The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.

Community Count Community Subscriber Count
beehaw.org 6 133450
hexbear.net 33 663204
lemdro.id 1 17052
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 15907
lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 53006
lemmy.ml 14 356460
lemmy.one 1 16257
lemmy.world 39 851950
lemmynsfw.com 2 33586
sh.itjust.works 1 16006
sopuli.xyz 1 14093

The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as “suspicious”)

EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:

Community Count Community Active Month Count
awful.systems 1 2616
feddit.org 2 7363
feddit.uk 2 5289
hexbear.net 1 2952
lemdro.id 1 2898
lemm.ee 3 8898
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 11422
lemmy.ca 3 14910
lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 13752
lemmy.ml 10 54949
lemmy.world 57 338384
lemmy.wtf 1 3602
lemmy.zip 3 12020
mander.xyz 1 11469
sh.itjust.works 5 37365
slrpnk.net 3 10897
sopuli.xyz 2 10070
ttrpg.network 1 4107

Community Count:

Community Users:

            • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Horseshoe theory is essentially Latte-Flavored horseshit

              The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.[6][8]

              Wikipedia: Horseshoe Theory

    • Skua@kbin.earth
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      3 months ago

      It’s essentially where reddit’s old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it

      • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        To be fair, that’s because liberalism is closer to fascism than any sort of leftism, and many of these instances have a strongly liberal user base because many were with Reddit longer than most leftists were.

        • Skua@kbin.earth
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          3 months ago

          I really don’t think the specific date of reddit departure is what shaped the politics of either community, especially not when the one you’re saying was less shaped by reddit was born out of a political subreddit

          Hexbear’s site culture is full of in jokes and big on dunking. That’s always going to be abrasive to outsiders, even without the whole thing where all of their many emojis were enormous on other instances

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.

      • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.

      • thoro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        .world never federated with Hexbear from what I remember. I’m pretty sure they were on the block list before Hexbear got federation completed. There was no single incident as far as I know.

        • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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          3 months ago

          Wrong. They federated with them then had a big discussion on if they should defederate (you can probably still find it in meta). It’s why I left - I prefer to make my own defederation decisions (and I like Hexbear, and Piracy too).

          Source: I was there.