this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Fediverse
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
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Lemmy.world has about 40% of the pop these days.
I just signed up, and it's confusing. I used lemmy.world because it seemed like it was the only means to get my registration approved. It wasn't clear whether or not this account can still view and interact with other "instances", so I went with the website that had the largest userbase.
When I first signed up - when reddit did the API thing - I was also shocked how empty it felt here. And it is, but when I adjusted I came to prefer that. There's fewer commenters but also less bullshit. I spend less of my linked screen time doomscrolling and more on other stuff, like reading and gaming.
I agree. This place feels dead? I'm sure I'm just doing it wrong. But, I downloaded Blorp, went to 'Explore', and the amount of 'subreddits ' is so minimal. What am I doing wrong here? Lol
I’m the developer behind Blorp. The trouble with the threadiverse (a term that refers to Lemmy and PieFed) is it’s not tuned by big cooperations to get you addicted. That also means you gotta dig a little more to find the content you’re looking for. I’m happy to help direct you if you have questions!
Thanks for using my app!
Hi there! Thanks for developing the app, that's quite impressive. Not sure if there's a good answer to this, but what I was referring to was when I 'Explore' and search for something specific, it doesn't seem to be there. So I thought maybe I was doing something wrong? And if there is something specific that I end up finding, it sometimes only has ~1-10 members, if it's a 'Community'. If there are any tips surrounding these things, that'd be awesome!
I’m guessing you’re subscribing to more niche communities. For example, I really enjoyed r/homekit, r/WLED, and r/TvTooHigh on Reddit. I think some of those exist on Lemmy, but they are very very inactive compared to Reddit. But if you look at more broad topics like !news@lemmy.world or !technology@lemmy.world, those are way more active.
There are a few exceptions. Lemmy seems to attract lots of Linux and Star Trek fans. I consider those topics more niche, but here they are very active topics.
I know this is easier said than done, but I really want the niche communities here to be more active. If you see a community missing, create it. If you see the one you’re looking for but it’s inactive, post to it.
Yes, it can. I'm from Piefed.social.
Yeah there are like a handful of instances with 90% of the users.
Lemmy.world, lemmy.zip, lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, fedinsfw.app, piefed social have the bulk combined. Lemmy.ca and feddit.org not too far behind.
Why is it not possible to have a sort of algorithm that 'recommends' an instance to each new user depending on which instances have less numbers?
Is that a bad idea?
There is. Someone told me that it recommends lemmy.ml roughly half the time. I tried it personally and it first recommended hexbear.net, so I tried it again and then it recommended lemmy.ml. If I was an American-based centrist Reddit user, being sent to either of those places who literally celebrate and call for my literal and actual irl murder (not joking), I would nope out and never visit the Threadiverse again.
So yes, it is a very bad idea if the goal is to entice people to join from any Western civilization.
you mean https://join-lemmy.org/ ? they've removed those recommendations actually
Nope, I still see both of them, very high up in the list too - despite it being sorted by "random", which would make a kind of sense if it would weight more highly active instances higher, so not true random but with a random component. However, every time I refresh the page both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net consistently appeared in the top 5 instances every single time. So most definitely biased towards them, whatever the underlying reasoning may be.
There was something that removed lemmy.ml long ago, but apparently it is not that one.
I don't want to send leftists to a conservative cesspit, and conversely I don't want to send USA centrists to a leftist ("tankie") version. Neither would feel terribly welcomed in those respective opposite spaces.
Instead, the list should be curated to show only "Newbie-friendly" instances by default, even while allowing those others to appear as opt-in alternatives. Which, surprise surprise, the PieFed instance picker does do exactly that - see one of those at e.g. https://feddit.online/auth/instance_chooser.
mine just says to join thelemmy.club or lemmus.org as the default, it doesn't show a list by default
screenshot of default recommendation when you open the https://join-lemmy.org/ page:
Yep that was a change a while back. Choice makes some people think there's too much effort involved so the first recommendation is a random "general" server. You can still see the list if you want.
It's not "random" though if it is always those two choices. And I also confirm that it is ALWAYS those 2 options - I've literally never seen a 3rd option offered that way. It's highly biased towards those two very tiny instances (of <200 people each)... as in exclusively so. Which could be fine, the issue I have here is in calling that as "random".
Also, if I were signing up that way, I would want to know the answer to questions such as: (1) are there multiple people on the instance admin team, (2) are they well-funded, since a negative answer to either of those might mean that the server disappears six months from now, which is a major inconvenience.
I can see why the instance picker might not choose to put that into front and center, but like... even with me having been on the Threadiverse since the Rexodus, I personally have no idea as to their answers. In contrast, something like PieFed.zip has an extremely established track record, with a very solid admin team. (To be clear, I am not saying that those other two instances do not, just that I do not know if they do or do not, and I didn't see an explanation on the instance picker page).
I believe it's three instances that were picked for the moment, including mine (I'm the admin) which has been going for nearly 3 years. I think their logic is to spread people out from the big instances.
I mean I think most people ending up on that page probably don't even know to ask. They may have no familiarity with fediverse software or what the hell an instance is. They just want to sign up to this reddit alternative they heard about.
It's a hard balance for sure.
That is how https://join-lemmy.org/ works now. I just got recommended thelemmy.club and in another browser it recommended lemmus.org
That's cool