We are now at 28.5K users (see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list). The top 10 instances also got a decent boost in user count. With the exception of beehaw.org which defederated, the Fediverse is thriving ๐ฅ
It stopped receiving posts or comments from other instances like lemmy.world. Their reasoning is that they want a highly moderated "safe" instance, but since moderation tools are still very primitive, they decided to defederate, it was easier than trying to moderate posts from the big instances. They said they will re-federate once mod tools improve.
They only defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works (don't remember where the dots were in that). If you look at their blocklist they're also defederated from a shitload of other instances, but most of those are some combination of spam, illegal content, and/or Nazis, which is fair.