I’m a bit sad (mostly for the reasons you already described), but it’s also new and exiting. Interestingly, I’m having more fun here than I’ve had on Reddit in years. Not only was it cool to set up my own instance, I also notice I’m contributing far more then I ever did on Reddit. Maybe it’s because the communities are a bit smaller, so there’s a better chance of someone actually reading your comment.

It’s the Malinese top-level domain from what I can tell. As to why it is favored, I can think of two reasons:

• Domain registration is free
• It mimicks the OG lemmy.ml domain