The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.
| Community Count | Community Subscriber Count | |
|---|---|---|
| beehaw.org | 6 | 133450 |
| hexbear.net | 33 | 663204 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 17052 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 15907 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 1 | 53006 |
| lemmy.ml | 14 | 356460 |
| lemmy.one | 1 | 16257 |
| lemmy.world | 39 | 851950 |
| lemmynsfw.com | 2 | 33586 |
| sh.itjust.works | 1 | 16006 |
| sopuli.xyz | 1 | 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:
| Community Count | Community Active Month Count | |
|---|---|---|
| awful.systems | 1 | 2616 |
| feddit.org | 2 | 7363 |
| feddit.uk | 2 | 5289 |
| hexbear.net | 1 | 2952 |
| lemdro.id | 1 | 2898 |
| lemm.ee | 3 | 8898 |
| lemmy.blahaj.zone | 1 | 11422 |
| lemmy.ca | 3 | 14910 |
| lemmy.dbzer0.com | 3 | 13752 |
| lemmy.ml | 10 | 54949 |
| lemmy.world | 57 | 338384 |
| lemmy.wtf | 1 | 3602 |
| lemmy.zip | 3 | 12020 |
| mander.xyz | 1 | 11469 |
| sh.itjust.works | 5 | 37365 |
| slrpnk.net | 3 | 10897 |
| sopuli.xyz | 2 | 10070 |
| ttrpg.network | 1 | 4107 |
Community Count:
Community Users:
I knew hexbear was big but not that big
It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform unfortunately
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt ppl who praise Soviets or North Korea
Yeah I can’t say I was bothered when LW defederated. I’ve gotten in way fewer stupid arguments since they did the same with Lemmygrad. IIRC LW didn’t even let hexbear federate in the first place.
I don’t like defederations. I prefer to see everything, every post and comment and then block users/instances on my own if it becomes too much.
Literally a second ago I blocked another tankie, from LW this time. Before I even managed to type this comment fully. But then I don’t shy from making comments that attract them if I disagree with something. So inbox always busy
Sounds like you waste alot of time with people who don’t deserve it
Yes but this may be a side effect of turning off the points experiment. Instead of getting dopamine from points I only get replies. So it could be that I subconsciously make my comments in a way that is more likely to attract some kind of response.
My main goal for Lemmy was to break Reddit addiction and I feel gaining likes plays a big part in staying glued to the screen
Seems like a good strategy would be to not have every post and comment shown to you if your goal is to break your habit of spending too much time on your phone or PC.
I would much rather signup to an instance that handles that for me.
As long as the instance is clear about what they defederate from and their reasons, then I’m happy with that. And if I wasn’t, I could choose a different instance.
Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).
I did end up blocking the lemmy.ml instance though, fuck that place. I haven’t even blocked hexbear or lemmygrad.
Yes, that’s pretty much our take on it: we’ll defederate CSAM (and nonce-adjacent) instances asap, those with lax registration tend to become havens for spammers and trolls, so there is usually a wave of defederating, then someone reaches out to them, it gets sorted and we allow them back in. That tends to be the regular defederation and isn’t controversial. Defederating, for example, Hexbear over, for example, trolling would be a bigger deal and we’d try and speak to the other Admins about it before any permanent banning.
Isn’t your instance federated with hexbear? Seems like it hardly blocks any lemmy instances.
lol, forgot I was even on my feddit.uk account.
I’d already gone through blocking all of that stuff via my app before the defederation stuff happened, but if I were signing up to a new instance I’d appreciate it being blocked by default.
Same here. I’ll curate my personal feed but I’ll occasionally scroll everything just to see what random new instance I’ll find, and to keep myself aware of what the current rhetoric is with the various groups.
I think ideally a Lemmy client could connect to a number of instances, and you could add the more contentious ones yourself.
Some of these places are literally hosting child porn. You don’t want that mirrored to a server that you’re responsible for.
You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it’s exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.
Can you truly say you’ve had the HB experience if you haven’t recieved emoji/sticker/gif spam from people who weren’t alive for 9/11, have never been outside their country, and refuse to listen to opposing views, but know with full certainty that all western countries are 100% full of genociders and colonial rapists who all deserve the glorious death the super benign, extremely peaceful and misunderstood countries of North Korea, China, and Russia who have never once been correctly accused of human rights violations…
And of course, if they point out that your country has dipped into those things in the past, well your entire worldview is shattered and their whataboutism has solved everything and proves you deserve the death they crave for you.
I am genuinely sad for HB. There are lgbt ppl there, generally dear to me. Seeing them enjoy such cesspit lured in by cultish atmosphere, supporting the very forces that can only destroy but not build anything. It is personal.
I can see why folk don’t like hexbear as they come off as leftist 4chan, but you don’t need to make things up. They often talk about traveling. I agree with a lot of their content and disagree with some, I’ve been to 10 countries. In the plane to France, an African told me how their country is still enslaved to France. Personally I don’t see the value in the immediate destruction of the west, but with their leaderships ardent support for Nazi Germany, Apartheid, the Climate Crisis and assassination of climate activists, others, and now Zionism, they should lose influence through any means necessary.
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You can block instances yourself, I personally don’t like when an instance makes that decision for me.
Blocking an instance is just equivalent to blocking all the communities on that instance. You’ll still see the blocked instance’s posts and comments in other instances and (maybe more importantly) the instance will still influence your feed via voting. So if hexbear collectively upvotes or downvotes some post, that will influence your feed. Defederation is the only way to prevent that kind of influence.
Downvotes are disabled on hexbear just fyi. One of the reason people leave a comment with stuff they disagree with. But upvoting yeah, very active userbase very actively upvoting means a lot of my feed on lemm.ee is from hexbear.
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That’s why I’m glad my instance blocked them.
I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What’s your point?
Western alliances which are the only places in the world with a robust LGBT rights framework?
“Nooooo you can’t just give people rights because it makes you look good!”
I didn’t realise committing genocide made people look good, I guess. You know those militaries kill lgbt people too right?
Bro my instance just defederated them. Happy to say I’ve never seen their shit
They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.Correction, updated data is actually closer to 2k MAU. They are the 4th most active instance, topped by lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and Lemmy.world.
Interesting, I expected them to be much larger
Yeah I was surprised too, but if you go by MAU hexbear and Lemmy.Ml combined are just under 3k last I checked.
Lemm.ee alone has about that many, and Lemmy.world has many times that
My guess is that they just needed to have their own community for a lot of stuff because so many instances are defederated from them. Though I am not sure…
Or because it’s older than most of the other instances
I guess it’s also natural that subcultures that tend to be banned elsewhere are early adaptors of alternative platforms.
We’re lucky we didn’t exist when the Trump extremists on Reddit went looking for a new home, or they would probably have been one of the biggest fields in this figure. Hopefully when the right wing extremists arrive instance admins will have the good sense to defederate.
That’s probably it
like Beehaw
Is there something wrong with beehaw?
No. Just that they’re defederated from lots of big instances so they tend to gave their own communities, which increases their size on chart.
Unlike Hexbear, they chose to be defederated
Ah that makes sense
Nothing wrong with beehaw as far as I know, but a while ago they defederated lemmy.world because the instance is to big and not moderated enough, or something like that.
They’ve existed for a while. A lot of subscribers are inactive users. Kind of like reddit where a sub can have 5k people and still be inactive.
It’s less that they’re big, but old.
I haven’t even heard of it xd
I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.
Most instances block them so most communities on those instances won’t see them either. Once you find certain communities on instances that don’t block them you suddenly see half the comments being from hexbear, which likely quickly makes you block those communities fairly quickly.
. world is defederated with hexbear iirc
Oh. Why?
You could go visit hexbear and you’d find out pretty quickly. It’s definitely not for everyone.
It’s an entire instance of teenage trolls
Other comments hit on this but I’ll add a little more. There is a good bit of trolls/trolling, some extreme views, and authoritarian government praise. Things like that.
Lemm.ee (my instance) is still federated so I see hexbear post/ comments. It’s definitely a more problematic instance imo.
Oh okay, got it
You only got replies from hexbear haters so let me balance it out a bit. Hexbear is by far the most LGBT+ friendly instance in the fediverse and has a supermajority of queer users. They’re aggressively anti-bigotry in all its forms and are extremely happy to educate and engage in discussions as long as you approach them in good faith.
Most people who go out of their way to shit talk them in the wild are just mad hexbear banned them for saying some racist or homophobic shit
Okay. Then why is almost every instance defederating?
Because hexbear is full of socialists and most instances are full of rabid pro-genocide liberals.
Gab also was big, but its role for the fediverse wasn’t.
Who or what is/was Gab? 😅
Its like truth social
What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.
Think of it as the Tankie version of The Donald.
Horseshoe theory strikes again.
Political illiteracy strikes again
Yeah, I’m doing my best to learn the concepts but I have a ways to go.
Your instance is defederated from them
It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.
I only know it because it is often mentioned when talking about trolling
It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.
Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.
I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.
.world never federated with Hexbear from what I remember. I’m pretty sure they were on the block list before Hexbear got federation completed. There was no single incident as far as I know.
Wrong. They federated with them then had a big discussion on if they should defederate (you can probably still find it in meta). It’s why I left - I prefer to make my own defederation decisions (and I like Hexbear, and Piracy too).
Source: I was there.
It’s essentially where reddit’s old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it
Not really surprising. 10 out of the 10 most commented posts in the past year are on hexbear (the top 2 being the weekly trans mega threads). Granted, a lot of that is just the hyper-active posting of a few users. Regardless, if you want a trans community, there’s basically no active alternative to hexbear’s traaa here.
What about blahaj?
I’m subscribed to pretty much all the trans coms I know of and traa is 90% of the trans content that shows up. Another 5% are other hexbear trans subs. Traa has as many comments in half a month as mtf@blajah has had in its entire existance and as many in a week as trans@blahaj has made in total (the two largest non-hexbear trans subs afaik).
This reads like someone telling me that the nazi bar is the only place to go because the nazi bar has people there all the time and the other bars are mostly empty.
Cool. Being trans, not tolerating transphobia, and having emotes is comparable to being nazis?
Also, not suggesting people need to go there because its active. I could go to traa, egg, mtf, agender, enby, etc on reddit, but I don’t want to use reddit and a lot of those communities make hexbear look tame in terms of spamminess and immaturity.
Not at all what I wrote.
OFL, what is going on with this hexbear? And is there any reason behind the name?