As a result, our instance https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ got 625 new user registrations (of which 536 where accepted) in the past 24 hours! And the registrations are not abating even now. We still get like 10 new ones per hour!
I suspect this is probably the largest advertisement, for lemmy specifically, since the main reddit blackouts 1.5 years ago.
Have your own instances also seen an influx of new users?
It’s a bit of a mixed experience. Overall, federation has its benefits, but it also tends to encourage cliquish behavior among groups. Sometimes, entire servers get blacklisted for various reasons. Reddit has a lot of corners that don’t violate its current ToS but are generally ignored by the community at large. These are NSFW spaces usually. In federation the ToS isn’t usually about pleasing the most people and pulling them into your platform, it’s more about the ideals of your server admin team. That’s a good thing, I suppose. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out with Lemmy instances when Reddit bans porn.