- cross-posted to:
- bestoflemmy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- bestoflemmy@lemmy.world
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the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).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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Come to think of it:
I still remember when Lemmy was fairly new. Before $20M for the client API killed off all third-party Reddit apps, enshittifying Reddit to such a point that people left for the Threadiverse in droves in protest (and looking for something that didn’t require either Reddit’s Web interface or the official Reddit app). When /kbin was still experimental (as opposed to dead), when Mbin and PieFed didn’t exist yet, but Lotide still did (although it was more or less a zombie).
Back then, federation was optional on Lemmy. As in, Lemmy servers weren’t federated with anything by default. The admins had to manually add every single last Fediverse server, be it Lemmy, be it /kbin, be it something else, to an allowlist to allow it to federate with their server.
Lemmy servers actually had public lists of servers they federated with (as opposed to lists of servers they had defederated, available on third-party websites).
Not being federated with any given Lemmy server was the default back in the day. Most Fediverse servers were defederated from Lemmy servers because the admins of the Lemmy servers simply didn’t know that they existed. If you were lucky, then the admins occasionally checked their server logs, discovered Fediverse servers that they had never heard about, checked them and then added them to the list.
It was only a while later that a new Lemmy version switched to federating by default, simply because the above was tedious and impractical.
As others informed me, Hexbear still uses the allowlist system. While it seems like they’re pretty good about adding instances that don’t defederate them to their whitelist, six instances with over 50 MAU that don’t defederate them are effectively defederated from them due to not being on their whitelist.
Well that’s a confusing graph.
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.
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.
I could have sworn that hexbear defederated from jlai.lu. there was a whole spat between our instances a while back.
As someone informed me, Hexbear is unique in that most of its “defederations” are just instances that aren’t on its approval list. Jlai.lu doesn’t defederate Hexbear itself, but isn’t on the approval list, so I guess that’s effectively a defederation; I’ll adjust the next version of the chart to account for that.
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.
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.
This approach is honestly a non-starter. It lacks organic engagement, and most of the posts from people who do this have no comments or very few. It also tends to end up with one person flooding with a bunch of shit they didn’t read. Personally, I usually block this as meaningless attention seeking, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
If you want to put it that way, you could also argue that anything posted on the threadiverse, or even more broadly, on the internet, is meaningless attention seeking.
Or you could recognize that we need more content on the threadiverse to get more people engaged to reach the critical mass where we have a network effect which encourages more organic engagement, so anybody posting is doing their part to contribute to a greater cause.
If they set up a comm with a bot to repost the top three posts a day from a specific reddit comm, what’s the problem? Depending on the instance, maybe the admins don’t want to host that and view it as bloat. They can make their own rules. But on an instance that allows it, or on someone’s own instance, what’s the problem?
If someone doesn’t want to see it, they can block the comm. If nobody upvotes it, it won’t clog the all feed. If nobody comments on it, what’s the issue if it just sits there and stays empty?
Kinda eye-opening, thx for making the chart. I hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad. In my opinion, defederation should only ever be used to combat spam, not because of ideological differences or disputes between individuals.
One of the most common tips for people looking to switch over from Reddit has been that the instance you choose doesn’t really matter. But it clearly does. Choose the “wrong” instance and you may suddenly find yourself cut off from a sizable portion of other users because someone else decided they know better than you what you should and shouldn’t see.
I’m lucky to be on an instance that has “only” defederated one instance in this chart (lemmygrad.ml). I don’t really follow the drama around here, so I have no idea why that instance is banned. All I see is that there are 558 active users I’ll never be able to interact with just because someone I don’t personally know (my instance admin) made that decision at some point.
Wasn’t there just a big drama because some app developer built-in their own opinionated blocklist into their app or something? How is this any different?
My point being, why not leave these kinds of drastic decisions to individual users, who can and should block whoever they want, instead of dividing threadiverse into silos at the instance level?
Lemmygrad.ml is a Marxist-Leninist instance. The users are very chill there normally, so the reason for defederation is ideological.
Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha! Good one!
Have you visited Lemmygrad.ml? Just click on some of the threads, there’s much less hostility than most Lemmy.world threads. The idea that the commies on Grad are bloodthirsty beasts or something is more a consequence of their wide defederation causing defederated instances to project their imagination, not an actual analysis of how they act.
I’m sure they’re all patting each other’s backs there. But I’ve interacted with them elsewhere and when they are exposed to anything but straight tankie bootlicking they turn vicious. Not a single decent interaction, and I’ve had several.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that communists will generally oppose anticommunist viewpoints, and certainly critique non-communist views. Communists also tend to be political activists, so we also care quite a lot, which can often spill out into heated exchanges. This isn’t unique to communists, though, liberals are the same way for views they don’t align with. Therefore, the biggest difference and the reason for defederation is ideological, after all, irreconcilable political differences.
Ideological differences don’t explain the brigading, dogpiling, constant trolling, bad faith arguments. There are only so many times an instance admin is willing to ban single users from a place until they get fed up with a culture of abuse and cut ties with the whole lot.
I haven’t seen Lemmygrad brigading, trolling, or arguing in bad-faith. Active users going into active threads organically isn’t the same as brigading, which is typically associated with coordinated targeting. This can seem like “dogpiling” in practice, but again, this same behavior is exhibited by non-communists, same with what can be perceived as trolling or bad-faith arguments (and anecdotally I see far more of that on instances that aren’t predominantly leftist).
In the end, it’s ideology, not specific traits, as ideological differences cause not just communists but non-communists to behave in similar confrontational manners. Lemmygrad.ml aren’t especially bad-faith, trolling, etc, just like Lemmy.world isn’t. Both have distinct ideological identities and this difference caused friction.
