Spreading of the 100 biggest Lemmy communities
BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de to 
The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.
| Community Count | Community Subscriber Count | |
|---|---|---|
| beehaw.org | 6 | 133450 |
| hexbear.net | 33 | 663204 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 17052 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 15907 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 1 | 53006 |
| lemmy.ml | 14 | 356460 |
| lemmy.one | 1 | 16257 |
| lemmy.world | 39 | 851950 |
| lemmynsfw.com | 2 | 33586 |
| sh.itjust.works | 1 | 16006 |
| sopuli.xyz | 1 | 14093 |
The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as "suspicious")
EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:
| Community Count | Community Active Month Count | |
|---|---|---|
| awful.systems | 1 | 2616 |
| feddit.org | 2 | 7363 |
| feddit.uk | 2 | 5289 |
| hexbear.net | 1 | 2952 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 2898 |
| lemm.ee | 3 | 8898 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 11422 |
| lemmy.ca | 3 | 14910 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 3 | 13752 |
| lemmy.ml | 10 | 54949 |
| lemmy.world | 57 | 338384 |
| lemmy.wtf | 1 | 3602 |
| lemmy.zip | 3 | 12020 |
| mander.xyz | 1 | 11469 |
| sh.itjust.works | 5 | 37365 |
| slrpnk.net | 3 | 10897 |
| sopuli.xyz | 2 | 10070 |
| ttrpg.network | 1 | 4107 |
Community Count:
Community Users:
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I knew hexbear was big but not that big
It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform unfortunately
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt ppl who praise Soviets or North Korea
Yeah I can’t say I was bothered when LW defederated. I’ve gotten in way fewer stupid arguments since they did the same with Lemmygrad. IIRC LW didn’t even let hexbear federate in the first place.
I don’t like defederations. I prefer to see everything, every post and comment and then block users/instances on my own if it becomes too much.
Literally a second ago I blocked another tankie, from LW this time. Before I even managed to type this comment fully. But then I don’t shy from making comments that attract them if I disagree with something. So inbox always busy
Sounds like you waste alot of time with people who don't deserve it
Yes but this may be a side effect of turning off the points experiment. Instead of getting dopamine from points I only get replies. So it could be that I subconsciously make my comments in a way that is more likely to attract some kind of response.
My main goal for Lemmy was to break Reddit addiction and I feel gaining likes plays a big part in staying glued to the screen
Seems like a good strategy would be to not have every post and comment shown to you if your goal is to break your habit of spending too much time on your phone or PC.
I would much rather signup to an instance that handles that for me.
As long as the instance is clear about what they defederate from and their reasons, then I’m happy with that. And if I wasn’t, I could choose a different instance.
Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I'm really not a fan of defederation unless it's a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).
I did end up blocking the lemmy.ml instance though, fuck that place. I haven't even blocked hexbear or lemmygrad.
Yes, that's pretty much our take on it: we'll defederate CSAM (and nonce-adjacent) instances asap, those with lax registration tend to become havens for spammers and trolls, so there is usually a wave of defederating, then someone reaches out to them, it gets sorted and we allow them back in. That tends to be the regular defederation and isn't controversial. Defederating, for example, Hexbear over, for example, trolling would be a bigger deal and we'd try and speak to the other Admins about it before any permanent banning.
Isn't your instance federated with hexbear? Seems like it hardly blocks any lemmy instances.
lol, forgot I was even on my feddit.uk account.
I’d already gone through blocking all of that stuff via my app before the defederation stuff happened, but if I were signing up to a new instance I’d appreciate it being blocked by default.
I think ideally a Lemmy client could connect to a number of instances, and you could add the more contentious ones yourself.
Some of these places are literally hosting child porn. You don't want that mirrored to a server that you're responsible for.
Same here. I’ll curate my personal feed but I’ll occasionally scroll everything just to see what random new instance I’ll find, and to keep myself aware of what the current rhetoric is with the various groups.
You're not really using the fediverse until you've been told that you'll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it's exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.
Can you truly say you've had the HB experience if you haven't recieved emoji/sticker/gif spam from people who weren't alive for 9/11, have never been outside their country, and refuse to listen to opposing views, but know with full certainty that all western countries are 100% full of genociders and colonial rapists who all deserve the glorious death the super benign, extremely peaceful and misunderstood countries of North Korea, China, and Russia who have never once been correctly accused of human rights violations....
And of course, if they point out that your country has dipped into those things in the past, well your entire worldview is shattered and their whataboutism has solved everything and proves you deserve the death they crave for you.
I am genuinely sad for HB. There are lgbt ppl there, generally dear to me. Seeing them enjoy such cesspit lured in by cultish atmosphere, supporting the very forces that can only destroy but not build anything. It is personal.
There's actually a lot of lgbt people there, based on their last poll:
https://hexbear.net/post/2687582
you should come post in our extremely active weekly trans megathreads, you'll see that a lot of your preconceived notions are simply not true.
https://hexbear.net/post/3203892 or https://lemmy.ml/post/19071341
It's uncanny, so many times when I run into a commenter with a specific axe to grind about hexbear, they got already banned for something weird, in this case 2 days prior
ah, in that case, maybe she should stay far far away from the trans mega :)
I can see why folk don't like hexbear as they come off as leftist 4chan, but you don't need to make things up. They often talk about traveling. I agree with a lot of their content and disagree with some, I've been to 10 countries. In the plane to France, an African told me how their country is still enslaved to France. Personally I don't see the value in the immediate destruction of the west, but with their leaderships ardent support for Nazi Germany, Apartheid, the Climate Crisis and assassination of climate activists, others, and now Zionism, they should lose influence through any means necessary.
make it make sense
Didn't mean it literally, only that it's so shitposty that it can overshadow most serious conversations. It is a far better moderated and accepting community. It's mainly their trans posts that made me better accept trans individuals. And I discourage writing them off like most should with 4chan.
On the flipside there is the .World experience. Where Julian Assagne is a war criminal. And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.
Would you have link to such statements? Seems wild
Yeah, I've never once seen anything but criticism over the US's involvement in the middle east.
The most I've seen is a couple people saying the equivalent of "well SOMEONE had to do something about X" And a bunch of others jumping on them to clarify that X either never existed, or was massively exaggerated and the US isn't the World Police.
Genuinely would love to see someone link a good faith comment trying to argue the above, so I can tell them all about how they're a fucknut
It is your lucky day. Btaf45 is waiting for you in the comment chain below.
Wtf are you talking about? Oh, a .ml user. Ok then.
Julian Assange is a bootlicker and Kremlin stooge who sold us out to the American and Russian billionaires. The Mueller Report proved he was explicitly trying to get Treason Trump elected and working with Putin to push disinformation to that end.
Hey, aren't you the one who dropped a diaper load because Hexbear removed your comments justifying supporting candidates who were pro genocide?
https://hexbear.net/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=27562
Yep, that's me. You could probably find a few more good examples of me stepping in shit on Hexbear, that's hardly the first.
I disagree with those comments, but they seem pretty mild to have been banned. I just don't see how it's productive to ban all liberals the moment they try to explain their views. All that does is push people away who could potentially have been a future ally.
For starters, all liberals have Reddit and Lemmy.world, which are large. Where do leftists have?
Secondly, this comment is indistinguishable from concern-trolling. I'd have to read through your post history or go back and forth with you to know if you were an honest actor or just a troll.
Thirdly, most of us know your views, and have rejected them. Why would we care to hear them? Ask the homeless people in any major city how important discussions of freedom are. So fuck your so-called "productivity." If you were an ally you'd listen and be an ally.
I agree that lemmy.world is a primarily liberal instance, but I haven't seen the same level of censorship on lemmy.world as I have on hexbear, though I'm open to evidence to the contrary. You can create a space for a specific ideology without resorting to such an extreme level of censorship and lemmy.world is proof of that. Also see my home instance slrpnk.net, we're a primarily anarchist instance and we haven't had to resort to extreme censorship to achieve that.
By what method do you distinguish concern-trolling from legitimate concern? Concern-trolls generally want to shut down discussion, and the whole reason for my concern is that censorship shuts down discussion.
They're not my views, did you miss the part of my comment where I said I disagree with the comments that got them banned?
is not tame at all it dehumanizes some of societies most vulnerable. Imagine someone who has been in a psych ward or a homeless person reads this, and keep in mind both can be found posting on hexbear.
We don't live in a tame world, lots of people have deeply problematic viewpoints. When someone who expresses such viewpoints is otherwise well-intentioned it's better to address them directly and potentially change some minds (or at least plant the seed) than to shun them and further entrench them into a problematic worldview.
Depends on the environment you want to foster. There are already lotsa places where these kinds of "debates" are had (lemmy.world for instance) but really no place where the people that are being debated about can relax and not have to be confronted with the dehumanization they already are confronted with in their daily lives.
Hexbear prioritizes the latter.
Join an instance that’s defederated from them. I haven’t seen their nonsense in months.
You can block instances yourself, I personally don't like when an instance makes that decision for me.
Blocking an instance is just equivalent to blocking all the communities on that instance. You'll still see the blocked instance's posts and comments in other instances and (maybe more importantly) the instance will still influence your feed via voting. So if hexbear collectively upvotes or downvotes some post, that will influence your feed. Defederation is the only way to prevent that kind of influence.
Downvotes are disabled on hexbear just fyi. One of the reason people leave a comment with stuff they disagree with. But upvoting yeah, very active userbase very actively upvoting means a lot of my feed on lemm.ee is from hexbear.
Then block hexbear? Same result.
That's why I'm glad my instance blocked them.
Bro my instance just defederated them. Happy to say I've never seen their shit
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What's your point?
Western alliances which are the only places in the world with a robust LGBT rights framework?
"Nooooo you can't just give people rights because it makes you look good!"
I didn't realise committing genocide made people look good, I guess. You know those militaries kill lgbt people too right?
I mean, I don't know enough about North Korea here but Lenin decriminalized homosexuality in like 1920. Stalin recriminalized it in 1932-33 but for a bit there the Soviet Union was the most LGBT friendly country in the world.
Lemme rest, my palm is all sore
What’s going on with ppl that won’t even do simple google check before commenting something. I for example would be ashamed to peddle some bullshit that is one top search click to disprove or even common sense
So do your googling on this. I'll wait.
I already did. It took me 5 seconds and even before that I facepalmed hard just from grade school knowledge of the “world”
Well don't be too hard on yourself, you tried your best and that's all Jesus asks of you
What is the point of this, uh, argument? Since then it’s illegal to be LGBT in Russia, so you’re admitting that Russia sucks now? Agreed!
Russia began to suck hardest when the US succeeded in turning it into a supercharged version of itself. Every bad bit about Russia you don't like? It's where the US is headed, thanks to its own imperialism. "Rainbow Capitalism" is as unsustainable as Rainbow Slavery or Rainbow Fascism.
Lmao, .ml really is on a roll with the whole "we love LGBT rights but hate every country which actually has LGBT rights" cognitive dissonance lately.
They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.Correction, updated data is actually closer to 2k MAU. They are the 4th most active instance, topped by lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and Lemmy.world.
Interesting, I expected them to be much larger
Yeah I was surprised too, but if you go by MAU hexbear and Lemmy.Ml combined are just under 3k last I checked.
Lemm.ee alone has about that many, and Lemmy.world has many times that
My guess is that they just needed to have their own community for a lot of stuff because so many instances are defederated from them. Though I am not sure...
Or because it's older than most of the other instances
I guess it's also natural that subcultures that tend to be banned elsewhere are early adaptors of alternative platforms.
We're lucky we didn't exist when the Trump extremists on Reddit went looking for a new home, or they would probably have been one of the biggest fields in this figure. Hopefully when the right wing extremists arrive instance admins will have the good sense to defederate.
If I remember correctly, Hexbear was there before the exodus. So that wouldn't make sense.
Hexbear is older than most of the fediverse, and didn't have federation enabled for years. It's a very self-sufficient community.
That's probably it
like Beehaw
Is there something wrong with beehaw?
Nothing wrong with beehaw as far as I know, but a while ago they defederated lemmy.world because the instance is to big and not moderated enough, or something like that.
No. Just that they’re defederated from lots of big instances so they tend to gave their own communities, which increases their size on chart.
Unlike Hexbear, they chose to be defederated
Ah that makes sense
They’ve existed for a while. A lot of subscribers are inactive users. Kind of like reddit where a sub can have 5k people and still be inactive.
It's less that they're big, but old.
I haven't even heard of it xd
I only scroll all for now... Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.
Most instances block them so most communities on those instances won't see them either. Once you find certain communities on instances that don't block them you suddenly see half the comments being from hexbear, which likely quickly makes you block those communities fairly quickly.
. world is defederated with hexbear iirc
Oh. Why?
You could go visit hexbear and you'd find out pretty quickly. It's definitely not for everyone.
Other comments hit on this but I'll add a little more. There is a good bit of trolls/trolling, some extreme views, and authoritarian government praise. Things like that.
Lemm.ee (my instance) is still federated so I see hexbear post/ comments. It's definitely a more problematic instance imo.
Oh okay, got it
You only got replies from hexbear haters so let me balance it out a bit. Hexbear is by far the most LGBT+ friendly instance in the fediverse and has a supermajority of queer users. They're aggressively anti-bigotry in all its forms and are extremely happy to educate and engage in discussions as long as you approach them in good faith.
Most people who go out of their way to shit talk them in the wild are just mad hexbear banned them for saying some racist or homophobic shit
Okay. Then why is almost every instance defederating?
Because hexbear is full of socialists and most instances are full of rabid pro-genocide liberals.
It's not "almost every instance," it's largely Lemmy.world. hexbear defederated from some other instances, but most major instances are, in fact, federated with Hexbear.
Hexbear was not federated with any instances at all for years until about a year ago in the first place.
It's an entire instance of teenage trolls
What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.
Your instance is defederated from them
Think of it as the Tankie version of The Donald.
Horseshoe theory strikes again.
Political illiteracy strikes again
Yeah, I'm doing my best to learn the concepts but I have a ways to go.
Horseshoe theory is essentially Latte-Flavored horseshit
Wikipedia: Horseshoe Theory
It's essentially where reddit's old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it
To be fair, that's because liberalism is closer to fascism than any sort of leftism, and many of these instances have a strongly liberal user base because many were with Reddit longer than most leftists were.
I really don't think the specific date of reddit departure is what shaped the politics of either community, especially not when the one you're saying was less shaped by reddit was born out of a political subreddit
Hexbear's site culture is full of in jokes and big on dunking. That's always going to be abrasive to outsiders, even without the whole thing where all of their many emojis were enormous on other instances
I only know it because it is often mentioned when talking about trolling
It's an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.
It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.
Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.
I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.
.world never federated with Hexbear from what I remember. I'm pretty sure they were on the block list before Hexbear got federation completed. There was no single incident as far as I know.
Wrong. They federated with them then had a big discussion on if they should defederate (you can probably still find it in meta). It’s why I left - I prefer to make my own defederation decisions (and I like Hexbear, and Piracy too).
Source: I was there.
Not really surprising. 10 out of the 10 most commented posts in the past year are on hexbear (the top 2 being the weekly trans mega threads). Granted, a lot of that is just the hyper-active posting of a few users. Regardless, if you want a trans community, there's basically no active alternative to hexbear's traaa here.
What about blahaj?
I'm subscribed to pretty much all the trans coms I know of and traa is 90% of the trans content that shows up. Another 5% are other hexbear trans subs. Traa has as many comments in half a month as mtf@blajah has had in its entire existance and as many in a week as trans@blahaj has made in total (the two largest non-hexbear trans subs afaik).
This reads like someone telling me that the nazi bar is the only place to go because the nazi bar has people there all the time and the other bars are mostly empty.
Cool. Being trans, not tolerating transphobia, and having emotes is comparable to being nazis?
Also, not suggesting people need to go there because its active. I could go to traa, egg, mtf, agender, enby, etc on reddit, but I don't want to use reddit and a lot of those communities make hexbear look tame in terms of spamminess and immaturity.
Not at all what I wrote.
Did you know: you know you can just say you didn't read the comment?
It'd be much faster and way easier on everyone else to know to discard your input!
I did read it.
Gab also was big, but its role for the fediverse wasn't.
Who or what is/was Gab? 😅
Its like truth social
OFL, what is going on with this hexbear? And is there any reason behind the name?