In recent weeks, I have posted an absolutely staggering amount of content on Lemmy.

My goal is simply to support the platform. I hate huge corporations.

Now I’m taking a break. I won’t post anything or I’ll post very little (I still feel a little guilty!! Who will post new content 😢?)

But I need to focus on improving my own life and relax.

However… I’m just curious.

Is the number of Lemmy users actually increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Is that data even available?

Edit: I will still post stuff. I’ll just post a lot less!

  • asudox@lemmy.asudox.devM
    95·
    5 months ago

    No, the MAU (which is what I assume you meant) seems to be going down very slowly. Though it probably will start going up once again someday. Possibly when the new digg is released to the public or when Reddit pulls another shit that not even the current Redditors will be able to tolerate.

    I personally don’t have a problem with the current state. I like it here. I recognize lots of people every day comment and post. It feels cozy.

  • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    50·
    5 months ago

    Its been at a pretty consistent 50k which means we retained 25% of the users from our peak. Its 37.5k at the moment with 1.8k on piefed. There is another 18k users once NodeBB federations integrates.

    Its a decent little community, enough to be self sufficient and enough for new users to feel like they arent joining a ghost town.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      Many of us stopped actually “engaging” on Reddit long before we finally left it - the amount of trolls just waiting to pounce on anything at all that was said just got too damn high!

      There are (so MANY!) trolls here too, but you can block them all and then breathe an enormous sigh of relief and finally enjoy the rest - I am saying that here that is at least possible, whereas on Reddit it just simply was not.

        • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          Then you must be avoiding politics and the major news communities here - which is good advice for anyone to follow - in which case the rest of the Threadiverse is outright kind. Reddit used to have such people but they stopped talking years ago - I know I did.

          One thing to note about Reddit mods: the Rexodus broke the power of anyone who resisted, so the tiny dick energy thing is by design as in anyone there nowadays is a collaborator to its authoritarian regime, who of course is a very different type of personality (a conciliatory style: think “cop”, where power flows downhill) than what used to be the case years ago. I am speaking though of small niche subs - the largest ones had already enshittified by then, for different reasons. Power corrupts.

          But the Threadiverse is new, and so the early adoptor mindset reigns supreme. There are definitely authoritarians though - some of the more major ones you cannot see since Lemmy.world has defederated from them, thereby protecting you from that. Lemmy.ml still exists though, and if you ever say anything slightly negative about Russia, China, or North Korea (or in some cases simply not supportive enough of them?), then you can be banned from every community across the entire instance including ones you’ve never commented in before. So such things do exist here… but yeah there are also kind people here too, and that’s awesome! (Whereas on Reddit I simply gave up all hope whatsoever for anything positive, buried amidst all the mountains of trash)

  • LadyButterfly she/her@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    30·
    5 months ago

    Nice one for posting so much! I’m a prolific poster as well but you’ve got me beat. It’s a lot of work but I love to see people happily chatting here. I’ve no clue if it’s quieter atm overall, but don’t know that lemmy will fail. There’s enough of us atm, and not many alternatives.

  • Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
    28·
    5 months ago

    I believe it’s is slowly going down over time. But this is going at such a slow rate that reddit enshitification might lead more people to here in the future before there is no more great content on here.

    But thank you for making such a great effort. You deserve a break (:

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      2·
      5 months ago

      reddit resorted to using more shadowban purges instead of sitewide bans to slow the number of people leaving the site, SB people often dont realized they been banned at least for a while.(i wonder if they realized thier sitewide purges is doing mroe damage to them then they admit, thats why shadowbans replaced the blatant purges.

  • hatsa122@lemmy.world
    15·
    5 months ago

    Its the perfect size right now. Big enough to have a good variety of content and discussions while still small enough and niche to not be plagued by bots or targeted by corpos

  • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pub
    15·
    5 months ago

    Slowly going down. The learning curve is too steep for the general population (personal opinion, happy to debate).

    • FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online
      29·
      5 months ago

      I wonder how much of that decrease is a result of instances shutting down and their users migrating off of Lemmy to platforms like PieFed and others. The users may not be completely gone, just not on Lemmy.

      • styanax@lemmy.world
        14·
        5 months ago

        Piefed helped a number of communities reparent to their homeserver as-is when lemm.ee closed down, definitely a valid theory. meta@lemm.ee community final posts if you’re keen to farm data.

          • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
            16·
            5 months ago

            At a rough glance, it looks like PieFed’s active users went up by roughly the same number as Lemmy’s went down!

            Although that’s just the last couple of months - on top of that, the “Threadiverse” (including Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin, nodeBB, and flarum, though the wider “Fediverse” also includes Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other stuff that isn’t based on community forums like we do here; note from here on I’ll focus exclusively on Lemmy) activity has been going down for quite awhile now, basically since the Rexodus.

            According to people talking on r/Redditalternatives, Lemmy just isn’t interesting enough. Before Blaze’s (and others) heroic efforts to counteract it, previously the other top reason was that it was too confusing to have to pick an instance first before signing up (which is a legitimate thing for Mastodon even if not so much for Lemmy).

            I get it: not everyone uses Arch Linux and hates Windows hard enough for this audience. Purity beatings will continue until morale improves.

            Also Lemmy can be so incredibly toxic - sharing any kind of nuance will almost certainly be lost in the flood of people piling on not even for what someone says but if it sounds vaguely like something else that is popular to hate on. Argumentative people are just looking for excuses to argue, period. You personally have helped with that a ton, thank you so much for caring and sharing positivity vibes 😽❣️!! You are helping people not want to leave and go back to Reddit (which sounds odd I know, but remember that the tiny niche subs there really are different than the larger ones, and people can be much kinder in them than the more popular subs there, or the more popular communities here).

            • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
              11·
              5 months ago

              You personally have helped with that a ton, thank you so much for caring and sharing positivity vibes 😽❣️!! You are helping people not want to leave and go back to Reddit (which sounds odd I know, but remember that the tiny niche subs there really are different than the larger ones, and people can be much kinder in them than the more popular subs there, or the more popular communities here).

              Sharing this feeling as well, thank you so much @LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone for all your posts and comments on the platform!

              • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
                5·
                5 months ago

                I love it too, but it is something that does not happen “naturally”. A lot of people feel intimidated by e.g. someone spinning up a bot that will send 20-100 identical messages at someone (yes that’s a real story that I was reading about earlier today), and while that one is on the extreme side, more mundane methods of trolling work almost as well for a fraction of the effort.

                So thank you for your efforts to resist the trend and create a space where people can actually enjoy things:-).

      • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pub
        15·
        5 months ago

        <rant> I work in IT, user support. I’ve seen so many users still using AOL, Yahoo or ISP email accounts that were created for them automatically; they can’t figure out basic things like setting up Gmail with MFA or downloading Outlook for work from the app store. More importantly, they just don’t care; their eyes glaze over the moment you mention something like encryption (hacker talk to them) or privacy (you must be hiding something). They cannot tell the difference between Firefox or Chrome (all browsers are Internet Explorer). And these people are college educated doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc without a clue how technology works. I’ve changed the Chrome or Firefox icon to Internet Explorer on thousands of computers because even after giving them tutorial after tutorial, as soon as I leave the site, they are clicking that damn blue E and loading up MSNBC… </rant>

        • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
          4·
          5 months ago

          What harms people is not the lack of knowledge but unwillingness to learn.

          That said, there is only so much attention span to go around:-).

        • Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 months ago

          Wow, calm down. It was just a question. The core difference between Reddit and lemmy is in my mind like the core difference between something like whatsapp and email.

          • Lumidaub@feddit.org
            1·
            5 months ago

            Wasn’t directed at you personally, sorry. I’ve seen that comparison before and it makes me doubt my sanity.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago
          1. Domain + Username
          2. email is also very flawed (think spam, and spoofing, etc)
          3. its federated
          4. people usually just pick one of the big platforms, but there are other options.
          5. email servers get banned from interoperating with the network all the time

          The comparisons could go on. I’m sure there are contrasts too. But email is a point of reference most people know about. Unless they don’t have an email address. I guess.

          • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            And you think the average user thinks of ANY of this when they’re using Lemmy for the first time so they must conclude “oh it’s just like email”? This has absolutely nothing to do with using the platform.

            • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              5 months ago

              I answered your question about the similarities man. Settle down. You asked any and I gave you it. You didn’t ask for how it’s exactly like email.

              Also, I think tech nerds tend to look down on others in this topic. “It’s too difficult, it’s too much to learn.” —- and thus it won’t be profitable? What are we worried about?

              Activity pub and related networks didn’t just shrivel up and die right away due to this problem. I’m arguing with a stranger on the internet via a newer activity pub platform, in fact.

              • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pub
                2·
                5 months ago

                You’re right about tech nerds - I’m pretty sure most are borderline autistic, with a common trait of being far too literal in casual conversation. I (on the spectrum) spent a lot of time and effort conditioning myself to be more chill with neuro-norms. And it worked! I don’t get bent out of shape anymore discussing techy things with non-techy people, not do I correct them, because they are going to forget the technical details the second I turn away, but they will definitely remember (and dislike) the nerd who starting arguing over some trivial detail.

        • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pub
          1·
          5 months ago

          Email and Lemmy are both digital communication systems where people use personal computers connected to the internet to socialize across the world. To you, they are completely different. To my parents and most of my clients (boomers), they are one and the same. Is the Nintendo Switch the same as the Steam Deck? Hell no, I don’t even game, but I can rattle off a dozen differences between the two platforms. Yet, to those who are technologically illiterate (which is most Americans), they are one and the same. But I can understand your frustration, I had a Sega Genesis growing up, and my parents always called it a Nintendo, to which I would autistically shout “Moooom, it’s a Seg-AH GEN-esis, it’s totally different!”

          • Lumidaub@feddit.org
            2·
            5 months ago

            Very relatable, of course, and triggering a bunch of that type of memory, thanks for that. But bizarrely, it’s the opposite. The first thing I read about the Fediverse is how if I can understand email, I can understand the Fediverse. This was people who are way more geeky (and presumably autistic) than I am. I’ve seen that comparison several times since then and I still struggle to understand what the fuck they meant by that, other than “your username is username@hostname.suffix which looks like an email address” which is so fucking surface level it makes my head spin and has fuck-all to do with how you use the various platforms.

            • quid_pro_joe@infosec.pub
              2·
              5 months ago

              I think you and I are in that sweet sweet band of The Spectrum™ where we have heightened senses, intelligence, thirst for knowledge, ability to see things from unique perspectives, but without all the autistic screeching 😁

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      I believe that is more valid for Mastodon instances than for Lemmy ones.

      Except that you are still correct in the operational sense that most will not bother. See e.g. the migration to BlueSky rather than Mastodon.

      PieFed really might make for a qualitative shift though, in offering so many options such as categories of communities (akin to multi-Reddits), and polling, and flairs (both user and post) that Reddit users were used to and it makes them feel really like they are “slumming it” coming over to Lemmy that lacks all of that. The categories of communities and user-customizable and shareable feeds in particular really help with “content discovery”, as too does PieFed’s wizard that walks a first-time user through the process of setting up and joining what the user indicates that they are interested in.

      In contrast, Lemmy users are supposed to go… (somewhere? but where? where are these "somewhere"s ever mentioned? on a side-bar somewhere? extremely rarely I would believe they might be, but the vast majority of the time usually not) to find the content that they want to see. Often they end up browsing All rather than Subscribed, and get so frustrated with that that they simply leave Lemmy altogether, and then report their complaints over in r/RedditAlternatives. PieFed solved that particular problem though, as well as several others, so at this point I think any discussion about “the learning curve” needs to be split into one for Lemmy, where it really does remain too complicated for the average Reddit non-technical normie, vs. PieFed where it does not anymore.

      And I need to be careful or else this will turn into a HUGE tangent, but also the political extremism and bOtH sIdEs SaMe-ism on “Lemmy” is an enormous turn-off for people as well. Yes they can block each troll on an individual basis, or the same with communities, no they can’t TRULY block an entire instance (that horribly mis-named function would have been better termed a “community muting” rather than “instance blocking”, which still allows comments from users on that instance to appear everywhere else, plus able to reply and even trigger notifications, etc. - IT IS NOT A BLOCK). Anyway, how this relates is that mainstream non-technical normies just get overwhelmed, and don’t enjoy the political extremism having to be an opt-out rather than opt-in feature, with most of the ways presented by the software to opt-out not TRULY opting “out” rather than merely claiming to do so. In contrast, one of the first things that PieFed does is to set up a block-list of keywords, offering the options All, None, and even a third one Some to allow the content at a lower frequency. I have never put any words into it… but I appreciate that the feature exists, for the sake of those who want / need it to be able to enjoy their social media of choice.

      I predict that for all these reasons plus a few others, Lemmy will continue to die off. The die-hard userbase seems not to care actually, even being oddly proud of this? While PieFed - which just increased its userbase +400% - will continue to grow, and maybe PieFed will actually be the thing that captures more of the Reddit users. Lemmy certainly will not be, nor Mbin, and I cannot say for certain that PieFed will, just that it seems to me to be the only thing that possibly could (Sublinks seems dead in the water atm, due to the primary - only? - dev having a baby).

    • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      5 months ago

      I would love some sort of SSO identity provider on the fediverse. I mean, like not connected to any instances. That would make thing a bit easier.

      I never knew what .ml stood for.

    • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      One thing I’ve noticed is that on reddit, if I post a comment it’ll get either zero votes or a thousand, with next to no correlation between the number and how useful or well thought-out the comment was. On Lemmy it seems a lot more consistent, as though people here are actually paying attention? That and/or The Dreaded Algorithm hits a lot harder on Reddit.

      • Aliff@lemmy.mynameisaliff.co.uk
        1·
        5 months ago

        Yep, I agree… that was what I noticed too… plus, some did mention that it was the bots who upvoted/downvoted on Reddit posts and comments, so was there any real interaction, or? I was confused, really.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    5 months ago

    Been here since November. Seeing a lot more upvotes and comments on posts than when I got here.

  • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
    12·
    5 months ago

    Lemmy will never really grow beyond what it is now. Even if there was another influx of users, the retention rate is going to be low and the amount of active users is going to be even lower. It will forever remain a niche platform for 3 reasons:

    1. It’s made by and for people on the far left, tech/privacy nerds, and people who have been kicked out of Reddit. Because of this, the actual active users on here tend to fall into of these 3 groups, and they define Lemmy’s culture, and this includes the developers. Because of this, much of content on here revolve around niche topics and so there isn’t much here to appeal to the mainstream.

    2. It is fundamentally flawed by design. There are bunch of different communities on different instances about the same topic, and there is no way to consolidate them. Because of this, you have a bunch of dead communities that operate as independent nodes, instead of having centralized communities that are big and active. This issue would’ve been solved if Lemmy was designed to have each instance be a community in of itself (AskLemmy has its own instance and so does tech, gaming, and so on), but instead we have the current implementation.

    3. Lemmy has many of the problems that drive people away from Reddit. Sure, Lemmy isn’t a greedy corporation, which is nice, but it still has terminally online powermods with little to no accountability, a hostile and negative community, weird/extreme echo chambers that make most people cringe, and so on. If you sign up for Lemmy, you’re going to get the same problems but with a worse experience because it’s way smaller and has less content, so why would you come to Lemmy instead of making another Reddit account?

    I just don’t see Lemmy every becoming mainstream or overtaking Reddit. It’s already been 6 years since the start of Lemmy’s development, and 2 years since the big influx of users from Reddit’s API fiasco, and it STILL has to rely on the same dozen or so people spamming the platform to keep it barely active. Lemmy won’t collapse, but it also won’t be more than what it is now, at least not any time soon.

    • ruan@lemmy.eco.br
      4·
      5 months ago

      About #2: you have any suggestion on how you could achieve that and still be federated?

      It seem like you would need a central “oficial” instance that defines who is the “real” AskLemmy, etc…

      But yeah, I really want to hear if you have ideas on how achieve this and maintain it as a federation.

      • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 months ago

        If I were to redesign Lemmy, I would design it be like Reddit, but without the corporate centralization, so basically each subreddit would be it’s own instance, and they can federate or defedarate with other subreddits. I wouldn’t design it to where each instance tries to be it’s own full fledged Reddit alternative like right now. That’s a much cleaner design, but the big issue with it is that hosting the instances is a pain and so most people can’t do it.

        Therefore, my much more realistic alternative, is to add tags. Each community would have a limited number of relevant tags (could be required to create a community), and users can view and follow these tags. These tags would help streamline all these different communities across Lemmy under one label, which is the result we’re trying to achieve. I would also add another tab on the home feed called “tags” where users can view and filter all the posts from the all tags they follow.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      I feel like part of it also is that Lemmy isn’t designed for anywhere near the traffic that Reddit gets. For instance, Lemmy maintained Reddit’s mod power structure based on mod service length.

      Also Lemmy hasn’t really done a lot to build spam fighting measures. If the user base grows 10x the current size, I can see spam becoming a bigger problem which could affect usability.

      • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        While I agree with you that Lemmy is vulnerable to spam, I don’t think it’ll a problem any time soon. Even if the userbase grows ten fold, that would still only be around 350k users. That’s not enough to attract any major attention. Any spam Lemmy would get would come internally from users feuding with the devs or each other.

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
    11·
    5 months ago

    Thank you for your service.

    Also, thank you for asking. Yes, I’m increasing, and I’m eating more salads now to help prevent it, OK?