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.
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At the time, LW was among the only ones that could handle the influx of registrations.
So naturally, it became the default one, as people would want to get on the biggest one, similar to a way the biggest Mastodon instance is very prevalent.
People were also afraid their All feed won’t be as full if they were not on LW.
Nowadays I think the repartition is a bit better, and most of the top communities have at least an equivalent out of LW.
TBH they couldn’t handled the traffic at the beginning because Lemmy wasn’t stable as is now, but I believe they tried their best. Also I can’t say for all of them but their admins are reliable, trustworthy people.
I was on LW at first but made a switch specifically because the instancencouldn’t handle the influx
There was also a user that was booted for sublemmy camping (literally trying to grab thousands of sub names) that was constantly ddosing the site, and doing everything they could to mess things up for others. https://old.lemmy.world/post/1720870
Same here, switched cause of the down time mostly
Yeah, I guess people have a reflex to always go wherever is the biggest (which doesn’t really make sense in the Fediverse).
Mastodon is different, though. Mastodon.social is the default instance and is heavily suggested by the company, while join-lemmy.org lists instances randomly by default. There must be something that inclined users to join it, considering that it gained enough momentum to make up more than half of Lemmy users (not counting alien.top).
Join-lemmy was different at the time. There were only a few instances listed, and most of them where either quite selective in their registration, completely closed, or open. LW was among the last ones.
There was also the trend (and I did it as well) to tell Reddit users to “just go to LW, it’s like Reddit” to avoid having to confuse them with federation.
alien.top
I never heard of that instance, it has over one milion users but zero communities, what kind of a instance is that??
Reddit mirror, see https://lemm.ee/post/16850498
@Masimatutu Mander is where many of the cool science communities are though. :-)
I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform.
I agree. But I think what has happened is people are bringing a web 2.0 social media mentality to the fediverse. Instead of adjusting to decentralization/federation they are essentially trying to recreate centralization by clustering in the one spot.
Lemmy.world’s size and low friction signup became self-perpetuating for people who thought they were going “where everyone else is” and were afraid of missing out.
As the fediverse matures, I think we will see less obsession with recruitment or with needing to be the biggest/only community for whatever subject.
I think there are two big reasons…
- During the big Reddit exodus, a lot of people were recommending lemmy.world.
- It’s a general purpose instance. People tend to flock to those rather than more specific topical instances.
It’s a containment instance to keep the kids busy.
Funny, isn’t that how Facebook started? 🥲
Essentially it was because it was one of a small number of instances that had open signups without having to write an application (no matter how simple). Reducing the friction of getting an account and starting to use the site is more important than you would think.
Once it is popular then that is the one people will recommend since that is the instance they are familiar with.
They promised to be the exact same kind of nazi bar that reddit was, and they succeeded. I personally like they soaked up all the reactionaries running away from reddit because their CEO is… jewish, or whatever they came up with. Keeps em off reddit and more importantly off here.
Comment sorting
Interactivity
Active communities
Mostly just open applications. Though others are extremely easy to join.
Because it’s hipster reddit, making it twice as insufferable as normal reddit
Is this irony? If so, well done.
I find Lemmy much more helpful and pleasant to use than Reddit. If that makes it hipster Reddit then I’m all for it!
I first joined lemmy.world during the exudus because it was the most recommended one. Soon after, dropped it and joined lemmy.zip. My reason was world’s uptime issue, going dark because of constant DDoS attacks (not their fault) and the last straw for me was the ban of piracy community. I love lemmy.zip, they don’t ban instances or communities unless it absolutely warrants in which case the mods reached out to members for vote. Another big reason I love zip is because the mods are very chill and don’t overstep. I haven’t had any technical issue with zip.
The DDoS attacks are totally their fault, as are the constant CSAM attacks, because those are the kinds of people they keep around. The only websites I’ve ever seen sustain multiple DDoS attacks are those run by admins who passively protect child abusers and nazis because they’re the kinds of thin-skinned crackers who will go nuclear on even the slightest of perceived inconvenience, or sometimes for no reason at all.
I started there during the Great Reddit Migration. Made a few arguments against general censorship, and was downvoted to hell and back. Left when they blocked the piracy sub. Never looked back.
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.
Because the main general purpose instance(.ml)'s server was dying under the influx of redditoids
I see waaay more complaints about Hexbear than Reddit refugees.
Why would you leave a passive-aggressive comment about hexbear when the user made a legitimate point about the influx of redditors overloading .ml servers during the exodus?
I didn’t read the point that way at all. They seemed to be implying that Reddit users scared people away from .ml and to .world. I have no personal issue with you guys from lemmygrad and hexbear, but a lot of people do since you can come across a bit abrasive. So, I thought that was a bit of an ironic thing to say.
I think you misunderstood their comment? They’re saying the high number of active users coming from Reddit was too much for the computers to handle at the time, not that the Redditors themselves were scaring people away. The speed and downtime of the .ml instance at the time is what they are saying drove people to .world.
I remember world was a bit better at the time, but both instances were frequently struggling with performance after the third-party app ban.
Oh, yeah, if that’s what they meant, I do remember that. The biggest struggle was that the software was itself a bit rough, as (admittedly) a refugee myself, which to the admin’s credit has gotten much better.
