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!
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.
This is the sweet spot. After the initial teething pains but before the bigots and nazis take over.
The bigots and nazis are already quarantined at exploding heads thankfully
How can one obtain these numbers? Is there like a statistics website?
fedidb.com is what I used. The UI used to be better its kinda ass now.
Small enough to see the same few people on multiple threads and posts, large enough for a sense of activeness
This ain’t a sprint. This is a marathon
I don’t know if Lemmy is the future but ActivityPub social media is.
It is only matter of time.
I no longer feed my shit post on corpo socials. This is an aspect of the class war. Don’t feed your enemy.
I was worried at first that Lemmy would be basically dead compared to Reddit. But holy hell, its active enough and its qualitatively better than Reddit could ever be. I never realized how shit it was until I actually decided to leave permanently.
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.
I haven’t encountered a troll yet and the encountered bots so far are useful repost bots. Reddit is just filled with obnoxious people that I couldn’t stand, moderators with small dick energy that moderate to whatever rules they prefer (like permanent bans for using very common non-targeted slurs) and just annoying trolls on subs like WorldNews and Canada that get away with racist shit all the time.
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)
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 (:
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.
Why do you care? What’s your goal? 5300 posts in 2 months is beyond the realm of mortals.
we peaked mid 2023, i have posted 2.8k comments in 2.5 years, so my work complements yours
I don’t remember my stats from my lemm.ee (rip) account but I’d imagine it was nearing the thousands
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
the perfect size would be bigger than reddit.
Been here since November. Seeing a lot more upvotes and comments on posts than when I got here.
It appears that Twitter users are migrating to Bluesky, while simultaneously engaging with Reddit and Discord. Meanwhile, Reddit users are making their way to Lemmy or maybe not I exacly don’t how but LEMMY IS GOING UPP.
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?
Slowly going down. The learning curve is too steep for the general population (personal opinion, happy to debate).
I’m curious what you think makes email easy enough to understand for the general population, but lemmy to hard.
<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>
If a ‘professional’ can’t even find a file in a computer, should we really allow them to be a part of our society? They could be a danger for us all.
Good question! I say yes, because a functioning society is formed from the combined knowledge, skills, and efforts of it’s unique and diverse constituents, each of whom have strengths and weaknesses. However, if one does not have technical aptitude, then they should not be in a position that decides or controls technology - there are plenty of other non-techy jobs they could do, like farming or fishing.
I feel like we should keep those degenerates away from our society and replace them with people who know how to use technology.
We don’t need more Amish like savages
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that technology is not point. It’s just a tool, like a magnifying glass. Stop focusing on the tech, you’re going to waste what little time you have here on Earth. People are the point. Relationships are the point. Feeling emotions and expressing them is the point.
I have worked in IT almost my entire life. I watched computers shrink from refrigerator size to watch size. I witnessed the birth of the internet, and watched it grow, increasing in size and complexity until it seemed to connect everything. I could have been a programmer, or database architect, or systems administrator. But no, I chose to stay in tech support because that is how I connect with other people. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were when I was working under someone’s desk. I’ve seen ten thousand people in person struggle with tech problems that you and I would find trivial to solve. Are you saying that all those people, all those farmers, doctors, teachers, public defenders, artists, and parents deserve to be banished to the Phantom Zone because they can’t edit a PDF? Get the fuck outta here with that shallow thinking, and re-evaluate your life, and what is truly meaningful in it. May this conversation be the seed that helps you grow to your full and wonderful potential.
All my love, Biped # 117 Billion +1
I just want to win the lottery to get out of work and be free
That email comparison annoys the fuck out of me. How is any of this like email?
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.
Wasn’t directed at you personally, sorry. I’ve seen that comparison before and it makes me doubt my sanity.
- Domain + Username
- email is also very flawed (think spam, and spoofing, etc)
- its federated
- people usually just pick one of the big platforms, but there are other options.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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 😁
I couldn’t possibly disagree with that, for obvious reasons. (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)
Obama_awarding_Obama.gif 🏅
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).
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.
Nah. The same ten people that post content have just upped their game. Never stop you beautiful people!
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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Appearently the algorithm of Reddit has become shit this last days
That + I have begun to loathe the average “user” there + the Admin AI bot decided my comment making commentary on Reddit’s generally poor culture through very thick ironic language constituted “harassment” and perma-banned me. My 14 year old account - 2 “offenses” (one was valid) and it’s gone. I’ve appealed but it has been 8 days with no action.
It’s also just “people” parroting the same cold take like it’s hot over and over to farm karma. Yes Trump sucks, yes Epstein files need to be released, yes progressive policy, but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys? IRL is miserable enough lmao.
Ban-happy power tripping mods, recycled low-effort content, a generally discouraging attitude toward nuanced takes and critical thinning, and an absurd amount of bots and propaganda has really made me want to migrate. Anyways I’m here now, and I hope to contribute to this platform in a constructive and positive way! I welcome any pointers or advice!
Welcome!
There are good Lemmy apps if you don’t have one yet. You can search “for Lemmy” to see most of them (in the Android play store at least). I like Voyager for Lemmy.
but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys?
You might want to block some keywords then, as there’s also a lot of American politics on Lemmy. You can filter most of it that way.
Holy shit there’s a lot of tankies on here lol
Hey I just saw your conversation over on Memes@lemmy.ml. You’ll want to stay well clear of both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net to avoid most of the stupid tanky shit. Most other instances seem pretty cool.
Lol thank you for the heads up. I’ve already made a new account on lemmy.world and immediately blocked the entire lemmy.ml instance loll. I’ll be adding hexbear now😂
I feel like lemmy.world is a bit shielded from tankies in general. I see some posts from lemmy.ml from time to time but rarely insane tankie posts. Engaging with political posts from there might not be the best idea indeed, maybe there should be warnings for those who are not aware lol
Thank you! I stumbled upon Voyager and it’s been giving me some major nostalgia for the Apollo Reddit app lol.
Yea filtering may be the way to go. The problem is like to stay in the loop and engage in SOME politics, just everything in moderation. Hate when my feed on Reddit for example, is ENTIRELY Trump-related or politicized news. It’s just a bit draining after a while. I appreciate the heads up! I’m glad that I can already tell the community is a bit better about it here because none of my fellow leftists have commented jumping down my throat saying “too bad”😂
Well, I myself still use Reddit for my hobby since on lemmy there’s like 4 of us FPV pilots.
But generally: spread the word, if there’s a community you’d like that doesn’t exist - make it yourself
Yea, it seems for the more niche topics/interests/hobbies, Reddit may still be required.
It’s annoying because I’ve always been a lurker-commenter and don’t really post, but if I want to be the change I wanna see in the world — I’m going to have to start making posts here😂
I’ve gained some weight since joining. Does that count?
