Current breakdown at the time of this post sorted by the number of monthly active users:
- lemmy.world: 101,013 total users / 27,472 active users
- lemmy.ml: 41,972 total users / 4,905 active users
- beehaw.org: 12,270 total users / 4,178 active users
- sh.itjust.works: 17,509 total users / 3,381 active users
- feddit.de: 8,675 total users / 2,935 active users
- lemm.ee: 10,348 total users / 2,751 active users
- lemmynsfw.com: 22,967 total users / 2,310 active users
- lemmy.fmhy.ml: 8,777 total users / 1,704 active users
- lemmy.ca: 5,072 total users / 1,656 active users
- programming.dev: 5,058 total users / 1,242 active users
Not to be the fly in the ointment, but you can’t really just add those up and expect that number to be accurate if we’re trying to look at unique users within the fediverse. If I had to hazard a guess, a not-so-insignificant chunk of those probably overlap (i.e. users who have made multiple accounts across several instances). I have made an account across lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, kbin and fedia just as backups in case one instance fails. I might be an extreme case having 4, but pretty sure it’s becoming increasingly common for people to have at least 2 accounts (1 on a different instance).
With this same logic in mind, I’d assume almost the entire population of lemmynsfw should be disregarded from this count, which is almost certainly majority comprised of people’s porn alts that they want to keep separate from their main accounts.
If anything, I’m betting the population of lemmynsfw is more representative of the number of unique accounts across all instances since there’s really no point in creating more than one porn account.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. Too bad we don’t have unique user data to know for sure.
That’s why I sorted by active users (users who comment or post, not lurkers) instead to get a more accurate picture with the given data. For example, sh.itjust.works has more users than beehaw.org, but it’s ranked below beehaw because of fewer active users.
I think eventually instances with a lot of duplicate accounts will slowly fall out of the top rankings due to inactivity. That’s why I chose to look at just the top 10.
Yeah I have two accounts. But that’s when lemme.world was kind of crashing because of that update, and I thought I was doing something wrong. So I went to a different instance.
I made a bunch of accounts on a bunch of instances when I first started because I didn’t understand how they were connected. Even now, I’d suggest having one or two on the instances you like and decide which ones work best
To be fair, I am sure many people also have multiple accounts on the same instance. I am not sure what is the proportion between people opening accounts for backup like you and people just wanting alt accounts.
I don’t know if this is counted but it’s also perfectly reasonable to have accounts on defederated instances. So if this is counted that might inflate the numbers a bit.
yeah same, i made an account on 3 instances, since i see some instances being trigger happy with defederating, its just not clear yet which instances will be the most free.