World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.
I really can’t see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I’ve heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less… nice than those of smaller instances.
I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn’t make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.
Simply because people didn’t and still don’t understand how all of this works.
On top of the other comments, I’d also like to point out that it’s a little unfair to blame a brand new fediverse user for not understanding how it works.
I know I certainly didn’t understand how it worked with my first account, but you learn over time by using and interacting. You need to make an account first though to get to that point. Lemmy.world is a safe option for a new user who probably doesn’t understand the specifics of the decision of where to make an account.
You can’t blame people for the (sometimes) limited brainset they receive.
If it’s unclear to the majority, then it’s Lemmy which should aim to simplify the process of joining/explaining it to the general population.
Federated software is awesome, but sadly the recruiting process is still too difficult for many.
If it’s unclear which app to download / which instance to join, then that’s where a lot of registrations are being missed out on.