In the graph above I’ve arranged the 28 Threadiverse instances with at least 200 monthly active users (MAU)—orange instances running Lemmy, green Piefed, and red Mbin—on the basis of which instances they defederate.
Each instance has its MAU count listed below it, sourced from the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).
After adjustments, there are an estimated 43,287 monthly active Threadiverse users (35,184+7,200+903), of whom 87.84% are on the 28 largest instances. The percentages listed alongside the MAU figures correspond to each instance’s share of the total MAU count.
Defederation data was sourced from Federation Checker. The tool doesn’t support Mbin instances, so I left fedia.io in its own category. If any defederations are missing, feel free to let me know. Ideally such a chart should also include community blocks to better illustrate which instances block what, but that data doesn’t appear to be as easily searchable.
I also noticed cases of some instances being listed as being defederated by another instance, despite not appearing on the defederation list for that instance (i.e. reddthat.com and lemmygrad.ml are listed as being mutually blocked, despite neither having the other on their block lists). In testing that federation, I noticed that !wholesome@reddthat.com did not federate to Lemmygrad while !memes@reddthat.com did, so clarification on that matter would be helpful.
While I’ll update my generalized chart as needed to correct errors, perhaps at some point an automated federation mapping tool similar to the one feddit.de formerly hosted could be developed to more completely illustrate instance federation.
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Well that’s a confusing graph.
Since defederating is essentially an explicit block list and is directional, my assumption is that the groups that are circled have defederated from the things they’re pointing at. I could be wrong.
Map needs a key/legend.
The red circled stuff seems to be only one possible option, but isn’t visually very distinct, and the red circle shouldn’t be broken like that, just make sure the lines are all visible.
Apologies for the confusion; didn’t want to make it overly cluttered, but in retrospect I see that a legend would have been useful. I’ll incorporate suggestions in a revision.
Yeah, as someone who is struggling to understand the concept of federation…this doesn’t help me at all.
I guess what its saying, if you’re on lemmy.world, you can’t access content on lemmy.zip?
If I’m reading it correctly, lemmy.world cut ties from lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net while hexbear.net and beehaw.org cut ties with lemmy.world. lemmy.zip appears to be connected to everyone.
Why would they do that? I’m unaware of internal issues in Lemmy at this point?
It’s a question if history is real and if it matters or not.
A big contention is about the historical and political reality of Ukraine (spoilers in my instance .tld)
The “anti western” communists claim that the USA publicly bragged about doing a regime change on Ukraine, like before they did it, and the CIA affiliate even published the money they supported the organizer of the euromaidan protests with on their own website. Besides trained him. They also claim there were Nazis and that there are newspapers reports about this. They even unironically want to rehabilitate Stalin and the state violence of the great purge that passed about 10% of the population through a gulag! Imagine doing this in the USA today with all the MAGAts and corrupt officials and landowners in order to reeducate them and prevent a counterrevolution!!! Clearly they are insane.
And these are all lies because that is what Putin says and Putin is evil. So the good liberals of .world rightfully point out that all this is nonsense and Ukraine has always been neutral and the revolution of dignity must not be impinged by dirty commies. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia. The liberal socialists agree that this is a time where we need to band together and return to normalcy, because obviously we can’t have all this aggravation and it’s better to be inside the tent pissing out, no matter much fun it is to be on the outside pissing in.
This is all besides the question of ideology, collectivism and all that unamerican crap lol.
My personal opinion: You cannot have rational discourse with insane people in an insane society. It also means lemmy has failed as a global medium for meaningful political discourse. While the communist instances (the original developers btw) are pretty extreme and hostile, .world managed to monopolize much of lemmy and enforce (neo)liberal majority opinion on lemmy.
Obviously this is all satire. Nobody is planning a global war on democratic socialists or something.
The ones at the bottom that are below the None category aren’t defederated from anyone, so they can access every instance.
Well it means I need to have multiple accounts 😈
The beehaw.org/sh.itjust.works defederation is really one-way. Beehaw defederated from us after some exceptionally bad trolls were operating from sh.itjust.works in 2023. IIRC, they requested that we also defederate from them to really make sure the split was made. We honored their request.
We would happily reconnect if Beehaw decided they want to federate with us again. If not, then that’s fine; they have a right to associate with whomever they like.
I believe infosec.pub temporarily defederated from us around the same time for the same reason. It was a rough time.
I’ll adjust the graph by the next version to account for it as an exception.
If you want to complicate the graph further, I believe hexbear federates using an allow list. Blahaj, lemmy.ca, and sh.itjust.works are not on the allow list, so they are effectively defederated. I haven’t looked further to see which other large instances may be affected.
In most cases that a major instance isn’t on the Hexbear allow list, it seems to be an instance that blocks Hexbear already anyhow, so the current layout is sufficient for that. An exception seems to be jlai.lu, which does not block Hexbear yet isn’t on the approved list. In such a case, would the two instances still effectively be defederated?
In such a case, would the two instances still effectively be defederated?
I think so? That’s what I would expect, at least.
I say, I really don’t get why so many people stay over on Reddit.
This might be a micro version of the actual future internet, where we walk away from the global model and split it into ideological countries who believe the best way forward is to stop talking to the other group.
We’ve come a long way from drawing artificial lines on maps.
You can still choose one that talks to everybody else. In fact, this graphic might be a nice tool for new users who want advice beyond “Just choose any instance, it doesn’t matter” or “Just use lemmy.world”.
This might be a micro version of the actual future internet, where we walk away from the global model and split it into ideological countries who believe the best way forward is to stop talking to the other group.
Reminds me of the world depicted in The Diamond Age. The setting is perhaps our world a few decades in the future, where the role of countries has faded and instead life is organised via fragmented, extremely diverse patchwork of phyles based on ethnic or ideological affiliation, but entirely irrespective of where they geographically are (a phyle can operate in many different locations). These phyles interact via a deeply capitalistic Common Economic Protocol, where the only “human right” that matters is harm to an individual’s ability for economic productivity.
Well, first off, I doubt there’s much world with internet decades into the future. But if I had to do the fediverse design again, i would make defederation impossible.
You can just know there’s a r/thedonald over there, and not go there, but everyone else is still all there.
Creating a fediverse to federate the internet, and then casually allowing defederation is oxymoronic.
But then you must truly accept a universally agreed on definition of what free speech constitutes. Specifically the age old question on whether free speech includes hate speech or not. (And then there’s that gray zone where hate speechers will say it is not hate speech, they’re simply saying what other’s are thinking, or it’s just their opinion)
Gets pretty philosophical pretty quickly and in the end you might end up all the way back at this reddit + the defediverse.
And like I said, we aint got that kind of time left.
“One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning; so the higher one rose in the society, the more similar one’s Times became to one’s peers’.”
I say, I really don’t get why so many people stay over on Reddit.
This place fuckin sucks man? It’s pretty much reddit for left wing progressives who specifically care about left wing American* politics, linux, and not much else
While it would be nice if there were more activity, when the alternative is the ever-enshittifying Reddit, our best option is to contribute what we can here, be as welcoming as possible to new users, and block any content that isn’t interesting to achieve a personalized feed of one’s preferred content.
We are not interested in you recommending similar toxic people, as you support genocide in Palestine
I really like this but I can not figure it out. Would you be willing to make the data available?
The MAU numbers for instances were sourced from Fediverse Observer and calculated as a percentage of 43,287 for the percentages, but here’s a table of the defederation data:
Lemmy Instance Defederates lemmy.world Hexbear, Lemmygrad sh.itjust.works Beehaw, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.zip N/A lemmy.ml fedinsfw.app feddit.org fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad hexbear.net lemmy.world lemmy.dbzer0.com Lemmygrad, Feddit.org lemmy.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmy.blahaj.zone fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad programming.dev Hexbear discuss.tchncs.de Lemmygrad sopuli.xyz fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad lemmygrad.ml fedinsfw.app lemmy.today N/A slrpnk.net Hexbear, Lemmygrad feddit.uk N/A infosec.pub fedinsfw.app, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml reddthat.com N/A jlai.lu Lemmygrad beehaw.org sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world, Lemmygrad, Hexbear pawb.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad thelemmy.club N/A feddit.nl N/A Piefed Instance Defederates fedinsfw.app Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.social Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.ca Hexbear, Lemmygrad piefed.zip N/A Mbin Instance Defederates fedia.io ? Can someone give me the gossip on fedinsfw.app and feddit.org? What are they? Why is db0zer defederated from feddit.org?
FediNSFW is a Piefed instance dedicated to NSFW content. Some instances defederate it due to that, while (as @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net mentioned) Multiverse and apparently Blahaj defederate it due to it hosting a ‘Fautbait’ community over CP concerns.
Feddit.org strictly enforces German anti-semitism laws on criticizing Israel. As a result, dbzer0 accused it of being Zionist and defederated it. I don’t think criticism of Israel should be removed, but I also prefer to be on an instance with wider federation, which is why I switched my main account from dbzer0 to Sopuli.
Cool, thank you for the explanations!
Things that pop out to me:
- The Internet was made for porn, both in users and less defederating.
- The main blocks really are mostly the Triad (grad, hexbear and ml) which I get. I personally don’t mind tankies despite the instance I’m on, but they can sometimes echo Russian propaganda that’s demonstrably false. Communism as a concept is ok, though.
The Beehaw thing predates me, I heard they’re nice people, though. I also agree with the sentiment that more fringe groups and random porn might scare away newbies, so I get why things are the way they are.
OK I think I get how to read this, once I understood the concept. Very nice work.
Maybe it would be a little clearer if the lines where boxes overlap were just slightly offset – it would help see and distinguish them. For example if the blue box was moved down by just a little more than the width of the red lines, instead of being directly on top of them. If that makes sense.
I’ll consider doing that for the revision; thanks for the feedback!
Kinda eye-opening, thx for making the chart. I hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad. In my opinion, defederation should only ever be used to combat spam, not because of ideological differences or disputes between individuals.
One of the most common tips for people looking to switch over from Reddit has been that the instance you choose doesn’t really matter. But it clearly does. Choose the “wrong” instance and you may suddenly find yourself cut off from a sizable portion of other users because someone else decided they know better than you what you should and shouldn’t see.
I’m lucky to be on an instance that has “only” defederated one instance in this chart (lemmygrad.ml). I don’t really follow the drama around here, so I have no idea why that instance is banned. All I see is that there are 558 active users I’ll never be able to interact with just because someone I don’t personally know (my instance admin) made that decision at some point.
Wasn’t there just a big drama because some app developer built-in their own opinionated blocklist into their app or something? How is this any different?
My point being, why not leave these kinds of drastic decisions to individual users, who can and should block whoever they want, instead of dividing threadiverse into silos at the instance level?
Note that defederations with smaller instances (representing 12% of users) are not represented here, so there are even more defederations than what is listed here. Hopefully that will come across better with more data in the next version of the graph.
As requiring new users to implement multiple blocks off the bat can be a big ask for those still on the fence about leaving Reddit, defederating known NSFW, troll, and tankie instances can improve new user retention. For those who prefer more hands-off moderation practices, specific instances can cater to them, but I think a more tailored experience is better for users arriving from Reddit.
I think the main issue is that this isn’t communicated clearly. Most people joining a random instance listed on join-lemmy.org won’t know what defederation means and they have no way of knowing that by choosing that particular instance they’ll be cut off from a certain number of other users.
I’m not so sure, I’d rather have a prepopulated blocklist that I can further configure myself, as opposed to instance level blocks that I can’t reverse.
Lemmygrad.ml is a Marxist-Leninist instance. The users are very chill there normally, so the reason for defederation is ideological.
Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha! Good one!
Have you visited Lemmygrad.ml? Just click on some of the threads, there’s much less hostility than most Lemmy.world threads. The idea that the commies on Grad are bloodthirsty beasts or something is more a consequence of their wide defederation causing defederated instances to project their imagination, not an actual analysis of how they act.
I’m sure they’re all patting each other’s backs there. But I’ve interacted with them elsewhere and when they are exposed to anything but straight tankie bootlicking they turn vicious. Not a single decent interaction, and I’ve had several.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that communists will generally oppose anticommunist viewpoints, and certainly critique non-communist views. Communists also tend to be political activists, so we also care quite a lot, which can often spill out into heated exchanges. This isn’t unique to communists, though, liberals are the same way for views they don’t align with. Therefore, the biggest difference and the reason for defederation is ideological, after all, irreconcilable political differences.
Ideological differences don’t explain the brigading, dogpiling, constant trolling, bad faith arguments. There are only so many times an instance admin is willing to ban single users from a place until they get fed up with a culture of abuse and cut ties with the whole lot.
I haven’t seen Lemmygrad brigading, trolling, or arguing in bad-faith. Active users going into active threads organically isn’t the same as brigading, which is typically associated with coordinated targeting. This can seem like “dogpiling” in practice, but again, this same behavior is exhibited by non-communists, same with what can be perceived as trolling or bad-faith arguments (and anecdotally I see far more of that on instances that aren’t predominantly leftist).
In the end, it’s ideology, not specific traits, as ideological differences cause not just communists but non-communists to behave in similar confrontational manners. Lemmygrad.ml aren’t especially bad-faith, trolling, etc, just like Lemmy.world isn’t. Both have distinct ideological identities and this difference caused friction.
Thanks for the work, really interesting graph! I think it *might be easier to read if the rectangles were ovals or some morph between rectangle and oval, so that the overlapping groupings are a bit more distinct.
Thanks for the feedback; I’ll try to make the groupings more distinct in the revision.
This is cool, thanks!
I thought the % underneath was the number of users who couldn’t see that instance, but I guess it’s % of the active fediverse users?
Yes; the percentage underneath an instance is its proportion of the overall Threadiverse userbase. The percentages on the large arrows are the sum of the userbases within the associated box, indicating the extent to which an instance is defederated (somewhat of an underestimation, given that 12% of users are unaccounted for).
Ok, I’ll be the one to ask: What happened that 6 instances with 13% of the population combined blocked the porn instance?
As many instances were already blocking the original lemmynsfw.com, I suspect most do it as a means of moderating the feeds of new users who might not want to see porn. An alternative to this (as mentioned by @Cricket@lemmy.zip) would be blocking access to its communities (versus the instance itself) by default, allowing users to see replies from fedinsfw.app users and unblock the communities should they wish to. In either case, I think user retention is better served by limiting access to such content to those who are specifically interested in it.
For Multiverse and apparently Blahaj specifically, they defederate it over CP concerns due to it hosting a ‘Fautbait’ community.
Makes sense, thanks for the background!
Graph is very big resolution-wise, it lags. Do you have a slightly smaller one?
Here’s a version exported at 150 DPI instead of 300:
Thanks, that works! :3
Do sharing a circle mean defederated or federated?
What’s the number and oercebt next to the arrows though?
The number is the number of instances within the box blocking the instance in question, whereas the percentage is the percentage of overall Threadiverse users that those instances represent. For instance, at least 64.01% of Threadiverse users (the actual figure is higher as the 12% of users on smaller instances are not accounted for) cannot access Hexbear communities or interact with Hexbear users.
I’m keen for v2. I still don’t get it but I’ve been here a while now and want to work out how this stuff works (including Lemmy, PieFed, Mastadon crossposts, comments etc).
Seems easy on the surface but once you dig it’s some specialised knowledge.
Good work dude.
Ultimately most of the process involved adding additional columns to data extracted from Fediverse Observer, most importantly the block lists from Federation Checker.
From there, the hardest part was figuring out how to lay things out in a way that enabled instances with similar block lists to be placed in adjacent groups in a way that’s understandable while leaving room for arrows.
Have gotten helpful feedback so far, so hopefully the next version will be easier to understand.
Does that mean that discuss does not federate with lmmy.ml, lemmygrad, programming.dev and hexbears?
We might read the diagram differently, but I only see a defederation with lemmygrad.
Correct 👍
