I want to see a list for each popular server (e.g. the top 10 lemmy instances) and I want to see - for each instance - with whom they federate. How can I do this? Any sure-fire way to know if a instance like HexBear.net is being federated with lemmy.world? How do you know?
Many of the inactive instances are probably from people who tried self hosting and then gave up. Just my theory.
Yep. Small ones that still hosted communities also had a high attrition rate - I was in some of them.
I'm sure. I don't know what the software does if an instance is active for a few days, then goes offline and doesn't come back. It stays on the federation list, i presume? Probably a fair amount are also personal instances with 2-3 accounts.
I'm pretty sure it sticks around forever, I clicked on a few without "software" or "verison" filled in at random and most 404'd or 503'd.
That makes sense. We wouldn't want the content to be deleted. I've seen there are a few communities where the original instance is now not functioning, but the content remains on this instance.
Exactly. I wouldn't want to lose !moviesandtv@lemmy.film even if we can effectively no longer post. For archival reasons.