10mo ago

Lemmy Active Users looking good

Source: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

256 comments

I assume this latest bump is due to lemmy.world updating and now counting lurkers when assessing active users.
- Its still only voters, lurkers that dont do any actions arent counted
  
  Don't forget that Reddit was made up of 90% lurkers, and less than 1% of active posters, the rest would comment but rarely post themselves. These numbers are great if we keep those statistics in mind
  
  I think of a lurker as someone who doesn't post - I guess your definition is someone who doesn't interact at all (besides making an account and subscribing, I assume). But yes, I mean users who only vote are now counted (it's not using views afaik).
- Probably a lot more to do with people being pissed about reddit going public and selling their data to ai companies for profits.
  
  I'd like to think that too but I still go to Reddit and browsed a lot of those threads. In almost all of them, people were making the claim that there was nowhere to go, with maybe the occasional person chiming in to name-drop Lemmy, followed by a couple more comments from people bad-mouthing it.
  People are definitely mad at Reddit but there does seem to still be this overall sense that Lenny is not good enough yet
- Pretty sure it's the jean/bean memes

My internet experience has been slower since switching to Mastodon and Lemmy/Kbin. And it's so nice. The things I see are more interesting. The conversations are usually more well thought out. And lowest common denominator dopamine content isn't being driven into my eyeballs by Algorithms. I've legitimately been happier since the Reddit API debacle.
Long live the Old Internet.
- Seriously, it feels like 1999 internet. And I'm loving it!
  
  Now give us EverQuest for that proper 1999 experience!
  
  Seriously, it feels like 1999 internet. And I'm loving it!
  56K modem handshake sound intensifies
- ^^^^^

I come after the great reddit API purge. Haven't looked back and I'm happy for it.
I've gotten part of my life back as a result.
- Me as well. I occasionally peak back to some niche subreddits, but don't contribute anymore. I'm hoping some pop up here over time.
  
  What are some you'd like to see?
- It's surprising the psychological difference of "net seventeen people think you're an asshole" vs "twenty people think you're an asshole, but three people get you".
  
  FYI, a browser plugin called Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) exposed the vote breakdown on Reddit as well, although like all scores on reddit, it was fuzzed to confound cheaters.
  
  That's when the mods hit you with their downvote button

Lemmy is probably the best fedidiverse project so far and it's not even close
- just wish the default ui was better (i currently use photon)
  
  I think the default UI is fine but the good thing is that neither of us are forced to use any UI - we are free to have third party apps and stuff like that :)
  
  I'm using Alexandrite, find it good
  
  It's about as good as old reddit!? Isn't that what people want? A website straight out of the early 2000s.😁
  EDIT: probably cheaper to host for sure.
  
  I too use Photon when on PC. However I do believe the majority of users here liked the old reddit style of things maybe. Might be why the default look of lemmy looks like it does? I'm only guessing here though!

Super, super impressive.
Most web apps, especially social media - get that peak and then have this huge falloff (see Threads for a particularly grisly example). Lemmy seems really good at keeping its user base.
It reminds me that I need to contribute posts more often myself. I’m think the only reason I ever go back to reddit is that it has some specialized subs we just don’t have here yet. But sometimes you have to start posting to an audience of 0 to get things going.
- the only reason I ever go back to reddit is that it has some specialized subs we just don’t have here yet. But sometimes you have to start posting to an audience of 0 to get things going.
  Same. I've had some success with starting or reviving communities just by posting and commenting regularly, interspersed with a few cross-posts to related communities. Be the change you want to see in the world, and I hope more users will come!
  
  I feel like a big hurdle is the way you have to type out cross posts. There was just something elegant about Reddits solution: /r/subreddit.
- I have not been paying attention to threads and so I gave it a quick google. It seems that threads is doing just fine, with 130 million monthly users now.
  
  Where should I be looking for the grisly stats?
  
  I’m pretty sure that 130 million monthly users was the absolute peak, which lasted for all of about 5 days.
  See:
  https://www.similarweb.com/amp/blog/insights/social-media-news/threads-first-month/

I definitely really like the quality of discussion on Lemmy, it makes me feel like it's actually worthwhile to comment and discuss things again. It feels like how it felt when I started using reddit back in 2012 or so.
- Yep. Been saying for a while that it feels like old Reddit.
  I wonder if it’s a nerd-level thing. Reddit devolved as it turned into another social media outlet instead of a niche internet techie place.
  
  It's also a volume thing. By the time I reach a reddit comment thread what I wanted to say has already been said, and if I say it again my comment will drown in a sea of heavily upvoted comments. On lemmy you can be several days late to the party and still get both upvotes and responses.
- I like the lack of in-jokes, one-liners and endless popculture references.
  
  It's only a matter of time...
  The beans are coming.

I remember people whining that lemmy is on its decline already. We are back and here to stay
(Edit typo)
- I don't think that initial peak was ever "real" anyway. I think it was due to people creating multiple accounts on different instances (or maybe even claiming multiple usernames on the same instance) before settling down with the one account they were actually going to consistently use.
  
  Yeah that's me. I signed up for and used beehaw for a month before switching to my current lemmy.ca. My old account would definitely be counted the same way as someone who signed up, got bored and left
  
  There are definitely people that bounced off Lemmy for whatever reason. No idea how many though, I myself had 4 accounts on various instances before I settled on this one.
  
  Definitely at least part of it was people who came to try it out and left (back to Reddit or wherever).
  And your case too. I also did it. But we'd be 100% speculating if either of us guessed which was more common and how much.
- Don't wanna do the 'ackshually' thing but it's a little confusing so, I think you meant whining?
  
  Thanks. I edited it because I sea it's confusing (different from the typo in this comment)

I just joined today! So far really enjoying it.
- I just came back today! Never did anything before but just subscribed to like 100 sublemmies? Is that the right word lmao?
  
  100 sublemmies? Is that the right word lmao?
  no it isn't, they're called communities
  
  Sublemmies, I like it
  
  Welcome back!
- Welcome!
  
  Thanks for the warm welcome!
- reddit may have better subs, but here it's 99% less bots and shills
  
  I love it! So much comfy vibes here
- Welcome!

- I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE! god dam it i was supposed to be the cool one with this gif... nicely done...

I've heard about Lemmy for a while, and I just joined after getting permanently banned for "threatening violence" after posting "nice sub here" in a new subreddit. I wish I were joking, but it personally doesn't surprise me that much when considering my past experiences. The appeal was denied.
Reddit's most dedicated and longstanding users can only tolerate so many nonsensical and frivolous permanent account bans over the years before they flock to that beautiful forest sprouting up across the river. Lemmy should continue to grow because people like me intend to be here for the life of it.
My last few months on Reddit were spent tracking bot accounts, and taking note of suspicious patterns of certain subreddits refusing to take action against blatant propaganda bots. I'm glad to be past that, at least for now, and I wish the users I'm leaving behind luck. Things were nuts.
- Just be aware Lemmy has its own share of issues and extremist views. It's not as simple as Reddit is evil and Lemmy is good, both have their pros and cons at end of day and realistically they both probably have a role to play for people.
  
  It is as simple as the fact that being banned from a Lemmy instance does not shutdown access to all of Lemmy’s communities like it does with Reddit.
  This allows actual, messy, contextualized moderation to happen within communities according to the values of those communities without creating broader distortions in a global moderation policy and enforcement scheme.
  In other words there are unfortunately transphobic communities on Reddit and Lemmy, but the difference is there are also (many) communities on Lemmy that if you start spouting transphobic bullshit a moderator will unceremoniously and fairly quickly shut you down without a bunch of techbro handwringing about censorship or general apathy towards violence against trans people.
  This aspect does in fact make Lemmy clearly better than Reddit on the whole, because this is a fundamental issue to social networks and communities.
- Welcome aboard the lemmy train!
- Lmao, I was banned on reddit for reporting something somebody else wrote. Banned for abuse of the report system. Just want to repeat, it was a full reddit ban, not a subreddit ban.
  I had submitted a total of 5 reports over the life of the account. The first 3 were acted on by the admins (clear calls to violence/racism) and 2 that passed admin review.
  The first report I submitted on r/worldnews led to me being banned from reddit.
- getting permanently banned for “threatening violence” after posting “nice sub here” in a new subreddit
  A bot likely checked what other subreddits you were subscribed to and found one deemed not acceptable.
- Yeah I got permabanned too.
  I still post there occasionally. I made 4 new Reddit accounts from behind 7 proxies, but they all got banned due to browser fingerprinting. But I wised up and now the 5th one's still not banned even though I access it from my home IP. I really try my best not to give such a hostile company more content, but there's still a few local subs and specific content that isn't big enough yet on Lemmy.
- Yeah, I still browse reddit from time to time (mostly when lemme feed is dried up or I'm at my computer. I don't browse it for hours like I used to, though. And I haven't made a comment that wasn't on r/lfg for months.
  Most of my feed is about Canada, makes sense, I live there. But a vast majority of it is right wing propaganda. Anti immigration, pro PeePee, anti Trudeau, etc. Every week a new right wing subreddit crops up.

AFAIK, V0.19 adds anyone that votes to MAU instead of just commenters and posters, so any server thats converted is reporting better #s. With Lemmy.world now on 0.19, expect this to be even sharper.
- adds anyone that votes to MAU instead of just commenters and posters
  That seems fair. They're interacting with Lemmy, so they're using Lemmy, and should be counted.
- The fediverse is growth hacking, nice.
- What is MAU?
  
  Monthly Active Users
  
  What is MAU?
  This is a wrong answer, but this song is what I always think of when I see 'MAU'.

Oh my God what terrible thing to Reddit happened in February
- The IPO announcement w/ shares being offered to Reddit users. Also, the deal with AI training off of user data without consent. Hard to keep track these days lol.
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if we see another boom in active users and new accounts due to that. Just depends on how much this pushes users who were already annoyed over api changes over the edge.
- Reddit can't help but treat their mods and user base like absolute shit. So while it may not be much, there will be a slow and steady drip of users over time.
  
  It seems more like there are infusions into Lemmy when Reddit makes some kind of change, and there's a slow drip out of Lemmy
- If you don't know, Reddit updated their interface in February and made it worse by doing so. People who tolerated the older "new" interface can find a way to use that (at new.reddit) while the older interface is still there too (old.reddit).
  Still, it seems like Reddit keeps making changes to drive away their older user base which hypothetically is drawing in new users (otherwise it seems a bit silly for them to be doing those changes).

That's it? Wow, a lot fewer people were upset about the loss of 3rd party apps than I thought. We need to add at least 3 more zeroes to that number if this place stands a chance at taking down reddit.
- Does it need to?
  
  I… kinda like lemmy the way it is I guess? Sure, I wish some niche-communities were a bit more active (looking at you, /c/malefashionadvice). But then again on Lemmy I actually feel motivated to contribute actively. Because I know my content won’t be monetized by some corporate behemoth. So maybe this is just fine the way it is?
- I don't give two shits about taking down reddit. I just want somewhere else to go, and Lemmy works for that.
- Every once in a while I check up on what reddit looks like now.
  I find the same or similar topics posted, with 600 comments instead of 30, and 570 of those 600 are just whatever's the first thing that pops into everyone's mind after reading the post title.
  I like it better here.
  
  Both sides have their benefits, and it's a shame there is no good best-of-both-worlds. I get where you're coming from, I never felt the urge to participate on Reddit because it was so often just shouting into the void and getting buried in hundreds of one-word replies and in-jokes and memes. Here I feel seen, and often feel like my contribution (although mostly just small comments) makes an impact.
  At the same time, a huge critical mass of a userbase is completely necessary for niche communities to survive. Maybe not as overwhelmingly massive as Reddit's, but magnitudes larger than Lemmy has right now. Lemmy has a very distinct userbase slant and if you're in the target audience (tech, FOSS, Linux etc) you're probably great here. But even common interests like sports struggle for traction, and true niche stuff has an extremely tough time.
- It doesn't need to take down reddit. I'd like to see Lemmy at 1 million active users though. Just need enough critical mass to be able to branch into more smaller sublemmys which draws in the fans of those subs specifically and creates better curated content.
  
  Yeah, 1 million would be about the right size for a better active community. 500k would probably do wonders too.
  
  at 1 million active users though. Just need enough critical mass to be able to branch into more smaller sublemmys which draws in the fans of those subs specifically
  I was responding kind of someone else as well, but where are these numbers coming from?
  Is it truly 1 million? Or maybe 500k? Or maybe 2 million?
  People seem to be using numbers so arbitrarily.
- Oh, many more were upset - just too lazy to inconvenience themselves with switching platforms.
  
  I’d say this is only half of the answer.
  After browsing Lemmy for a while, you get the sense that the average user here is the type that gets upset about a social media company making changes to an API. That is a very specific type of person and you can see it in the comments.
  I’d guess people get turned off by that type of person and leave.
  I come here once Reddit and hacker news content is old. This isn’t a place I’d recommend to anyone, unfortunately. There are extremely strong biases all over and deep echo chambers. Users here seem like the perpetually online type. Most perspectives I’ve seen have been heavily influenced by online discourse rather than reality.
  I visit this site less and less due to the user base.
- If this place ends up with 70 million users, I won't be one of them. Lemmy isn't a for-profit company. It doesn't need growth for the sake of growth.
  Besides, lemmy growth isn't a measure of Reddit shrinkage. Lots of people are just quitting without a replacement.
  
  Imagine hosting an instance if Lemmy had that many users. I can imagine it being a full time job.
  
  Agree to disagree. I miss having niche communities, and the only way to get them is with a large user base.
- I don't want Lemmy to go after Reddit. I want it to be its own thing.
  With that being said, more users would mean having some living communities. Some major communities on lemmy.world like videos are hilariously empty, probably less so than small, local subreddits.
- Slow but steady growth is better imo, especially since Lemmy's moderation tools are still not that good and instance admins often get overwhelmed maintaining their own instances. Some instance admins got frustrated so much, they decided to create a new lemmy backend: https://github.com/sublinks/sublinks-api
- I like the idea of a slow increase over time. I remember Reddit did that one chatroom experiment where you started out small. And then merged with larger and larger rooms. Small rooms had at least a chance to hang and chat and the larger rooms turned into twitch chat spam. To a degree maybe the same could be said for comments, on Reddit now I still see thousands of redundant replies to subjects whereas here it's definitely still fresh if not shorter chains.
  Though in terms of niche topics it may definitely need more traffic somehow. I think reddit benefits a lot from its search indexing and if Lemmy ever began to appear in search traffic more like forums did in early Google I could see that improving.
- Old reddit isn't dead yet
- Are you trying to get the bots to migrate too?

Lemmy.world updated to 0.19.3, which count anyone who voted(lurker), as an active user, hence the bump in user. The same bump can be seen on january, where a lot instance started to updated to the latest version.
- Well now I'm not a lurker... so uh... there...lol
  
  I am a voter

I really like it here. Feels homey and not toxic. And I post a lot lol.
- Thanks for your efforts keeping the Poetry comm alive! I know I mainly lurk there but I appreciate your posts!
  
  I'm glad to hear! I don't think everyone loves my tastes in poetry every day but I hope at least it makes people think.
- There's a few weirdos, but overall much better than reddit. And blocking is your friend.
  
  Really like being able to block the porn instances too. I don't care if people want porn but I don't like randomly running across it, I personally don't care for it.

I'm in this picture!
- And I like it

I really like lemmy as a platform. The only thing I miss is better search options.
Someone knows a efficient way to search for a topic using lemmy or some search engine? Some trick or something?
The fact that topics are dispersed in many instances makes kind of hard to try to find a post where someone may be talking about the topic you need.
- Kagi has built support for it iirc.
- Low-skill option would be backfilling entire lemmy on mastodon and using elasticsearch.
  
  Lol thats an interesting idea
- Hey have you tried discord? Me and all the communities I am part of have moved to it!
  edit I should I have put /s in my comment, I mistakenly thought that was obvious but I really shouldn't have thought that I guess lol
  
  Not gonna down vote you like others but discord is ass for medium to large communities imo.

Great news. it's also nice to see they are more accurately counting active users with the latest update. I still think Lemmy will surpast a million active users with in a year or two.

invest .. invest now!
- Watching this graph more often than that of Bitcoin

That would be me on Lemmy as well.
Happy to be here!

As someone who mostly lurking back in reddit, lemmy sort of forces me to engage (give back) in community. While at first I felt weird, it grow on me to contribute for discussion and hopefully I can start my own post in a community lol.
- My hope is to have more small communities migrate here. Best part of Reddit was the small fan/enthusiast communities. Lemmy would be a good home for those 🤞

The post/comment propaganda seems to have worked as well. Every post is way more active nowadays

I like Mastodon even more, because there are more and more serious accounts with identity behind. Here more troll talk.
- I don't like following people I like to follow topics
  
  I like following you.
- It's what I'm here for
- I see a lot of people posting and no one engaging with each other there. Honestly what's the point if no one talks to each other.
  
  Guess it just depends but I see a lot of people interacting on certain topics and a lot of posts I make get a good amount of activity. I get way more interaction on my posts than I had on Twitter for instance.
- I want to like mastodon but I don't want to do the leg work of finding accounts. I like the algorithm to some extent, I want help to find things.
  I also have trouble deciding how to support the post. Liking doesn't do anything and tooting or whatever puts it on my page. I don't feel part of the community boosting topics I like.
  I like voting things up and down.
  Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I try and get instantly bored because I have to hunt for everything. I really tried.
  
  For me it's just being able to have longer discussion. I dunno, maybe I can do that on Mastodon but it feels to quick for me. I've always liked forum posting, so this suits me better

Doing my part!

Hopefully all the communities I follow on Reddit move here so I don't have to use that site.
- There might be a significant number of users here waiting for everyone else to switch over to lemmy. If you start a niche community, it's a little easier for someone else to be like "It's kind of empty, but it exists on lemmy too." What you need is a critical mass of people. It usually takes time and effort to reach that, and someone must be first.
  
  I think the problem is that theres a lot of niche communities created for an exodus from Reddit that didnt really happen.
  If you search for a certain community and find that yeah it exists but nobody has posted there in 6 months...
  
  !cranetrainexcavators@lemmy.world baby. Does reddit have that? No. Didn't think so! ;)

Wanna get more ppl on Lemmy?
Just show them the dope apps like sync. The web interface low key sucked at the start and almost drove me away.
- Yeah the webUI is horrible. Jerboah is the best FOSS app
- You can show the also the other UIs for the web. Photon is quite decent, the default is not very attractive as you say.
- i use the photon front end

I know that everytime I look in the mirror
- Nice.
  
  Another good looking comment from a total stud

Very Nice! - Borat

I will say unlike Reddit I find the best experience on here tends to be sorting posts by newest comments so that way discussion pushes things to the front of my page. There's still too little content for sorting things by Top in various different communities to be worth the time. I suppose this turns it into more of an old-school forum homepage in a way.
- The top sorts kind of suck, because active posts fall off them to fast on the short end, and posts are dead by the time the hit top day or longer.
  
  My flow starts the day with Active > Hot > 6 hour > 1 Hour
  Midday checks Active > 6 > New
  Evening checks Hot & 1

Lets be fair, Steve Huffman did most of the work to make Lemmy so popular.
Shout out to the old r/jailbait mod for making in happen!

I think Lemmy is a good foothold for activitypub. Reddit has been going to shit for some time and their userbase is tech savvy enough to actually migrate to something like Lemmy in significant enough numbers for it to matter.
I can only hope it continues to grow like this

Reddit making all third party apps a PAID service after releasing the paid API, and its first party app being total AD oriented instead of user orientef sure helped!
- 100%. Reddit killed the vibe for the people that appreciate it the most.

The network effect is compounded by all the other applications that interop with Lemmy, ActivityPub apps sure but more so KBin and MBin and others that provide a similar service to Lemmy.

I'm fairly sure that the admins of lemmy.world said that we could expect a big spike in active users after the upgrade to 1.19 due to a change in how active users are calculated. I can't seem to find the post now, though.
- They did. I believe comments now count as activity where only posts did before?
  
  Ah ok. This is a very sensible change. I never post, but I interact probably once a month or so.
  
  Up/downvotes now count as well, AFAIK.

Part of it could be that people post less during the holidays and there is a significant portion of people who browse sites like reddit/Lemmy during their downtime at work.

How many are bots
- Barely any since fedidb excludes botted instances
  The increase here though is cause lemmy.world upgraded to 0.19 and 0.19 includes voters as active users
- Beep boop
  
  Good Bot.
- Everyone except you is a bot.
  I'm not even sure about you tbh.
  
  User name checks out 😄
- If you were in reality a bot, are you confident that you would know?
  
  "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"

Definitely.
For a daily view: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

.ml needs to start handing out more petty bans to tamp down the enthusiasm again.

As long there is content, I'll be here. Think same goes for others.

Does Lemmy need to grow for some reason? Sometimes I swear I can feel the Reddit community toxicity seeping in and its really disappointing. Honestly, for me personally if Lemmy continued on exactly as it is today, I'd be perfectly content.
That said, if there are benefits to growth beyond the wide scope of mass adoption fucking over the proprietary social medias I'm all ears.
- Lemmy doesn't have the niche communities that Reddit did, and those come with a larger user base.
  Lemmy has plenty of memes, politics, Linux, and anime, but there are many small communities which do not (yet) have active equivalents here.
  Here are a few of my own examples, but everyone will have their own unique list: r/wheresthebeef, r/Penderwicks, r/twistypuzzles, r/Cubers, r/fusion, r/legoRockets, r/HarryPotteronHBO, r/anarchycubing, r/deextinction, r/cubinggore.
  I would welcome more users if it means more niche communities.
- I understand what are you saying but forget about overall size of the community for a second, what lemmy would really benefit from is more niche subreddits with active users. That will only come from more people on lemmy and that is the real reason to desire lemmy growth besides a basic wish for other people to not be stuck in a shitty corporate silo.
- There's still a ton of niche subreddits that there's no viable replacement for here.
- Well it's not really just about making you happy, the project is about displacing corporate controlled media so that community projects and social movements can flourish allowing us up create a better world for all.
  I myself have very elitist and isolationist tendencies but I think it's important to set them aside somewhat for the common good.
- I'd like some niche communities to be more active, and realistically speaking that's only going to happen with a bigger userbase.
- We can always crawl further in to hide from scary normal people, but the normal people need this type of platform too. We can just subscribe to our nerdy communities and stop browsing all or everything once there is too much stuff to browse that way anyway.
- Isn't that good enough?

My usage dropped for a while, but it’s the only ‘social media’ that doesn’t actively leave me feeling worse about the platform and the world after using it.

Woo!

I’m doing my part!

Trainspotting.

What's up with the low in December?
- Over time people from that initial spike realized that the platform isn't what they expected/liked, some likely went back to their previous platform but i am going to be optimistic and say they moved to mastodon.
  The climb we see now is fresh users that heard of lemmy and are now checking it out.
  //This is how i read this graph, other interpretation may be possible, you can't really know for certain without more data.
  
  Traffic peaked at the reddit migration, after that, people either left or became mostly lurkers, and since lemmy versions before 0.19 didn't count votes as activity most users were not included in the graph.
  Now that instances are upgrading to 0.19 there's an increase of activity.
- 0.19 broke federation for quite a lot of people for the majority of December, probably has something to do with it.
  I've been an almost daily Lemming since last summer but when nothing I posted was making it off my server for about three weeks there wasn't much point!

Hell yeah! We're here, ~~we're queer,~~ get used to it!

The site is great.

According to: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=270 the monthly active users are still in decline... even if we take into account the new way of counting active users, the previous bump comes from v0.19 being added to other servers

I wish posters+commenters were in one color and lurkers in another

Speculation on this graph alone, I would say that students being off/people avoiding family gave the bump in December. And I'd expect another bump in May/June as Summer starts

Well, I don't actually exist. So just go ahead and subtract one

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