Quick notes for those who only know of Lemmy after the reddit API fiasco: from what I understand, reddit’s banning of /r/chapotraphouse in mid-2020 is how Hexbear came to be (biggest instance prior to API drama, albeit unfederated at the time due to major software divergence) and the banning of /r/genzedong, /r/genzhao and /r/genzhukov in March 2022 brought a large exodus of users onto lemmygrad.ml, making it the most popular federated instance until the reddit API changes.
Quick notes for those who only know of Lemmy after the reddit API fiasco: from what I understand, reddit’s banning of /r/chapotraphouse in mid-2020 is how Hexbear came to be (biggest instance prior to API drama, albeit unfederated at the time due to major software divergence) and the banning of /r/genzedong, /r/genzhao and /r/genzhukov in March 2022 brought a large exodus of users onto lemmygrad.ml, making it the most popular federated instance until the reddit API changes.