Refer to title.
Lemmy.World, almost certainly. As it is, they’re on track to surpass lemmy.ml, and lemmy.ml has stated that they don’t really want to be a big instance, but would prefer to be a smaller one like they used to be, redirecting new users to other instances, not least of all because the number of users was causing the server to implode.
Kbin is nice, and all, but it’s technically its own thing, and isn’t really a lemmy instance, even if it can be used as one. It’s not quite as big as the others are.
Beehaw’s account creation limits will almost certainly hamper any growth they will get, even if they decided to refederate with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works again, but even then, they were still the third-biggest before defederating, so it might be a bit of a toss-up.
Beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works, effectively disconnecting from them. According to the post they made, they were disconnecting due to the influx of new users on both those instances overwhelming the moderation tools and moderation team that they had going.
It’s worth noting that Beehaw describes itself as a safe-space instance, where registration is restricted, and all users registering have to be approved by instance operators. This is fine and all, but there’s an issue. See, with the way that Lemmy and Federation works, you don’t have to be a registered user on an instance to post there. So a user can just circumvent Beehaw’s account creation restrictions by creating an account on a less-restrictive instance (such as lemmy.world), and posting over there. Which isn’t ideal for Beehaw’s moderators and operators, who had trouble dealing with “bad actors” from those instances (trolls and things), simply because their open registration policy meant that there would be be an influx of new users who found Beehaw’s community through lemmy.world, or sh.itjust.works, or trolls who could comment on Beehaw’s posts through them, circumventing bans and things.
Since it was too much for them to deal with, using the current tools that they had available to them, Beehaw defederated themselves from those two instances, effectively separating themselves from those two. Beehaw users won’t see new posts from those instances, and those users wouldn’t be able to see any new posts from Beehaw.
Given the current state of things, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kbin might also be on the chopping block, since they’ve been having a few problems with users from there too, but that’s neither here nor there.
Still, the Beehaw operators have said that they’re willing to reconnect with those instances once Lemmy develops better moderation tools that let them manage that amount of users (and they’re in contact with the operators for those two instances), but we have no real idea when that might be.
I believe it is going to be Lemmy.World. Besides my home instance of Kbin, which I love dearly, it is the one I see and hear about the most.
It does make sense because it is open to sign-ups, is federated with pretty much everything (apart from closed off instances like Beehaw and the tankies at Grad), and has the advantage of being a Lemmy instance (which gives it name recognition).
In the long-term, I hope federation keeps this space open, even if there is one or some “main” instance(s) people use.
The good thing about having open sign-up is that you get a big userbase pretty quickly.
The bad thing about having open sign-up is that you have people squatting on usernames and impersonating other people.
I mean, can you imagine?
I read this in a Harley Quinn accent so I’m 99% sure this is the actual Margot Robbie and is all the proof I need to consider this a verified account. Thank you Ms. Robbie for explaining things once again like you did in The Big Short!
If you like me explaining things, feel free to join the community I made for everyone to explain things.
https://lemmy.world/c/nowlemmyexplain
Also, preorder tickets for “Barbie”, opening July 21st only in theaters. The writers are still on strike and I’ve got bills to pay.
I absolutely couldn’t imagine it at all.
Loved your performance in Suicide Squad, particularly the bit where you said it was Squad’in time and Squaded on the Joker
lemmy.world because it’s currently the biggest instance with open signups, and it has “lemmy” right there in the name. It’s the obvious place for a novice to choose.
Kbin and probably kbin.social
The biggest growth will come from Reddit/Twitter. A huge chunk of users from both are young and become easily outraged over social issues.
Websites tend to grow in stages and at each stage they build momentum. If you kill momentum at a key point everyone can end up fleeing the website.
The developers of lemmy are tankies, idiologues can’t help themselves. As a result they’ll drop a comment supporting some abhorrent action from China/Russia or repost China/Russia state media propaganda and cause outrage at a key moment and lemmy will become a dirty word.
Ngl I kinda love the whole tankie drama. It feels ripe for discourse. Though I did watch a fairly toxic debate on here where it turned into yelling, what was essentially the same points on both sides, at each other, without realizing they were actually kind of in agreement. To think any one human perspective is even remotely the right one is a pretty big oof ime. I think we can all agree that the people who came before us are not our goal, and we need to be better.
Aside from not having controversial admins it also has a much more Reddit like interface, which makes the transition much easier.
I’ve exclusively used it since I found it and now don’t feel like dipping into other ones yet. I also so far kind of like the dev. I’m just on that team for now, but we will see how things change. I’m hoping more work will be put into it to make it even better because I see potential.
Either kbin.social or Lemmy.world. Then again, this hyper growth period is ripe for disruption. Facebook is talking about an ActivityPub instance. Imagine if they poured resources into UX improvements and directed their 2.5 billion users to it. It would be the largest instance by far overnight.
It would also be defederates instantly by hundreds of communities - people don’t want corporations here because of what corpos have done to their own social media platforms.
The last thing I want to see is a meta community get big, because meta will probably start injecting ad posts directly into the community. I’m ok if it’s just the users, I’m not ok if it’s all the other baggage.
Not to mention meta will probably start with microblogging platforms first. Which is a bit harder to fuck with in the way meta can with Lemmy/kbin. I’d be more ok with it if they stayed there, I would however delete or park my Instagram accounts, especially if insta users can follow me directly on mastodon.
Interestingly, there has been some polls about the age of Mastodon users. Generally they point towards users being rather old for the standards of a new tech platform.
Here’s one poll by @futurebird, with 459 respondents. Half are gen X, and almost 10% are boomers.
I would guess the average age of the Threadiverse might be lower, but it seems the Fediverse has some appeal across generations. I suspect that those of us who remember the indie internet from days of yore might find the Fediverse more intuitive than gen Z who are discovering the beautiful chaos for the first time.
Edit: Here’s another poll by @mcneely showing the same results with 26 750 respondents: Half the respondents are 41-60 years old, 10% are older than 60.
There’s nothing inherently confusing about the protocol. It just needs UX improvements. Meta has a few billion in product research and experience they could use to improve the protocol immensely.
