How did Lemmy World become the default instance?

World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.

I really can’t see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I’ve heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less… nice than those of smaller instances.

I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn’t make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.

TeaHands, (edited )
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

I joined .world when there were only about 100 of us (was trying to find a nice small server to settle on, so much for that!), and rolled up my sleeves and went full-time tech support for like 2 weeks to help with the influx. So from that pov:

  • When the Reddit exodus started (slightly earlier than people had anticipated), .world was one of the only instances that didn’t require a proper application to join.
  • There was a bug where acceptance emails weren’t being delivered to Gmail addresses (probably some others too but for obvious reasons Gmail was noticed first). That meant people waiting for their applications to be accepted on other servers didn’t realise they had been. As well as this some people were just impatient waiting in general so gave up on their original instance choice and joined .world instead.
  • Other instances also started to close registrations completely due to not being able to handle the scaling. World wasn’t handling it great but Ruud specifically announced he wouldn’t be closing signups, which is one of the reasons it became the default recommendation while everything was on fire.
  • There was a thread tracking how quickly we were growing, I remember us celebrating 1000 users and then a couple weeks later 100,000! And that was kind of exciting so I can’t blame people for wanting to be part of it.

The best part is, I was the one who reported the Gmail thing to Ruud after seeing the admins of another instance had figured out a fix. I remember saying it was good we’d noticed it now, before the influx “next week” (ie Reddit’s scheduled meltdown). Turned out, he had no idea that was about to happen at all and the timing of setting up .world was just a total coincidence! 😆

Edit: This was only like six months ago and recounting the tale to all you whippersnappers is making me feel like an old grandma telling tales of the war.

sanguinepar,
@sanguinepar@lemmy.world avatar

I think I was about the 2500th to join .world, had no idea it would grow so much. Thanks to all the tech bods who make it happen :-)

RBWells,

I am another June Lemmy baby. Pretty happy about how it scaled up so well so quickly.

TeaHands,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah it was pretty crazy suddenly being on The Big Instance! We were in good hands though, the team had been through very similar with mastodon.world and knew how to not panic :D

Risk,

Thanks Grandma. :)

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Edit: This was only like six months ago and recounting the tale to all you whippersnappers is making me feel like an old grandma telling tales of the war.

Exactly my feeling

isildun,

You say “only” 6 months ago but it’s surprising to me just how quickly this time has passed.

I was a Reddit every day user pre-Lemmy. I happened to get linked to something there yesterday and saw all my sub’s “last visited” dates at 6 months. It’s crazy how easy it was to go cold turkey and I haven’t seen a need to go back.

TeaHands,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

Same, I follow a search result there sometimes but essentially just logged out there, signed up here, and that was that. The Reddit Days seem like another lifetime now.

ilinamorato,

The one I wanted to join literally had a notice on the sign up page saying that they didn’t accept email addresses from my host. The one I joined before .world collapsed under the weight of the Reddit migration a couple of days into Spez’s meltdown and still hasn’t come back. .world turned out to be stable and well-built enough for me to actually stick around.

Lemmy needs something like the Mastodon server covenant, I think.

sarmale,

What was your email host?

ilinamorato,

Gmail.

Curdie,

I started on kbin. The content I was enjoying was all from lemmy.world so when I ditched kbin I just came over here.

GarbageShoot,

The lemmy.ml devs encouraged Ledditors to go there and a few other places instead.

DemBoSain,
@DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

I started there during the Great Reddit Migration. Made a few arguments against general censorship, and was downvoted to hell and back. Left when they blocked the piracy sub. Never looked back.

superbirra,

it is not clear what your expectation is, tho: should people somehow magically load balance between unknown alternatives? What exactly is the point beside ‘big is bad’?

dRLY,
@dRLY@lemmy.ml avatar

True, it is really up to the instance to decide if they want to stay small and turn off registrations or big and keep them turned on. So long as the instances of all sizes stick to the official standards of the Lemmy codebase and respect the specs of the various other federated systems. It is not really an issue that the average user should have to worry about (for most issues at least).

nutsack,

there is no point. instances that get too big for their budget can pause sign ups anytime they want.

psychothumbs,

I think the big thing is not having any requirements to join, you just make an account and you’re in. I started out trying to join a different instance and the second I saw a list of questions to answer I noped out and came here.

Pika,

When I joined most instances either required approval or were straight closed, whereas LW did not, so I joined LW for a little while before jumping to another that had opened up during one of the moderation policy updates.

So availability plus as an instance grows more people tend to recommend it.

LufyCZ,

The piracy community was unblocked quite soon after

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

I joined because it didn’t require jumping through any hoops to join and was featured prominently on the join-lemmy website.

Dick_Justice,
@Dick_Justice@lemmy.world avatar

I picked it because I liked the name.

LemmyKnowsBest, (edited )

I tried for 2 months to join all kinds of instances and they were all silent & unresponsive. .world is the only one that responded and finally worked.

Wahots,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

Mostly just open applications. Though others are extremely easy to join.

Mango,

Defaultitis.

Omega_Haxors,

They promised to be the exact same kind of nazi bar that reddit was, and they succeeded. I personally like they soaked up all the reactionaries running away from reddit because their CEO is… jewish, or whatever they came up with. Keeps em off reddit and more importantly off here.

rbesfe,

lemmy.ml

Yeah this tracks

Omega_Haxors,

Mfers escape a capitalist platform falling under its own contradictions only to surprise-pikachu face when people actually have left views.

Honestly lemmy developers need to charge people to use their platform if they’re just going to use it to be anticommunist. They’re never going to do it because it goes against their values, but it would be cathartic as fuck if they did, and you mfers would pay up, too.

kattenluik,

You’ve forgotten what left means and have zero clue how projects like Lemmy work, if you’re going to be angry at someone who didn’t really say anything to you at least do it with some self respect.

Omega_Haxors,

Nah respectability politics are for nazis. I’m not going to hold back on the facts just to make people feel comfortable.

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