Trackers like Lemmyverse.net and Fediverse Explorer are incentivizing instance owners to inflate numbers with bots ( lemmy.world )
The vast majority of the instances in that screenshot have known jumps from 1~50 users to tens of thousands in less than a day. These instances also happen to not require a captcha on sign up....
![](https://kbin.cafe/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/92/de/92def22c5cb1b73100ea9ba63ae12b66579a6aad1042b0743faed1bfbe530c5f.png)