How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?

gylotip@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 470 points –

I don't understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.

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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

I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia

Not to discount your other points, but lemmy.ml isn't hosted in Malaysia. The .ml TLD is for Mali, a country in Africa. And the site is hosted by OVH, on servers in France.

Wow, thanks for that, I really thought .ml was Malaysia. While I had some mild concerns about Malaysia, isn't Mali a shit show as far as human rights? If the servers are in France, that mitigates a lot, but I think I have more concerns about Mali.

The country of Mali has little to do with lemmy.ml, apart from an annual transaction worth 10 USD.

Mali has nothing to do with the instance though. Every country has a top level domain, like .CA or .UK etc. Most of them you have to pay to make a website using the domain. Mali is one country that lets anybody use the ML domain for free. That’s the only reason Lemmy.ml uses it, they have nothing to do with Mali else-wise. (Well there is the bit about ML = Marxist Leninist, but that is a bit of a backronym.)

For me ML stands for Machine Learning. Mali is sitting on a goldmine of a tld, and could turn into Tuvalu

Ya. I’m pretty sure they just took .ml because it was a cheaper domain, but someone’ll have to correct me on that.

The admins of .ml are tankies. The letters don't reference a place, they reference a couple of communist leaders who the admins are fans of. I'm surprised that more people aren't aware of that on this platform.

It's intended to stand for Marxist - Leninist, is what I heard. I didn't want to support a tankie thing which is why I went to world.

I don't think it stands for either, I saw somewhere that it stands for Marx-Lenin since the founders are communists

Classic communists, making their own tlds and everything

It is indeed a Mali domain, but of course people choose their domains because of their niche community - in case of .ml, it often stands for "Machine Learning". In this case I am pretty sure you are right and it is meant to represent " Marxist/Leninist" in this case, it is known that the instance admins are close to that ideology.

Would you feel better if they were communists and chose something completely neutral instead, like .io?

That’s such an arbitrary thing to be concerned about

I love how World and Blahaj are lgbt friendly and anti authoritarianism, unlike .ml.

Can I ask what worries you about it being hosted on Malaysia?

I'm not any authority, and I could be just ignorant, but my understanding is that the Malaysian government makes liberal use of laws against sedition and that govern communication to silence dissent. There was an artist who has been jailed a couple times this year for political satire. That kind of atmosphere doesn't seem like a good place to host communities that want free discussion.

Malaysian police are also asking Interpol to help them investigate a comedian in New York over a joke she made about Malaysia. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65894721

They haven't asked for extradition yet, but it worries me that they could ask for extradition from the US just because a US citizen made a mean joke that hurt their feelings. If they asked, would the US comply? Seems pretty anti-free-speech if they did.

That's a pretty valid reason, I'll have to look into it more as I already created an account on .ml. While I do call myself an anarchist/communist, I don't zealously jump at the defense of a government without nuancing the situation.

Excep .ml isn’t the TLD for Malaysia… .my is. .ml is Mali.

And TLDs have little to do with where stuff is hosted. .it is Italy and .ai is Anguilla, but not always by Italian or Anguillan companies.

I knew that .ml stand for "Marxist-Lenninist" and now that I realize the other lem thought .ml meant it's being hosted in Malaysia I'm cracking up. That's a fun mishap.

It's decidedly not hosted in malaysia. I'm also unclear why that would be a problem though.

This is pretty much the same thought pattern I had, however I made my account here after Beehaw defederated and have since decided not to use it anymore. Lemmy.world reminds me so much of the older style internet and forums and it’s a breath of fresh air.