join-lemmy.org regularly crawls all active Lemmy instances to keep the instance list updated. Additionally it also collects data from all Lemmy communities. The data is now publicly available in the following git repository:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-statistics

Check the readme for details about the available data. Interestingly the numbers are quite different from other websites:

join-lemmy.org fediverse.observer fedidb.com
Monthly Active Users 42.170 36.336 50.063
Instances 512 376 446

Here are some ideas what to do with the data:

  • Recreate the Lemmymap, graphically showing the connections or defederations between instances.
  • Render graphs, which could be added directly to join-lemmy.org (#532).
  • Investigate what is causing the different numbers shown above.
  • Run various types of analysis, like this one done by @malsadev.
  • Build a tool to help users discover interesting and relevant communities.
  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    For the sake of Lemmy’s growth, it’s problematic that join-lemmy.org (as an official platform) features Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and Lemmy.ml so prominently. While I dislike Reddit enough to have not tossed away Lemmy as a whole for its tankies and instead blocked those instances, featuring and recommending the use of extremist instances hurts Lemmy’s image (and Piefed and Mbin by association) in the eyes of potential users.

    Speak for yourself, the fact that Lemmy offers leftist and communist instances is a big draw for a lot of users, myself included. They are prominent due to their size and activity, and recommending them for those who want them is good for growth. Further, for those that prefer not to be on leftist/communist instances, it’s good that the communists have a place to go to, rather than joining, say, Lemmy.world, which would be a poor fit and result in far more friction.