Since defederating is essentially an explicit block list and is directional, my assumption is that the groups that are circled have defederated from the things they're pointing at. I could be wrong.

Map needs a key/legend.

The red circled stuff seems to be only one possible option, but isn't visually very distinct, and the red circle shouldn't be broken like that, just make sure the lines are all visible.

Yeah, as someone who is struggling to understand the concept of federation...this doesn't help me at all.

I guess what its saying, if you're on lemmy.world, you can't access content on lemmy.zip?

Yeah I cant understand it at all.

I'll adjust the graph by the next version to account for it as an exception.

The MAU numbers for instances were sourced from Fediverse Observer and calculated as a percentage of 43,287 for the percentages, but here's a table of the defederation data:

I'm feeling the same way. I've bounced around a few places since joining. I started on midwest.social which was great for a while, but I think the instance grew more than the dev could keep up with. I started seeing connectivity issues and problems displaying content so I reluctantly migrated to .world to see what joining the largest instance would be like. The technical issues went away but I couldn't figure out why I could no longer see /c/piracy until I realized that they're a bunch of pushovers that defederated from dbzer0 based on some liability bogeyman. So I found myself on Lemmy.zip where I can police my own content and have no technical issues.

Note that defederations with smaller instances (representing 12% of users) are not represented here, so there are even more defederations than what is listed here. Hopefully that will come across better with more data in the next version of the graph.

As requiring new users to implement multiple blocks off the bat can be a big ask for those still on the fence about leaving Reddit, defederating known NSFW, troll, and tankie instances can improve new user retention. For those who prefer more hands-off moderation practices, specific instances can cater to them, but I think a more tailored experience is better for users arriving from Reddit.

This is what organic growth looks like. It spreads in fits and starts, bits of it clump together and pile up, pieces of it separate and take on life of their own or die. When part of it rots (hexbear) the larger organism cuts it off to limit the spread of disease.

Lemmy (and more generally, ActivityPub) is growing, not like a rose bush, but like a field of grass. Some pieces of it are blooming, some pieces of it are dying, some pieces are adapting to different environments, but the spread is inexorable and the horizon unlimited.

If you want to see what the field is like on the other side of that hill, well it won't just come to you, you'll have to get up and go to it.

Many fantastic instances do exactly that.

But in answer to your question, you may want to research The Intolerance Paradox. In short, when people refuse to follow the rules it kinda becomes spam. Even if you were okay with CSAM or pictures of pigs actively showing the poop falling out of their anuses (sadly, I bet you think I am being hyperbolic here? nope, this is kinda Hexbear's major schtick), the fact remains that it scares away newcomers.

I will note that if you self-host your own instance then you have perfect control over every aspect of your experience, being able to fine-tune it to perfectly suit your precise needs. Otherwise you will want to choose an instance provider that aligns with whatever your needs are. Some people will choose one of the instances that defederates from almost nothing, while others actually want an experience that is more what they are used to and would expect coming over from the overly bot-modded Reddit, i.e. they want (even outright demand) that censorship be done for them.

This is why the instance pickers need to carefully explain what each instance is about, since there is not just one audience with a single set of needs & expectations.

Wouldn't it make more sense to indicate federation with an arrow and defederation with no arrow?

Unless an instance chooses to defederate from another, everything is federated by default; indicating that with arrows would result in a very messy graph.

Interesting that so many instances have defederated from fedinsfw.app. What's that about?

Fedinsfw.app, like lemmynsfw.com before it, is an instance dedicated to hosting NSFW content. As such content can be off-putting for new users, and only a subset of users are interested in seeing it, some instances choose to defederate from instances dedicated to it. While I'm broadly against defederation that results in a fractured Threadiverse, in this case doing so is probably more helpful in terms of new user retention than it is harmful (users can easily have separate accounts on SFW and NSFW instances or choose an instance that maintains federation with both).

As many instances were already blocking the original lemmynsfw.com, I suspect most do it as a means of moderating the feeds of new users who might not want to see porn. An alternative to this (as mentioned by @Cricket@lemmy.zip) would be blocking access to its communities (versus the instance itself) by default, allowing users to see replies from fedinsfw.app users and unblock the communities should they wish to. In either case, I think user retention is better served by limiting access to such content to those who are specifically interested in it.

For Multiverse and apparently Blahaj specifically, they defederate it over CP concerns due to it hosting a 'Fautbait' community.