Almost! At the time of this post, lemmy.world has a whopping 25733 users and is growing fast.
Since my last post yesterday, it has added 4000 new users, making it the clear second-largest lemmy instance out there. Also quickly catching up to lemmy.ml's 36000 (not taking new signups).
beehaw.org (3rd largest) sits at 12500 users, partly because of more restrictive registration requirements.
Source: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
Exciting to see all this growth!
Except BeeHaw as defederated lemmy.world - which is a shame. Step in the wrong direction IMO. That's going to be a huge problem because now if you're a BeeHaw member you no longer see anything lemmy.world related - you're suddenly, overnight, cut off from thousands of people and posts.
Having these larger instances owned by 1 person like they all are now is a shame, but unavoidable at the beginning I suppose. One of them gets bitter and you have thousands defederated. I guess over time as things splinter up more it may get better.
I'll likely just spin up my own instance so I can federate with everyone and never be dropped (at least from my side).
I kinda understand beehaws stance. Lemmy.world is very lightly moderated right now, allowing a huge influx of problems, questionable posts, NSFW in wrong sections, tons of racism and bigotry flowing out the walls. Maybe if more people get that shit under control they will reconsider.
They've been primarily targeting minority communities, not just dumping shit into random posts.
We do need better tools don't get me wrong! That said... Admining for some bigger communities I have had a total of 3 reports, only needed to act on 1. Banned 1 person, from a small asexual community I run for bigotry but outside of that... It has been pretty quiet. Not to down play it beehaw probably deal with a lot of shitty people too. Especially in the bigger LGBT+ community.
There are some really toxic instances out there, but as far as they go. I don't think Lemmy.World is anything worse than what you see in Reddit on a good day.
I feel pretty sure they even said it was temporary.