by the next version to account for it as an exception.
If you want to complicate the graph further, I believe hexbear federates using an allow list. Blahaj, lemmy.ca, and sh.itjust.works are not on the allow list, so they are effectively defederated. I haven’t looked further to see which other large instances may be affected.
Does that mean that discuss does not federate with lmmy.ml, lemmygrad, programming.dev and hexbears?
We might read the diagram differently, but I only see a defederation with lemmygrad.
Correct 👍
No, discuss is only in the blue box, which’s arrow points to lemmygrad, so they defederated from them.
You must not read this Graph like a Venn diagram
Yep, I read it as federating with everybody in the same box
What’s the beef between beehaw and lemmy.world?
Not so much beef as in beehaw could not manage the torrent of content coming their way from world
According to beehaw there’s no beef, it’s just too many users for them to effectively moderate
Block the “default”. That’s actually pretty clever. Not because you dislike those people, but because it’s the default and requires extra effort to not be a part of.
Things that pop out to me:
- The Internet was made for porn, both in users and less defederating.
- The main blocks really are mostly the Triad (grad, hexbear and ml) which I get. I personally don’t mind tankies despite the instance I’m on, but they can sometimes echo Russian propaganda that’s demonstrably false. Communism as a concept is ok, though.
The Beehaw thing predates me, I heard they’re nice people, though. I also agree with the sentiment that more fringe groups and random porn might scare away newbies, so I get why things are the way they are.
Our instance deferated fedinsfw because of the adult porn pretending to be child porn pretending to be adult porn. According to Australian law, fake child porn is legally considered child porn, and also our users think it’s gross.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
I say, I really don’t get why so many people stay over on Reddit.
This might be a micro version of the actual future internet, where we walk away from the global model and split it into ideological countries who believe the best way forward is to stop talking to the other group.
We’ve come a long way from drawing artificial lines on maps.
I can understand people staying on Reddit more than those staying on Twitter to be honest.
At least spez hasn’t gone full nazi yet, or provided tools for generating pedophilia.
Both of which people seem to be perfectly fine with. So it doesn’t surprise me they’re fine with Reddit too.
At least spez hasn’t gone full nazi yet
citation needed
The fediverse is great if you fall into the like 5 interests that are pretty well represented here.
But if the communities you wanna engage with aren’t really active enough for potential posters to not just forget they exist, or you don’t really want to be on a platform where 75% of the front page is news or memes about the state of the world politically, its not neccisarily a great replacement to reddit
For me it happens to cover enough of my bases, but I can get why it wouldn’t for many people.
I’ve said this a number of times over the past couple days, but if there’s an instance for mirroring subreddits, where niche subreddits that don’t have an equivalent here yet basically get a carbon copy and a repost bot to stock them with relevant stuff from over there, that could fill in some of those gaps and make the fediverse a more attractive alternative.
It won’t have the same level of engagement right away, but it will provide a place for that engagement to occur, and as more people start using it it will create a network effect. As things stand now, we’re missing a lot of those niche communities.
There is an instance like that - lemmit.online. It’s been going for three years and it’s still a ghost town.
Ah, I see. Yeah, it is a ghost town…
It really is pretty dead outside the main subjects. I have noone to talk about the latest episode of My Adventures with Superman. Did they now just leave the other universe with Clark dead? That sucks.
I do want to watch that. It’s in my list of shows to watch one the first season is done. I normally don’t follow western animation or comics, but he’s so derpy I think it’ll be endearing enough for me to enjoy.
I don’t know if we’re talking about the same show. MAWS is in its 3rd season now. It has been good so far in my opinion.
Just like in real life, one must grow and sometimes create the communities they want to be apart of.
Difficult when people here only like 5 things and they shun everything that is not those 5 things.
While thats true, if my friend whose biggest interests are science informed dog training and animal genetics joins the threadiverse there are not enough people here who genuinely really care about those subjects to actually sustain any of the social connection she’s looking for around them.
If my friend who’s super into basketball and competitive league of legends join she’d have at least a couple people to talk to, but its fundamentally not what she’s looking for to talk to exactly 3 other people who care about the thing she’s into.
I try to remember that as much as I love the fediverse and feel at home here, it has real limitations for lots of people, and its okay if its not in a state they can go enjoy very easily. This is a space that I am passionate about and want to contribute to. I don’t expect everyone to do labor to invest in a space that isnt their passion just to chat with folks when they have the ability to chat with folks somewhere else, even if that place has bigger picture downsides or harms associated with it.
You can still choose one that talks to everybody else. In fact, this graphic might be a nice tool for new users who want advice beyond “Just choose any instance, it doesn’t matter” or “Just use lemmy.world”.
I don’t know if this is better or worse. I do like the selectivity of it, though, where you’re free to join or privately defederate instances
Wow, infosec.pub is based!
Graph is very big resolution-wise, it lags. Do you have a slightly smaller one?
Here’s a version exported at 150 DPI instead of 300:
Thanks, that works! :3
