We are now at 28.5K users (see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list). The top 10 instances also got a decent boost in user count. With the exception of beehaw.org which defederated, the Fediverse is thriving ๐ฅ
Itโs gotta start somewhere though. It makes sense that as refugees flock over theyโll gravitate towards the largest instance, because the expectation is thatโs where the usage is and they donโt yet grok how the Fediverse works. As they settle in, Iโd expect a number of them to spread out a bit. Once we can migrate accounts Iโd expect the load to be distributed even better.
Load would not be distributed though right? Because all the user data / activity would just be copied to every federating instance. Fediverse is more about redundancy & lack of centralized control, rather than load balancing.
As I understand it the federation protocol is copying all the data from instance to instance. I think data is probably going to be the most taxing part of running a social media site, but since all the data is replicated, there wont be much load sharing there. Each instance will be taking care of the cpu/load requirements of rendering/serving the pages for their users, so there is some scaling benefits there to distribution. Anyway, I'm also still learning as well! I think we all are lol
But then you're still not getting it? You don't need to join other instances, you can subscribe to communities from any instances in the Fediverse without joining another instance.