World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.
I really can’t see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I’ve heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less… nice than those of smaller instances.
I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn’t make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.
@Masimatutu Mander is where many of the cool science communities are though. :-)
I agree. But I think what has happened is people are bringing a web 2.0 social media mentality to the fediverse. Instead of adjusting to decentralization/federation they are essentially trying to recreate centralization by clustering in the one spot.
Lemmy.world’s size and low friction signup became self-perpetuating for people who thought they were going “where everyone else is” and were afraid of missing out.
As the fediverse matures, I think we will see less obsession with recruitment or with needing to be the biggest/only community for whatever subject.
It’s also worth noting that human beings are not 100% rational creatures, always thoroughly collecting data and making careful decisions about what will get them the best results. Instead they’re just a little bit lazier than that.
Theoretically laziness is a biological adaptation that improves survivability for part of the population during times of famine.