this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

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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the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip's suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).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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[–] AgentSeven@lemmy.today 2 points 14 minutes ago

dbzer0 refuses to put their "old" interface back up, which I could get around with opnxng - but it keeps going down anyway, so I have switched to lemmy.today thanks to this thread! I prefer less defederation rather than more. I'll opt out of what I want to opt out of.

[–] Ripley_Tripley@lemmus.org 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The instance I'm in is definitely the odd ones out, we got no one here😅

[–] Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

102 monthly active users, so if I expand the limit to 100 next time it would be included. Ideally all instances would be represented, but when doing it manually in a chart like this, at some point I have to draw a line.

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 hours ago

I'll consider doing that for the revision; thanks for the feedback!

[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

am I reading this right, that blahaj blocks federation from pawb?? that doesn't seem right

[–] JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 hour ago

blahaj is in the black box (has defederated fedinsfw.app), in the blue box (has defederated Lemmygrad) and in the red box (has defederated Hexbear). No one on this graph has defederated pawb. The graph is a bit confusing on the first look.

[–] Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 hour ago

No; the instances in the black box defederate fedinsfw.app, not pawb.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 60 points 12 hours ago (8 children)

Well that's a confusing graph.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 9 points 5 hours ago

Yeah I cant understand it at all.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz 9 points 7 hours ago

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.

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[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 26 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Very proud of lemmy.zip! Joined very early on cause the name sounded cool lol, and apparently a lot of others also did. If i remember right we had a vote on defederations and the only major one to happen(or maybe the only one, idk) was exploding heads which was a nazi instance with CSAM on it so that was obvious, even that was mainly cause of the CSAM. I really like the approach of users being able to block instances and communities rather than the instance deciding for me. I still have ml and hexbear blocked tho cause they banned me after i stood up for trans rights or something lol

[–] seawoowaes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

You got temporary banned from the lemmy.ml memes community and permanently banned from the hexbear vegan community and divisionsbyzero mycology community.

[–] LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I'm feeling the same way. I've bounced around a few places since joining. I started on midwest.social which was great for a while, but I think the instance grew more than the dev could keep up with. I started seeing connectivity issues and problems displaying content so I reluctantly migrated to .world to see what joining the largest instance would be like. The technical issues went away but I couldn't figure out why I could no longer see /c/piracy until I realized that they're a bunch of pushovers that defederated from dbzer0 based on some liability bogeyman. So I found myself on Lemmy.zip where I can police my own content and have no technical issues.

[–] Million@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 hours ago

.zip and Demogodrick definitely cool.

I also lucked out by joining here just because I couldnt join more popular instances at the time. Happy that I landed here

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