Beehaw is the next-largest Lemmy instance after lemmy.ml. They've already defederated themselves from lemmygrad.ml for ~10 months

https://beehaw.org/post/443376

  • temptest [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yes*, and also, yes.

    Hexbear, if we group it in with Lemmy as a non-federating fork, was by far the biggest, and possibly still is (I haven't run numbers). But if we only considered federated instances, Lemmygrad was the biggest. Here is a rundown from about a year ago.

      • temptest [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        That is noteworthy, but it would be nice if we can find a metric which shows activity. For example, the same front-page which lists lemmy.ml as having 31K users also says only 2K active in the last 6 months, I think it's fair to say most are dormant.

        Hexbear says "529 Users Online", while lemmy.ml currently says "2K users online", so I'm assuming their measuring the same thing. If that's the case, this rush has boosted them above Hexbear, although there's no knowing if how much they will retain after this month is over.

        • sovietknuckles [they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          If that’s the case, this rush has boosted them above Hexbear, although there’s no knowing if how much they will retain after this month is over.

          lemmy.ml will probably pass 4k users when reddit enables the new API pricing on July 1, essentially booting all Apollo users.