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the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).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.
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’.”