How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?

Lemmy.ml actively asked people to sign up elsewhere. They have a small server and aren't meant to be a general instance.

Lemmy.world is run by people who have one of the larger Mastodon servers, and actively advertises to be open and neutral.

It’s also the devs server and they have Lemmy code to write. Can’t be spending time moderating.
- And the other stuff
It's also presented as the default on most apps, I believe
- That’s a big one. People tend to go with the default
This is the correct answer. The devs have been saying this for years but new users often weren't aware of this and saw it as the default instance. It's good to see that's changed.
They’re not neutral though. They’ve already started defederating instances with users whose opinions they don’t like.
- Well I said they advertise, not that they are.

I think most of it has to do with that lemmy.world has better hardware than other instances. The admin Rudd has a lot of experience running federated services as well. So it may be his first rodeo lemmy-wise but not hosting a federated service with a large user-base.

So when a lot of smaller instances started getting overwhelmed and stopping signups, lemmy.world was going strong without the performance issues that other instances might see.

That along with the fact that NSFW content is allowed makes lemmy.world a good alternative for Reddit refugees looking for something stable with a similar set of rules as well.

I myself joined lemmy.ml at first, then beehaw.org when lemmy.ml asked everyone to spread out, and finally found home on lemmy.world because I didn’t really like how downvotes are disabled on beehaw. Not to mention the defederation that beehaw has done recently. Although I can understand and appreciate why they’ve done that.

Indeed. Even though I'm using the Lemmy.ca instance to distribute the load, I use Ruud's Mastodon instance.
I've signed up for a bunch of them and still haven't decided where I want to make my main. I know that annoys some people but I love it because it means I get to have a choice! I think I'll have a Lemmy world account since they're big, buti also want to find a good smaller community to have slower more meaningful conversations. I hope the Lemmy protocol adds support for account linking some day.
- I’ve signed up for a bunch of them and still haven’t decided where I want to make my main.
  Same story for me, although I keep coming back to Lemmy.world in the first instance, at least for the Lemmy instances (also explored kbin, tildes and squabbles). Mixed feelings about Lemmy.ml as I think there’s virtue being on the instance the devs run as it seems unlikely to go away, although there has been the talks around political views. From the political side, I do hang out more often than not in tech spaces though so I doubt it’d actually impact anything I’d want to engage in discussion about.
  Also have an account with Beehaw which was my first but silly as it may seem, the name of that one puts me off a bit. “Lemmy.world” sounds like something I can more easily communicate to a friend verbally, for whatever that is worth.

Why did I create a Lemmy world account as opposed to beehaw or ml? Because it's the first one I saw. Because it doesn't matter. Because I don't know what ml stands for. Because Lenny world said "general use." Because I didn't have to fill out an application. Because I can still interact with everything else, and again, it doesn't matter.

I joined because lemmy.sdf.org is often inaccessible. And also because lemmy.sdf.org blocked lemmy.world, so why not go straight to the source?
Seconded
And ml is?
- the national tld for Mali, but the lemmy ml owners chose it for a "Marxist-Leninist" reference. no kidding.
  fun fact - they* also deny genocides committed by (even nominally) communist regimes.
  *a lot of them, and even those who don't actively, still stick with the goons who do.
- Motherland if I'm not mistaken.
- The top level domain of the Metherlands

I signed up on the 12th, after spending a little time comparing with the information I had. My thought process was:

I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
I thought a larger instance might mean it sticks around longer, but didn't really want to be on the largest (which .ml was)
Beehaw seemed otherwise a good fit, but their policies seemed too restrictive
.world seemed to have liberal policies, allowed NSFW, was large but not largest, and was hosted in a country that didn't worry me

I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
Not to discount your other points, but lemmy.ml isn't hosted in Malaysia. The .ml TLD is for Mali, a country in Africa. And the site is hosted by OVH, on servers in France.
- It's intended to stand for Marxist - Leninist, is what I heard. I didn't want to support a tankie thing which is why I went to world.
- Wow, thanks for that, I really thought .ml was Malaysia. While I had some mild concerns about Malaysia, isn't Mali a shit show as far as human rights? If the servers are in France, that mitigates a lot, but I think I have more concerns about Mali.
I love how World and Blahaj are lgbt friendly and anti authoritarianism, unlike .ml.
This is pretty much the same thought pattern I had, however I made my account here after Beehaw defederated and have since decided not to use it anymore. Lemmy.world reminds me so much of the older style internet and forums and it’s a breath of fresh air.
Can I ask what worries you about it being hosted on Malaysia?
- I'm not any authority, and I could be just ignorant, but my understanding is that the Malaysian government makes liberal use of laws against sedition and that govern communication to silence dissent. There was an artist who has been jailed a couple times this year for political satire. That kind of atmosphere doesn't seem like a good place to host communities that want free discussion.
- It's decidedly not hosted in malaysia. I'm also unclear why that would be a problem though.

Regardless of the how, I think it's really cool that the top instance isn't run by the devs. Really shows off the power and appeal of decentralized services.

The developer for RIF told me to come here. I figured that I should trust the person that created the app that I've used for hundreds of hours.

Same. Like the parent of a child grown up, RIF has been forced to let us go, but not without influencing our direction lol
My exact reason. Had the popup show.
Then I created my own instance

I am new like most of us. When I signed up I had no idea what an instance was. To me the name Lemmy.world sounded like it was more general and therefore would have more content so I picked that one.

Yeah the name sounded the most inviting. It's Lemmy... That's the name of what I want... And it's world, that sounds like a generic description of "everything". But at the end of the day I just clicked a link in a comment. Seemed to me to be the more popular one suggested.

I don't know man, I'm here because shit just works.

I left Beehaw because the defederated from instances where half my communities were at. Ended up on Lemmy world because they had my favorites.

At this point I don’t know how I got here and where I’m going and I’m too afraid to ask
I started at BeeHaw because they have a lot of cool communities. I didn't want to write an essay (I'm exaggerating ...a little) to sign up for an account so I ended up on sh.itjust.works.
- Haha same. I started at beehaw but am having a hard time manually adding communities that I want to keep in that feed since they aren't onfederated instances. So I moved to sh.ithust.works and reddthat.
  I'll probably keep beehaw, I like a lot of what it has to offer and it's cool for it to be a specific corner for me. But one of the others will probably become my default home

Lemmy.ml had sign ups closed. Behaw required a short story or something to get accepted. Lemmy.world was accepting sign-ups wasn't hosted somewhere shady and had active communities. It was a pretty easy choice. Assuming the admins have a pledge drive or something to host on AWS/GCP so we can get better burst capabilities I'd love to donate.

Donations to keep the lemmy.world instance up-and-running can be made through:
https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld or https://patreon.com/mastodonworld
@ruud does good work, and he's a HELL of a good admin. I'd recommend that we all contribute in order to have a place to gather. I've been looking at the various solutions to the Reddit conundrum and, personally, I think that lemmy.world is our best bet at this point...
EDIT: I have no affiliation; I just think that we should pay it back however we can. It costs money to run servers and, even if we just "buy him a coffee," every little bit helps IMO.
- @Ruud has been great and Lemmy.world has very transparent so I will throw some cash their way. The mastodon.world blog is transparent with costs and financials which I appreciate.
  I would love to see if they have a roadmap of how they plan to address the current surge of traffic or if they plan to just wait it out with their current VPS.
- @Ruud has been great and Lemmy.world has very transparent so I will throw some cash their way. The mastodon.world blog is transparent with costs and financials which I appreciate.
  I would love to see if they have a roadmap of how they plan to address the current surge of traffic or if they plan to just wait it out with their current VPS.

I was overwhelmed by the options of instances. Then Reddit is Fun had a pop up message suggesting to go to lemmy.world. I trusted Reddit is Fun so I followed its suggestion.

I open today rif accidently and it started to work again. Logged out mind you. Got a weird message with instructions to log back into my Reddit account. Was able to browse Reddit as a guest on the meanwhile. Didn't want to log back in as fuck Reddit.
Did rif sell to Reddit? Couldn't blame him if he did but all the same I am leaving. Just can't see how rif would still work without Reddit owning his servers. Anyone know what is going on?
- Reddit wasn't interested in buying any of the 3rd party apps. Since you know, apparently they're so great at making apps that there were a dozen third party ones that people preferred.
- I don't know, but it might be that Reddit is only limiting API keys for authenticated sessions. That way the anonymous requests still work up to the free API rate limits.

I am new like most of us. When I signed up I had now idea what an instance was. To me the name Lemmy.world sounded like it was more general and therefore would have more content so I picked that one.

Mainly because signups were closed on Lemmy.ml and they were not on Lemmy.world.

Ya, I applied for beehaw.org and didn't get access after a few days and lemmy.world was open so made an account there. Not much else to it.
Exactly this. I tried numerous times on lemmy.ml and never got an email back for the verification, so I just gave up. World is the next logical choice. Since beehaw is already defederating, if you're coming to the fediverse, joining an instance that's already isolating itself, even if it has good reasons, doesn't seem appealing. So lemmy.world it is. Tho here I am using my kbin mostly because then I have kbin, mastodon, and Lemmy integration all in one.

I didn’t really know what I was doing, and it sounded the most “official”.

By keeping sign-ups open, mostly.

Lemmy.ml, to my understanding, was always meant to be a pilot instance from the devs of lemmy. Beehaw is kind of its own forum. There is also sh.itjust.works, but that has been caught up in some federation drama, and I don't think people like the name. Lemmy.world has been the right server at the right time to absorb everyone and I guess they have been able to keep up with sign-ups. Kudos to them.

federation drama
Not really. We had a thedonald community for like 5 hours before it was banned, and a tiny number of people started shouting about how terrible we are because we don't read the minds of people joining.
Also, we're trying to run this instance democratically, and the first vote is a pretty easy no-brainer: defederate a hate speech instance. Not really "drama" as much as everyone has an opinion.
You can check out the discussion on the agora, the vast majority of the discussion is very respectful.
EDIT: Discussion I'm talking about is here.
- I'm talking about on other instances, who are trying to figure out if they are defederating.

Rif sent me to lemmy.world to make an account. Didnt know the deal here and still kinda iffy but im getting the idea.

As someone signing up for lemmy.world, my reasons were:

It sounds official or at least less obscure than ".ml" or "sh.itjust.works"
It sounded inclusive (we're all part of the world, so to speak)
It was in the list of default instances of Connect for Lemmy

Otherwise, I didn't give much though to which instance to pick.

Same - sounds better, like .com vs .io and similar.
Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.

Lemmy.ml are tankies anyway so, good

I went for the most generic "official" sounding name.

Underrated comment. I picked it because I had no idea what I was doing and it sounded all-encompassing and I wanted access to everything. I didn't even know what an instance was. I just picked it because it sounded like a good guess to get access to all of Lemmy.
- Yeah same. But from .world we're able to access all the other instances right?

When I had to choose I thought .world means, it‘s the central, most important place to be. Didn‘t know what the other abbreviations meant. Didn‘t care.

They're just top Level Domains (TLDs). It's like .com, doesn't mean anything outside of a name usually.
The other abbreviations are simply website domains. FYI the ".ml" from the mail lemmy dev means Marxist-Leninist, because they are tankies.
- How do we know that? Have they said so?

Probably because its name sounds official and it allows quick registration while others need approval (some never approves you).

Turns out it’s the right choice as the admin seems very active in updates and fixes. Lemmy.world also has a more chill homey vibes. At least that’s what I observed so far.

Lemmy.ml grew too large during the early days of June. They started to recommend people to NOT sign up for lemmy.ml and find another instance. The next instance that stood out was beehaw which rejected signups if they didn't like your answer as to why you wanted to join. After that, lemmy.world stood out the most.

Also because the political leanings of the lemmy.ml mods offended a lot of former redditors, including myself.
- The lemmy devs are hardcore communists
- And why exactly did it do that? Their political stance has no part in the development or the management of the instance.

I see a lot of posts about how lemmy.ml admins are deleting any posts critical of Russia & China. Are there any receipts for those claims? I haven't seen any actual proof, just a whole lot of people saying tankie.

I see a lot of posts about how lemmy.ml admins are deleting any posts critical of Russia & China. Are there any receipts for those claims? I haven’t seen any actual proof, just a whole lot of people saying tankie.
The modlogs show that the moderators there are doing their job. If folks wanna continue uncritically regurgitating NATO propaganda and McCarthyism, they can do it elsewhere. Though I will admit, the irony of thousands of people fleeing a capitalist sinking ship, to a ship built and run by communists, only to then complain about all the communists, is funny.

Lemmy.world allows creating communities, where as lemmy.ml doesn't. For me that was a big reason why I moved from lemmy.ml to lemmy.world. (I made this account after beehaw defederated lemmy.world. I would have made this my default account, but sadly there still seems to be some communication issues between instances. I have some communities on lemmy.world, but I don't see the content sync properly here.)

Beehaw unlinked from Lemmy.world? Yeah will have to go smoke my beehaw account then if I can.
- From what I recall (from all of 8 days ago) Beehaw said it was because lemmy.world allowed unrestricted signups and therefore was at risk from bots or (i guess) unsavory people, while Beehaw was trying to have a curated membership to be 'safe'.
- It's temporary until there are better mod tools - beehaw is supposed to be a safe space but they cannot keep their promise when federating with everyone else due to the amount of posts.

Does any of that make you think it's SUPPOSED to be new user friendly?
They don't have to be. They also don't have to be federated.
- Have people not learned anything from their reddit experience? Beehaw is extremely massive fed flags. Its literally the same exact toxic behavior that the uber mods that hoarded subreddits and got off from power would have.
  Its not a good look and im shocked people support it...