The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.

beehaw.org hexbear.net lemdro.id lemmy.blahaj.zone lemmy.dbzer0.com lemmy.ml lemmy.one lemmy.world lemmynsfw.com sh.itjust.works sopuli.xyz
Community Count 6 33 1 1 1 14 1 39 2 1 1
Community Subscriber Count 133450 663204 17052 15907 53006 356460 16257 851950 33586 16006 14093

The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as “suspicious”)

EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:

awful.systems feddit.org feddit.uk hexbear.net lemdro.id lemm.ee lemmy.blahaj.zone lemmy.ca lemmy.dbzer0.com lemmy.ml lemmy.world lemmy.wtf lemmy.zip mander.xyz sh.itjust.works slrpnk.net sopuli.xyz ttrpg.network
Community Count 1 2 2 1 1 3 1 3 3 10 57 1 3 1 5 3 2 1
Community Active Month Count 2616 7363 5289 2952 2898 8898 11422 14910 13752 54949 338384 3602 12020 11469 37365 10897 10070 4107

Community Count:

Community Users:

  • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    2 months ago

    I heard what lemmy is. I googled Lemmy. I downloaded an app. I pressed sign up. I ended up on Lemmy.world.

    I’ll be honest I don’t even really understand what different instances do.

    • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      They can be oriented to some type of content: For example, the many feddit.something are targetting people by countries or langages (.it, .uk, etc.). slrpnk.net is solarpunk oriented, mander.xyz science oriented. Litterature.cafe is books, reading and writing oriented.
      And they can offer different moderation policies: People on lemmynsfw.com probably want to see NSFW content. lemmy.world has a policy against it. lemmy.dbzer0.com allow for open discussion about piracy that many instances forbid and so on.

      It you don’t see the difference in instances, it is probably that you are about fine on your local instance. But if one day, you hear about a community you can’t access, maybe that is because it is blocked by lemmy.word and you could access it from another instance

      • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        If the dbzer0 instance allows piracy talk but I’m signed up to an instance that doesn’t allow it, can I talk in their community or do I risk being banned from mine?

        In other words, are my comments stored on their instance or on mine?

        • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Lemmy stores your posts and replies on both your host server and on the server of the community.

          One interesting behavior to note here that is different from reddit is that while comments on reddit belong to the profile of the person commenting and is then imported to view in the subreddit (this is why you can edit comments after being banned, and why there visible in your profile even if removed from a subreddit), on lemmy the target community is instead authoritative and your host server will by default respect a deletion by community mods on different servers by also removing that comment from your profile.

        • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          You can talk on their instance. If the moderator of your instance dis not wanted you to interact with this other instance they would have block it.

          are my comments stored on their instance or on mine?

          That I’m not sure. But I think there is a copy of the content you accessed on your instance. Maybe someone administrating an instance could answer you better than I did.

        • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Your comments are stored on both. The “canonical” version would be on your home instance but every instance that is federated with your instance would get a copy of your comments. I think it’s even possible to have your content removed from one instance but not another. One of my posts shows as removed in the mod log but isn’t actually removed.

      • Eiri@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        So which instance an account is from matters regarding which communities you can join? Huh.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Only insofar as some instances block communication from some other instances. Not mine though, that’s actually one of the reasons I picked it. That and it being by an org that’s older than the web and runs a public unix server and a bunch of retrocomputing type services as well as fediverse stuff. They started out as a dialup anime BBS.