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the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @[email protected]’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).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 [email protected] did not federate to Lemmygrad while [email protected] 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.
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I could have sworn that hexbear defederated from jlai.lu. there was a whole spat between our instances a while back.
As someone informed me, Hexbear is unique in that most of its “defederations” are just instances that aren’t on its approval list. Jlai.lu doesn’t defederate Hexbear itself, but isn’t on the approval list, so I guess that’s effectively a defederation; I’ll adjust the next version of the chart to account for that.
This looks like a job for… The Defedestrator
Thanks for the work, really interesting graph! I think it *might be easier to read if the rectangles were ovals or some morph between rectangle and oval, so that the overlapping groupings are a bit more distinct.
Thanks for the feedback; I’ll try to make the groupings more distinct in the revision.
Ok, I’ll be the one to ask: What happened that 6 instances with 13% of the population combined blocked the porn instance?
As many instances were already blocking the original lemmynsfw.com, I suspect most do it as a means of moderating the feeds of new users who might not want to see porn. An alternative to this (as mentioned by @[email protected]) would be blocking access to its communities (versus the instance itself) by default, allowing users to see replies from fedinsfw.app users and unblock the communities should they wish to. In either case, I think user retention is better served by limiting access to such content to those who are specifically interested in it.
For Multiverse and apparently Blahaj specifically, they defederate it over CP concerns due to it hosting a ‘Fautbait’ community.
An alternative to this (as mentioned by @[email protected]) would be blocking its communities (versus the instance itself) by default, allowing users to see replies from fedinsfw.app users and unblock the communities should they wish to.
Hey thanks for tagging me, but let me clarify because that’s not exactly what I meant. Lemmy.zip doesn’t block any communities by default (as far as I can recall, at least). It blocks a couple of instances by default, and each user can remove those blocks if they wish. This is different from defederating from those instances because defederation cannot be controlled by users, only by admins, but it’s still an instance block, not community block.
Just registered, this is correct.
Thanks for confirming.
Thanks for the clarification 👍 Clarified with italics that what is being blocked is access to the communities, rather than a direct blocking of individual communities.
The key distinction I wanted to highlight—aside from unblocking being an option—was that users from the blocked instance can still interact with communities on the blocking instance, compared to defederation.
No problem 👍
Makes sense, thanks for the background!
I always felt it was strange that it didn’t just happen at the client level. Should have had flags in the initial design and moderate to enforce. Just turn the default off on all clients people can turn it on if they want.
The fautbait stuff is obviously a deeper problem
Well that’s a confusing graph.
Yeah I cant understand it at all.
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.
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.
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.
Ideological differences. Lemmy.world is liberal, while lemmygrad and hexbear are hardcore communists (aka tankies).
I believe its not the hardcore communism but the style of users on those instances. hexbear users were brigading communities of other instances, and their moderators did nothing. they earned it.
No hexbear was never federated. They started discussing whether to federate and writing moderation rules, sent them to other admins for input, and .world preemptively put hexbear on their defederation list. .world basically said it was ideological differences, they posted all the parts of the draft hexbear rules where they were explaining that hexbear was communist/anarchist and anti-western, and that was just a self-evident reason to preemptively defederate.
oh, that’s right, forgot how .world was with it. but they earned it for the rest of the fediverse.
The ones at the bottom that are below the None category aren’t defederated from anyone, so they can access every instance.
OK I think I get how to read this, once I understood the concept. Very nice work.
Maybe it would be a little clearer if the lines where boxes overlap were just slightly offset – it would help see and distinguish them. For example if the blue box was moved down by just a little more than the width of the red lines, instead of being directly on top of them. If that makes sense.
I’ll consider doing that for the revision; thanks for the feedback!
deleted by creator
What’s the number and oercebt next to the arrows though?
The number is the number of instances within the box blocking the instance in question, whereas the percentage is the percentage of overall Threadiverse users that those instances represent. For instance, at least 64.01% of Threadiverse users (the actual figure is higher as the 12% of users on smaller instances are not accounted for) cannot access Hexbear communities or interact with Hexbear users.
I’m keen for v2. I still don’t get it but I’ve been here a while now and want to work out how this stuff works (including Lemmy, PieFed, Mastadon crossposts, comments etc).
Seems easy on the surface but once you dig it’s some specialised knowledge.
Good work dude.
Ultimately most of the process involved adding additional columns to data extracted from Fediverse Observer, most importantly the block lists from Federation Checker.
From there, the hardest part was figuring out how to lay things out in a way that enabled instances with similar block lists to be placed in adjacent groups in a way that’s understandable while leaving room for arrows.
Have gotten helpful feedback so far, so hopefully the next version will be easier to understand.
Very proud of lemmy.zip! Joined very early on cause the name sounded cool lol, and apparently a lot of others also did. If i remember right we had a vote on defederations and the only major one to happen(or maybe the only one, idk) was exploding heads which was a nazi instance with CSAM on it so that was obvious, even that was mainly cause of the CSAM. I really like the approach of users being able to block instances and communities rather than the instance deciding for me. I still have ml and hexbear blocked tho cause they banned me after i stood up for trans rights or something lol
Hexbear blocked you for being pro trans? I find that hard to believe.
I disagree with them on a lot but they are a very pro trans group of people
i’ve been blocked for being pro trans in many communities.
because I’m not pro-trans enough. so i must want to kill all trans people. or so their logic goes.
it’s not really often a reflection of the instance or the community, so much as one really really angry user or a few, who have decided you’re the scum of the earth for voicing an opinion they don’t agree with 120%. you know, toxic nutbag users.
extremists often thing anyone isn’t as extreme as them is committing a hate crime against them.
anyway, i haven’t been banned anywhere since, since i blocked the instances from which those types of folks tend to come from. and they overwhelmingly come from a few instances, and making a post in their instances basically paints a target on your back and they stalk you across the fediverse because well, that’s the type of user they are. they could just… block you. but you know, that would be too simple, they need to feel like they have punished you for not agreeing with them.
You got temporary banned from the lemmy.ml memes community and permanently banned from the hexbear vegan community and divisionsbyzero mycology community.
Oh i thought it was a perma ban. Also how can i check this? Cause i got banned after commenting about trans rights but i guess that wasnt why i got banned, tho the memes community ban might be that. 2 years is still insane tho. As for the other, yeah i was anti-ai in an ai community and not a vegan in a vegan community, but the way that is phrased is insane.
.zip and Demogodrick definitely cool.
I also lucked out by joining here just because I couldnt join more popular instances at the time. Happy that I landed here
I’m feeling the same way. I’ve bounced around a few places since joining. I started on midwest.social which was great for a while, but I think the instance grew more than the dev could keep up with. I started seeing connectivity issues and problems displaying content so I reluctantly migrated to .world to see what joining the largest instance would be like. The technical issues went away but I couldn’t figure out why I could no longer see /c/piracy until I realized that they’re a bunch of pushovers that defederated from dbzer0 based on some liability bogeyman. So I found myself on Lemmy.zip where I can police my own content and have no technical issues.
The instance I’m in is definitely the odd ones out, we got no one here😅
Same
102 monthly active users, so if I expand the limit to 100 next time it would be included. Ideally all instances would be represented, but when doing it manually in a chart like this, at some point I have to draw a line.
Yeah, I understand, it would be ALOT to record.
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.
If you want to complicate the graph further, I believe hexbear federates using an allow list. Blahaj, lemmy.ca, and sh.itjust.works are not on the allow list, so they are effectively defederated. I haven’t looked further to see which other large instances may be affected.
In most cases that a major instance isn’t on the Hexbear allow list, it seems to be an instance that blocks Hexbear already anyhow, so the current layout is sufficient for that. An exception seems to be jlai.lu, which does not block Hexbear yet isn’t on the approved list. In such a case, would the two instances still effectively be defederated?
In such a case, would the two instances still effectively be defederated?
I think so? That’s what I would expect, at least.
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.
I’ve said this a number of times over the past couple days, but if there’s an instance for mirroring subreddits, where niche subreddits that don’t have an equivalent here yet basically get a carbon copy and a repost bot to stock them with relevant stuff from over there, that could fill in some of those gaps and make the fediverse a more attractive alternative.
It won’t have the same level of engagement right away, but it will provide a place for that engagement to occur, and as more people start using it it will create a network effect. As things stand now, we’re missing a lot of those niche communities.
There is an instance like that - lemmit.online. It’s been going for three years and it’s still a ghost town.
Ah, I see. Yeah, it is a ghost town…
Someone explained that that exists and hasnt connected with people, but I think a big part of why it hasnt is that theres no real social drive to comment or engage with something if theres zero chance the poster might see it. It kinda feels like you’re just speaking into the void, or talking to yourself
Thats how I feel about it at least 🤷🏻♂️ if a human reposts stuff at least you can chat with the reposter about it, if its the kind of post where that makes sense. If the post is a “hey look at this thing I did”, the reposter can’t really say how it went or discuss the experience
That makes sense. I guess it would mainly only work for posts linking to articles, but we already have that honestly
Just like in real life, one must grow and sometimes create the communities they want to be apart of.
While thats true, if my friend whose biggest interests are science informed dog training and animal genetics joins the threadiverse there are not enough people here who genuinely really care about those subjects to actually sustain any of the social connection she’s looking for around them.
If my friend who’s super into basketball and competitive league of legends join she’d have at least a couple people to talk to, but its fundamentally not what she’s looking for to talk to exactly 3 other people who care about the thing she’s into.
I try to remember that as much as I love the fediverse and feel at home here, it has real limitations for lots of people, and its okay if its not in a state they can go enjoy very easily. This is a space that I am passionate about and want to contribute to. I don’t expect everyone to do labor to invest in a space that isnt their passion just to chat with folks when they have the ability to chat with folks somewhere else, even if that place has bigger picture downsides or harms associated with it.
Difficult when people here only like 5 things and they shun everything that is not those 5 things.
It really is pretty dead outside the main subjects. I have noone to talk about the latest episode of My Adventures with Superman. Did they now just leave the other universe with Clark dead? That sucks.
Maybe try making a post on one of the movies or shows comms (I’m not familiar with it and don’t know if its a movie or a show. Though you can also just post where people are.)
c/casual_conversations can also be a place to chat
I think in some cases on the threadiverse communities just have to be more catchall, because there aren’t enough people to congregate around a more specific topic. But there may be other people out there who would love to chat about that with you, even if there aren’t enough for a specific community for the show
(Apologies if youve already tried this, I just had the problem solving thought and figured I’d share. If its not helpful thats okay :)
I do want to watch that. It’s in my list of shows to watch one the first season is done. I normally don’t follow western animation or comics, but he’s so derpy I think it’ll be endearing enough for me to enjoy.
I don’t know if we’re talking about the same show. MAWS is in its 3rd season now. It has been good so far in my opinion.
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 can understand people staying on Reddit more than those staying on Twitter to be honest.
At least spez hasn’t gone full nazi yet, or provided tools for generating pedophilia.
Both of which people seem to be perfectly fine with. So it doesn’t surprise me they’re fine with Reddit too.
At least spez hasn’t gone full nazi yet
citation needed
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
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
While it would be nice if there were more activity, when the alternative is the ever-enshittifying Reddit, our best option is to contribute what we can here, be as welcoming as possible to new users, and block any content that isn’t interesting to achieve a personalized feed of one’s preferred content.
That’s slander!
We also like Star Trek!
You can always post eco-fascist Australian memes if that’s more your thing
@[email protected] this is what I mean, cunts everywhere in this place, why would I encourage anyone to come here?
Banned 1 day for being disrespectful. Next one is a perma.
Unfortunately there are too many people here who would rather be brash and rude at the hint of any disagreement, rather than discussing civilly and promoting a healthy community that is not an echo chamber.
My best advice is to just block people who you find rude to make the remainder slightly less rude on average.
That guy was brash, but I somewhat agree with him. This place is full of people who left reddit for a multitude of reasons. Just think about that. Reddit didn’t suffice for the vast majority of people here, and now those same people are circlejerking each other in an echo chamber the size of McDonald’s PlayPlace tube. This is why Lemmy, in my opinion, won’t last long.
That and McDonald’s PlayPlace tubes smell like socks.
I also don’t think the Threadiverse should be an echo chamber, nor do I think that user deserved a temp ban for expressing their frustration with it. Ultimately, fewer defederations, more acceptance of differing opinions, and being welcoming of users who aren’t interested in politics are the primary viable means for the platform to grow beyond being a niche echo chamber.
I’m a cunt? I’m just encouraging you to follow your dreams.
You can even post anti-linux memes with that one other guy.
We are not interested in you recommending similar toxic people, as you support genocide in Palestine
I really like this but I can not figure it out. Would you be willing to make the data available?
The MAU numbers for instances were sourced from Fediverse Observer and calculated as a percentage of 43,287 for the percentages, but here’s a table of the defederation data:
Lemmy Instance Defederates lemmy.world Hexbear, Lemmygrad sh.itjust.works Beehaw, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.zip N/A lemmy.ml fedinsfw.app feddit.org fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad hexbear.net lemmy.world lemmy.dbzer0.com Lemmygrad, Feddit.org lemmy.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.blahaj.zone fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad programming.dev Hexbear discuss.tchncs.de Lemmygrad sopuli.xyz fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmygrad.ml fedinsfw.app lemmy.today N/A slrpnk.net Hexbear, Lemmygrad feddit.uk N/A infosec.pub fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml reddthat.com N/A jlai.lu Lemmygrad beehaw.org sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world, Lemmygrad, Hexbear pawb.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad thelemmy.club N/A feddit.nl N/A Piefed Instance Defederates fedinsfw.app Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.zip N/A Mbin Instance Defederates fedia.io ? Can someone give me the gossip on fedinsfw.app and feddit.org? What are they? Why is db0zer defederated from feddit.org?
FediNSFW is a Piefed instance dedicated to NSFW content. Some instances defederate it due to that, while (as @[email protected] mentioned) Multiverse and apparently Blahaj defederate it due to it hosting a ‘Fautbait’ community over CP concerns.
Feddit.org strictly enforces German anti-semitism laws on criticizing Israel. As a result, dbzer0 accused it of being Zionist and defederated it. I don’t think criticism of Israel should be removed, but I also prefer to be on an instance with wider federation, which is why I switched my main account from dbzer0 to Sopuli.
Cool, thank you for the explanations!
What the hell are Hexbear and Lemmygrad and what did they do that everyone’s blocking them?
Lemmygrad and Hexbear (I think) are instances filled with “tankies”, which means that they can’t shut up about how awesome authoritarian regimes that present themselves as communist, like China, and some others, like Russia, are, despite all the crimes against human rights those countries’ governments keep committing (according to tankies, the governments they support don’t actually commit any atrocities, it’s just “lies spread via anti-communist propaganda”, which they also use as a excuse for silencing anyone presenting criticism about their favourite regimes). Please keep in mind that lots of communists don’t see countries like China as communist, despite the countries calling themselves that.
As these instances have lots of tankies, they tend to have toxic communities. Their users also tend to hate trans people for some reason, and sometines try to harass people because of it, which is a big no-no to instances that want their trans users to feel safe, such as Blåhaj Zone.
The second “hexbear is anti trans” comment I’ve seen in this thread
I spent a lot of time on hexbear over the last year because I had never run into tankies before. They are definitely problematic, way too ok with killing humans to achieve goals, and willing to lie to win a debate in an ends justify the means sort of way, but they arent anti trans in any way that I saw. If they are lying about their pro trans stance they are putting a ton of effort into it and theyve succesfully tricked me I guess
Lammygrad are Marxist Leninist, Hexbear are dirtbag leftists. That makes them the natural enemies of center-left and centrist instances like .world.
In my opinion it comes down to a disagreement over capitalism. One side wants to destroy it, the other side wants to moderate it.
To add an annecdote, hexbear has this handy link to an image: (nsfw) https://hexbear.net/PPB
Ask yourself why a discussion platform might keep this image quick-link and you may understand why everyone defederates from them.
also worth noting that I’d have all the data in the Lemmyverse.net data, I could probably build a page that shows something similar to this graph.
Things that pop out to me:
- The Internet was made for porn, both in users and less defederating.
- The main blocks really are mostly the Triad (grad, hexbear and ml) which I get. I personally don’t mind tankies despite the instance I’m on, but they can sometimes echo Russian propaganda that’s demonstrably false. Communism as a concept is ok, though.
The Beehaw thing predates me, I heard they’re nice people, though. I also agree with the sentiment that more fringe groups and random porn might scare away newbies, so I get why things are the way they are.
Our instance deferated fedinsfw because of the adult porn pretending to be child porn pretending to be adult porn. According to Australian law, fake child porn is legally considered child porn, and also our users think it’s gross.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
am I reading this right, that blahaj blocks federation from pawb?? that doesn’t seem right
blahaj is in the black box (has defederated fedinsfw.app), in the blue box (has defederated Lemmygrad) and in the red box (has defederated Hexbear). No one on this graph has defederated pawb. The graph is a bit confusing on the first look.
No; the instances in the black box defederate fedinsfw.app, not pawb.
