As of right now:
-
kbin.social has 36,508 total users: https://fedidb.org/network/instance/kbin.social
-
lemmy.ml has 36,185: https://fedidb.org/network/instance/lemmy.ml
-
lemmy.world has 33,945: https://fedidb.org/network/instance/lemmy.world
Well done, kbinauts!
(For completeness: Lemmy as a whole is still much larger than kbin by 330,192 users to 41,477.)
Yes, but unlike with Email, I can host my own instance and expect it to federate with other major instances. If you have a residential IP then you can forget hosting you own Email because major players don’t want anything to do with you due to spam.
It’s possible this can happen to the fediverse, but I’m more optimistic about it because the fediverse is generally not a business venture like Email is now.