this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Similar to Mastodon's spikes last year, it seems. Anyways, there is data to think about. Source

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[–] Chocrates 388 points 1 year ago (22 children)

I feel like that is more or less to be expected. A ton of people found Lemmy during the reddit protests. Now that the protests are gone and Lemmy has had its growing pains some users are leaving, going back to reddit or other places. If we keep using it and making content users will grow organically.

Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.

[–] requiem 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I don’t think it’s about a craving for centralisation but for newcomers and people still learning the core ideas about decentralisation it’s about a promise of more active engagement and more varied content.

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[–] ObviouslyNotBanana 194 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That doesn't seem weird to me. Honestly it seems weird that it's that active. I would've expected a sharper, quicker decline. Retaining active users is hard.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Exactly. Users who are involved in extremely niche communities will probably not find a place on Lemmy/Kbin yet. In 2008, reddit was the same. The politics subreddit only had 50,000 subscribers.

It's all about momentum. The more users we have, the more engagement in niche communities, the more it'll attract and retain users.

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

And loads of people hear the buzz, try it out and leave when they grow bored. I think the reason for the downward spike not being worse is that the threshold to take part in Lemmy communities is higher than many social media sites, and invested time registering makes people more likely to stay.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy is a much closer analog to Reddit than Mastodon is for Twitter. While Mastodon has similar basic functionality to Twitter, it lacks a lot of the features that make it easy to find new content and new people to follow.

Pair that with some very polished third-party mobile reddit apps with large, loyal followings transitioning to Lemmy and it became way easier to abandon reddit for Lemmy than it was to leave Twitter for Mastodon. I'm a huge open source supporter, but the average user doesn't care about FOSS or open source software. They want something that looks nice and just works.

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[–] dmmeyournudes 147 points 1 year ago (27 children)

until personal interest groups are populated people will not use this site. its basically 1 big meme sub right now with some tech and politics sprinkled on top.

[–] deweydecibel 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is honestly it.

I like the site, I want to use it, I want to encourage others to use it, but I'm getting tired of only talking about the same things here.

Maybe we need to start encouraging people to post rather than just expecting them to.

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[–] [email protected] 138 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Some dropoff after initial hype is normal. Now we just continue as usual until reddit pisses people off again.

[–] Hobo 61 points 1 year ago

We have to wait until tomorrow?

[–] what_is_a_name 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are also conscious efforts to weed out bots and other measures that try to remove potential cancer from spreading.

There was a post recently that outlined bot weeding efforts on a couple dozen instances that tanked user number by something like 1/5 - clearly visible on graphs.

Lemmy’s doing great. Even if plenty small communities are still not big enough here.

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[–] [email protected] 115 points 1 year ago (14 children)

I'm to tired to make quality posts. Props to the people that can do that every day. Best I got is a few mildly opinionated comments.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Even lurkers are still part of the community.

I started out looking for an exact replacement for Reddit (where I mostly lurk). Initially I thought the lack of content and traffic on Lemmy was a bad thing, but I now see it as early days of a community and lack of content means I have a chance to make a post or comment that is valued and gets engagement from other users. Reddit was so mature that anything I wanted to post was either already there, not welcome or buried under an ocean of other content/comments. If you use both you could even find good content on Reddit to crosspost on Lemmy.

It's quite nice being part of a small community now. Even just an up/down vote from you will be worth more here. It's great.

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm actively lurking, I just have nothing of value to share 🌝

[–] DTFpanda 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I feel like people just want to hang out and talk about stuff. We don't always need to be wowed by some crazy high quality content or new OC. We just want to hang out with friends and shoot the shit. Most of us are on here to distract us from whatever bullshit we should probably be doing instead.

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[–] jesterraiin 96 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Well, to keep a user is way harder than to attract his attention.

I think that the key differences between this platform(s) and the more known alternatives are part of the problem - people are very dumb these days and lazy. Often the first reaction to something new and not working in the expected way is to skip it, or demand the solution, rather than look around, try different approach and such.

I feel like I'm witnessing Diaspora 2.0 effect...

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[–] MicroWave 80 points 1 year ago (7 children)

FYI, Lemmy doesn’t count lurkers as active users. Here’s how Lemmy counts active users:

An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm not too worried. Graphs dont only go up. :)

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Joined today. I’ll likely just lurk in the background…

[–] GiddyGap 37 points 1 year ago

They said while commenting...

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Also, this graph does not take into account kbin which is essentially the same kind of software as lemmy but tracked seperately. Better data can be found here: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse

Also, instance hopping and users registering on multiple instances before picking only one/being active on only once may be an explanation.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Also worth noting is Lemmy only counts posts/comments as "active users". Lurkers who only read and up/downvote aren't counted.

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[–] Lazylazycat 54 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Lemmy.world has been down a lot, I've been trying to use it but half the times I've logged on it's been down. So that might be part of it?

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[–] dynamojoe 53 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm generally a lurker so here. I posted.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (5 children)

As a lurker I mostly just vote. But gotta post every once in a while to add to active users stat!

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No worries, Lemmy is alive. Lemmy and Fediverse in general is better to grow organically.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There's also people that create multiple accounts in different instances and end up using just one.

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[–] Historical_General 48 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Some people might have made multiple accounts and chosen one possibly?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Lemmy needs a middle logical layer to really take off. If a local server moderats it as such, the default view for say /c/technology shouldn't be slit across a dozen instances. Instead it should be merged into one view.

Without it you have a bunch of largely stagnant communities.

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[–] STRIKINGdebate2 46 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For some the novelty of lemmy dropped pretty quickly. Most reddit users which make up a huge chunk of lemmy users would go days if not, weeks without commenting or posting. You kinda have to factor in that a lot of people are lemmy lurkers that will comment or post once they find something that interests them.

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[–] Dramachad 43 points 1 year ago (3 children)

can't maintain 90% uptime

why are we losing users?

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I don't understand why people have expectations from a young platform like it's supposed to be the new reddit/facebook all of a sudden. I lived through the digg->reddit move and believe me, it was worse than what we see on lemmy sometimes. Let it grow and it will have a chance. Offer help when you think some communities aren't correctly moderated or when you think you have better ideas. People usually will try to help (not all the time).

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[–] sturmblast 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm sticking with it for now. Reddit can piss off. The Spez shit was just the last straw for me after a lot of other disappointing shit in recent times.

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[–] TheMadnessKing 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is expected that there are corrections in numbers after a huge spike. The bigger goal will be to sustain this community.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Reddit is going to keep trying dumb methods to monetize or annoy their user base. Digg did a similar thing. The people will slowly get more and more annoyed and the content here will increase. It’s just a waiting game and federated services are the future.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dude I was away on vacation chill. :-)

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[–] merthyr1831 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

New users join, some leave, but the ones who stay are active. Lemmy feels very alive and that's what matters.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For the last month and a half, I have not used reddit at all. Lemmy has most of the communities that I was a part of.

But I get that, some niche subreddits still don't have communities here on lemmy. A few of my friends, stopped using lemmy because it didn't have the subs they were active in.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sites like reddit, Instagram, and twitter make the cognitive effort to go from signing up to using the app as low as possible. The users' experience is considered from before they even have an account. They make sure you don't ever see a blank page or feel like you're battling the app to find content.

Lemmy actively puts roadblocks in the way. Server choices, the hoops you need to jump though for server memberships, and highly fragmented communities all but ensure that people will face issues when signing up.

Sadly, a lot of users here feel that because they had to overcome them, so should everyone else. Until that changes then the self-defeating cycle will continue.

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[–] owatnext 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My biggest issue is that at least two out of three times I go to browse/post/comment on lemmy.world, the server is down. I have no clue the actual up time, maybe I am just unlucky. But I am considering migrating my main account to another server.

My alt's server has never experienced this much issue. Hopefully the devs add a migrate function.

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[–] LemmyWinks666 28 points 1 year ago

It'll hit equilibrium eventually. Not like this is something unusual for a platform that's making the rounds as the new and exciting thing.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Might as well post here as my first one. Hi, Lemmy. :)

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[–] Herdat 26 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Because you like numbers i reply. Now it's going up by one active user

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[–] admirdee 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Joined few days ago after sync released, thou I'm boost user at reddit before I will stay here no matter what. I'm already done with reddit and their trash app.. Can't wait boost for lemmy to release.

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[–] vidumec 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm just gonna leave this post here, for statistics.

Joined Lemmy today and find it kinda refreshing and reminding me of the old days when web was small yet varied.

Also really dig the web interface, especially the vaporwave-light theme :D

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