this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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idk it's my first time (kind of) trying to do dataviz, I thought the original post was super interesting but like other comments said, it was hard to read.

I think in a way it's mostly because defederation is complex to show as links, since it is the break of said link, but hopefully this type of graph is better ?

you do lose the "group" of instances view, though (and also I did not bother with per instance MAU as raw number + percentage, or sofware used)

let me know what you think!

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[–] lambalicious 1 points 38 minutes ago

nifty strongly curved arrows

I should sort my ties this way…

[–] Snoopy@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago

The similar color makes it slightly difficult to read but the graph is better, and easier to understand. Anyways, you are skilled, good job :3

[–] yoru77@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

When I saw it I thought of this quote: "Why Is It When Something Happens, It's Always You three?" Tbh I didn't know about 2 of 3 Top 3 defederated instances, I know why feddit is defederated, but why is lemmygrad?

[–] Lux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

lemmygrad is pro authoritarian

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 hours ago

Hexbear uses a whitelist so they are not federated with a bunch of these instances besides .world

[–] fireweed@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

In addition to comments others have made about some of the colors being difficult to see/differentiate, I think it would be worthwhile to distinguish one-way defederation from mutual defederation, perhaps with a texture?

It would make the graphic busier, but I also would enjoy seeing population percentages next to each instance name (to give weight to the significance of certain defederations, e.g. how much of the fediverse are you excluding by defederating with hexbear vs lemmy.world).

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

This graph is a lot more understandable, but the yellow is hard to see. I can't tell what instance lemmy.ml is defederating.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 hours ago

I assume for you it may be because of your display type. But that made me think of colorblind people and how much this format probably totally excludes them as an entire swath of the population

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 points 6 hours ago

fedinsfw.app looks like.

[–] BottleBoardBakon@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 hours ago

The porn one.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I find it mildly interesting that there's no inverse of lemmygrad, that defederates from everybody else

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Defederation is often seen as a last resort and generally seen pretty negatively. Defederating everyone would also get rid of most content

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

Yeah but this graph would have so much more data >:)

[–] Damage@feddit.it 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 hours ago

Not according to this graph

[–] ghen@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 hours ago

I'm on sh.ijust.works because it has a bad word in it. I don't know what you're all complaining about

[–] ozoned@piefed.social 22 points 9 hours ago (6 children)

I know lots of folks look at this and see a shattering of the what they expect. The Fediverse is NOT a platform. Lemmy.world is NOT the Threadiverse. Let's break these bonds. I left a server because I was suspected of being a CIA plant. I went to one that was more welcoming. I found they were too strict for me on their rules. I left that. I'm not on piefed.social. I'm planning on running my own piefed for ME and MY family/friends hopefully SOON^TM. If someone defederates from me, that's ok, they didn't want me to be a part of their community. MY community still exists.

These aren't platforms that are out there trying to save the entire world. They're building a community that interconnects to other communities. Don't like how they're doing it, you can literally spin up your own for dollars per month.

Yes, if you want your stuff to be found you have to advocate for it.

I think the Trek communities are stand outs of how this works and how it should be done. Think of like old Forum days. Normally folks would create a forum for a specific topic and other thigns would go other places. But now those forums connect and you can run your own and connect to everyone.

Break this idea that this major pillars disconnecting are fracturing the fediverse. IMO the more small instances we have the stronger the network.

So build a Piefed/Lemmy/Mastodon/GoToSocial/Bonfire whatever for your community and then allow those to connect out to others.

The idea of this change is scary though. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we can't exist the way I hope we do. But I think humans strive for community and communication and we have a new way to provide it to them.

[–] Bombastic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

Well said, agent Johnson.

God bless the U.S. of A

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

There are 500 Lemmy instances and 80 PieFed instances which are too small to show on the graph :)

[–] yoru77@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

It would be cool if every instance were a circle, and then you could see the lines

[–] testaccount789@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 hours ago

Don’t like how they’re doing it, you can literally spin up your own for dollars per month.

Not so easy.
Mostly a liability issue.
First there's security - make sure the server doesn't get compromised.
Then you need to figure out how to deal with illegal content like CSAM (was already a widespread issue on Lemmy at least once, causing multiple instances to shutdown) - even on private instance due to content caching.
And legal issues such as minimum age and privacy regulations that you'd have to comply with.

3rd one is not an issue if you only use it yourself, and perhaps with a couple of friends that won't try to sue you when they get mad.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 16 points 9 hours ago

Besides, and related to "not being a platform", it helps break the idea of everyone having to share the same space with everyone. If two groups can't have a healthy relationship, it is healthier for them to cut ties with each other. Meanwhile, the oligarchic platforms being as big and with barely any internal borders makes for the toxic environment of places like Reddit and Twitter that predates recent polemics.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Agreed. Its federated. Let instances do thier thing. It gives us more options not less.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 25 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

A bit scarier than the previous one at first glance, but the single line explanation including everything needed to understand makes it easier to read.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Something though, I think it'd be better to have a cut-off of MAU or some other relevance metric, as otherwise smaller instances defederating from major ones may sneakily make the major one seem more isolated than it really is.

[–] gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Or scale arrow size by MAU, I don't know.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 9 hours ago

That sounds like a great idea, that's some of the most important information.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I have to say, now it's even more amusing to hear people claim '.world is a bunch of narrow minded [whatevers] who block all opinions they don't like' (2 instances 😱)

[–] gedfromgont@piefed.ca 4 points 5 hours ago

2 of the major instances in this graph. They might block many more that are smaller but I didn't check.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 8 points 8 hours ago

What a mess. Not the graph, just all the netsplits in general.

[–] waldfee@feddit.org 11 points 8 hours ago

This graph is indeed a lot more intuitively readable. I think it could be improved further by avoiding needlessly crossing the arrows, like for example pawb.social -> lemmygrad.ml is crossing multiple other arrows, even though they are right next to another. Some arrows could also be shorter to avoid crossings, like beehaw.org -> sh.itjust.works

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 11 points 9 hours ago (5 children)

I’m kinda surprised that so many instances have defederated from fedinsfw.app It’s just porn, right? Who cares?

Maybe I’m naive and missing an important point. If so, I apologize for my ignorance.

[–] dil@piefed.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

The way the apps and frontends are setup, its easy enough to use alts for different usecases instead of having porn attached to general instances. Seperating gooner personas from regular is a positive imo. Keep that energy on the nsfw instances, banning them isn't like reddit getting rid of a community, everyone still can sign up and access it on the same app they already use. I always hated scrolling on r/all and seeing porn every 5 posts (nsfw tag covers a lot of non porn) Doesn't mean I don't use reddit for porn, I think I wouldve preferred having an alt there that only showed porn subs and vice versa with my main account showing none. Some seperation is healthy imo.

[–] Krusty@quokk.au 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It's not just porn.

It's pretty much all fetish and kink stuff... At least last time I looked. Including cartoons of children. Maybe worse than cartoons. Noped out quick. Cops find that shit in your cache and you might be going to prison.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

Cartoons of children? No thanks. I won’t be visiting anytime soon.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 25 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

If people want porn there's a million places they can look instead. It makes sense to just remove porn spam from your instance, most people don't really want it in with everything else. Also, it's harder to moderate or find people willing to moderate it.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 6 points 8 hours ago

Okay. Those all sound like good reasons. Thanks!

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

i know blahaj at least defederated it because of "a community for porn of women that appear to be under 18" (direct quotation from a local-only post)

i couldn’t find it myself (there’s a lot of communities on there!) but i’m guessing it’s some sort of "barely legal" porn community, which is gross (but unfortunately very common). so good riddance imo

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 3 points 5 hours ago

Ick. That’s a good reason, too.

[–] dadarobot@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 hours ago

i havent seen any of the discussions leading to this, but i assume the sheer amount of images/video takes up a lot of space, so they instances decided to avoid it altogether.

that and potential risks if something particularly unsavory becomes mirrored on your instance.

[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 hours ago

I like this representation a lot.

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

As it is, bright yellow on a white background results in me barely being able to see who any of the lemmy instances defederate from.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I find this much harder to read than the previously posted diagram, and it contains less information.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 8 hours ago

Yes, despite the problems with the other one, I found it easier to read. This one has too many crossing connections, and loses the groups.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

It's a very clear visualization. I do agree that some indication of the scale/activity of the instances would be a nice addition.

I also think you should add a date, as the relationships and active servers will likely change over time. If you keep it up, eventually you'll have a collection that illustrates the changes.