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the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).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.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
You can still choose one that talks to everybody else. In fact, this graphic might be a nice tool for new users who want advice beyond “Just choose any instance, it doesn’t matter” or “Just use lemmy.world”.
I say, I really don’t get why so many people stay over on Reddit.
This place fuckin sucks man? It’s pretty much reddit for left wing progressives who specifically care about left wing American* politics, linux, and not much else
I don’t know if this is better or worse. I do like the selectivity of it, though, where you’re free to join or privately defederate instances
This is cool, thanks!
Wouldn’t it make more sense to indicate federation with an arrow and defederation with no arrow?
Interesting that so many instances have defederated from fedinsfw.app. What’s that about?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to indicate federation with an arrow and defederation with no arrow?
Unless an instance chooses to defederate from another, everything is federated by default; indicating it with arrows would result in a very messy graph.
Interesting that so many instances have defederated from fedinsfw.app. What’s that about?
Fedinsfw.app, like lemmynsfw.com before it, is an instance dedicated to hosting NSFW content. As such content can be off-putting for new users, and only a subset of users are interested in seeing it, some instances choose to defederate from instances dedicated to it. While I’m broadly against defederation that results in a fractured Threadiverse, in this case doing so is probably more helpful in terms of new user retention than it is harmful (users can easily have separate accounts on SFW and NSFW instances or choose an instance that maintains federation with both).
Federating nsfw can bear legal issues. Although I believe Feddit.UK has entirely disabled access to NSFW
The beehaw.org/sh.itjust.works defederation is really one-way. Beehaw defederated from us after some exceptionally bad trolls were operating from sh.itjust.works in 2023. IIRC, they requested that we also defederate from them to really make sure the split was made. We honored their request.
We would happily reconnect if Beehaw decided they want to federate with us again. If not, then that’s fine; they have a right to associate with whomever they like.
I believe infosec.pub temporarily defederated from us around the same time for the same reason. It was a rough time.
I’ll adjust the graph by the next version to account for it as an exception.
Well that’s a confusing graph.
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.
Yeah, .zip gives its users full autonomy to block instances/users as they see fit, which is why I’m on their instance.
I am on all instances 😈
Why would they do that? I’m unaware of internal issues in Lemmy at this point?
It’s a question if history is real and if it matters or not.
A big contention is about the historical and political reality of Ukraine (spoilers in my instance .tld)
The “anti western” communists claim that the USA publicly bragged about doing a regime change on Ukraine, like before they did it, and the CIA affiliate even published the money they supported the organizer of the euromaidan protests with on their own website. Besides trained him. They also claim there were Nazis and that there are newspapers reports about this. They even unironically want to rehabilitate Stalin and the state violence of the great purge that passed about 10% of the population through a gulag! Imagine doing this in the USA today with all the MAGAts and corrupt officials and landowners in order to reeducate them and prevent a counterrevolution!!! Clearly they are insane.
And these are all lies because that is what Putin says and Putin is evil. So the good liberals of .world rightfully point out that all this is nonsense and Ukraine has always been neutral and the revolution of dignity must not be impinged by dirty commies. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia. The liberal socialists agree that this is a time where we need to band together and return to normalcy, because obviously we can’t have all this aggravation and it’s better to be inside the tent pissing out, no matter much fun it is to be on the outside pissing in.
This is all besides the question of ideology, collectivism and all that unamerican crap lol.
My personal opinion: You cannot have rational discourse with insane people in an insane society. It also means lemmy has failed as a global medium for meaningful political discourse. While the communist instances (the original developers btw) are pretty extreme and hostile, .world managed to monopolize much of lemmy and enforce (neo)liberal majority opinion on lemmy.
Obviously this is all satire. Nobody is planning a global war on democratic socialists or something.
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.
Apologies for the confusion; didn’t want to make it overly cluttered, but in retrospect I see that a legend would have been useful. I’ll incorporate suggestions in a revision.
I thought the % underneath was the number of users who couldn’t see that instance, but I guess it’s % of the active fediverse users?
Yes; the percentage underneath an instance is its proportion of the overall Threadiverse userbase. The percentages on the large arrows are the sum of the userbases within the associated box, indicating the extent to which an instance is defederated (somewhat of an underestimation, given that 12% of users are unaccounted for).
https://files.catbox.moe/218n2l.svg
Looks like something is going wrong with the Lemmy media proxy.
Replaced the catbox SVG link with a PNG upload for compatibility purposes, so hopefully it displays better now.
Do sharing a circle mean defederated or federated?
Arrows mean defederated. Circles mean everything within that circle is defederated from the target instance. (It took me a while to figure that out.)
Sorry for the confusion; I’ll try to make it clearer next time.
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?
Damn, I thought blahaj would have more defederation. Place is just as toxic as hexbear.
yaaasss feddit.uk #5 spot come on lads get in
