As a result, our instance https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ got 625 new user registrations (of which 536 where accepted) in the past 24 hours! And the registrations are not abating even now. We still get like 10 new ones per hour!
I suspect this is probably the largest advertisement, for lemmy specifically, since the main reddit blackouts 1.5 years ago.
Have your own instances also seen an influx of new users?
No, I think it’s just me on my instance (that probably has the capacity for 1000+ active users) and the steady influx of suspicious accounts that pass the email verification and captcha and then either post nothing, or post adverts get banned/deleted and it goes on.
Mind you I don’t really advertise the instance either. So that’s likely why.
I suspect people coming from reddit don’t understand the fediverse (I know I didn’t when I first got here). So they go to the hosting instance and join there, not really understanding they can join any instance and then join the community (if not already on the instance).
Captcha and email verification are trivially defeated by bots. If just getting lurkers is a concern, try using a registration application form like we do. Do you at least see these lurkers as MAU? (i.e. just voting)
Kbin.life is a neat domain!
A landing page of sorts for small instances could be neat - a list of small instances welcoming new users, what their moderation policies are, software, philosophy of (de)federation, and other basic stuff.
It’s easy to find the big ones, but for those looking for smaller instances they can be harder to find.
Thanks. I think at the time I made an instance (about a year and a half ago I reckon), there was quite a batch snapping up kbin/lemmy on every tld imaginable.
It’s actually not a bad idea. “The front page of the threadiverse” so to speak. There are plenty of instance lookups out there, but they’re generally self discovered. Something that helps match a user to a smaller instance cannot be a bad thing.
Having large instances is a good thing of course, especially for hosting larger communities. But, in order to remain fully independent, smaller instances that can be run truly as a hobby on affordable hardware are essential for the fediverse in my opinion.
I think it’s also a bit utopian to expect everyone to make an informed decision about which small instance to sign up for right away. It could be nice to have a little overview ready for whoever has been using lemmy.world or some other big instance for a while, understands how the fediverse works, and wants to migrate to a smaller instance for some reason or another.
Personally I wasn’t really sure where to go after Kbin.social, and my decision on Kbin.earth was pretty random. Happy with my decision though!
I have registration application enabled and I am getting 0 registrations.
You need to somehow get your url out. Usually if you’re just “generalist” people don’t see a big reason to register compared to something like lemm.ee. Also new servers have another issue is that one doesn’t know if they’ll be around long enough. We’ve lost so many small servers in lemmy when their admins discovered it was more trouble than it was worth.