Yes, it really does!
Since my post yesterday, lemmy.world has added about new 2600 users, bringing the user count to 28361 users. It’s the clear second-largest lemmy instance out there and quickly closing in on lemmy.ml’s 36k users (not taking new signups).
Interestingly, third-largest lemmy instance beehaw.org seems to have lost about 275 users since yesterday. Guessing some people were pissed off about its defederation enough to delete their beehaw accounts?
lemmy.world is operated by the folks from mastodon.world and they blog about their finances monthly: https://blog.mastodon.world/
That’s cool to see. I thought about doing something similar ships I try to spin up an instance.