1y ago

Daily Lemmy comments up from ~7m to ~11m following the launch of Sync?

Unless anyone knows another reason for this impressive increase in comments? Seems to roughly coincide with Sync launching. If thats the case, just goes to show the importance of good third party apps.

Source: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

EDIT: Looks like a confusingly labeled graph and I think this is total comments. I have no idea why that spike could exist though.

300 comments

I'm gonna blame it on all the sync haters just commenting about how sync sucks and why FOSS is so much better.
- So, should we thank them?
- I used Sync for Reddit for about 10 years but with the switch to the Fediverse I've adopted more of a FOSS mindset.
  My initial reaction was vitriolic for no other reason than being disappointed due to my own expectations. I'm sure it's still a great app and I still absolutely appreciate and respect lj; it's just not for me anymore. But that doesn't give me the right to force my opinion on others.
  Ultimately I'm just happy we're growing and I believe that's what we should be focussing on.
- What do you mean there are advertisements in my free app?
- lol. 3m comments, sync users and sync haters. Probably right.
- Still better to have all the discourse on Lemmy instead of Reddit :).
- I just don't get the love for Sync. It was the best reddit app on Android like 10 years ago, but so many other apps surpassed it a while ago. Boost was smoother and had more options. As for iOS, Alien Blue and then Apollo were much better.
  With lemmy, you've got great apps like memmy and Thunder that are imo better than Sync.
  So you're dealing with ads (or paying for closed source software) just to use a worse product that kinda goes against the FOSS philosophy Lemmy is built on.
  
  Hey, you're entitled to your opinion. I think it's fair to say that most people here in the official sync community are going to disagree with you about it being a bad app. As for the FOSS philosophy, I genuinely don't give a fuck. Cool that there are lots of FOSS alternatives but I like LJ and sync and have no issues supporting him. Nice that there are lots of options for different people.
  
  Completely agree, Thunder is SO much better and completely ad free.

Top 6 app behind X (still can't get used to that stupid name) and before Facebook lite... not bad
- Just call it Twitter like everyone else lol.
  A. It's more convenient and clear. B. It will probably piss off Musk.
  
  Now B is a cause I can get behind...
  
  I like the "corporations don't get to have deadnames" take
- It's currently #10 in the Google Play store, under the "social" category. (First is TikTok.)
  
  Depends on your region. I'm in Canada and it's 6th here.
  
  The odd thing is, their screenshot is on the play store as well, you can see the logo next to installed apps. However, when I check on my phone, it matches yours.
  
  It doesn't even show up in that list for me. Reddit shows up after top 50. I guess the list is made based on your geographic location as well.
- And nary a hint of the Official Reddit app in that screenshot. What could've possibly happened??? Ya just hate to see it, or not see it I guess
- Wow that's impressive.

Not surprising. Sync has made Lemmy a near-seamless change for me.
- Sync was Reddit for me. So when Reddit decided to end all 3rd party apps, it was also the end of Reddit for me. Now with Sync for Lemmy it feels like I can pick off exactly where I left off and it feels great. Maybe even slightly better, because it feels like more people are interested in the comments you write and more of them interact with you.
  
  Same except for Apollo on iOS.
  Glad to be here. Everything feels less shill-y and spammy. No more 500 of the same shitty comments in every thread
  Username checks out
  This deserves more upvotes
  "This"
  Came here to say this
  Made an account just to say I agree
  Lost it at ______
  Sigh unzips
  
  Agreed wholeheartedly.
  And like someone posted about we're not constantly policing ourselves with /s because the folks here are adults. On reddit it had gotten so vitriolic I didn't post often because someone was going to jump you for having a differing opinion or to express their faux outrage that you liked cheese on broccoli or whatever.
  
  I just made an account to reply to this lol. I finally bit the bullet and started using Lemmy a few days ago, the community here is of course much smaller than reddit but I would describe the comments here as being like the 1 in 10 comments on reddit that actually made me want to keep using the site. You don't see as many one word throw away pun comments here, which I'm not necessarily against but it gets very grating over time.
  I just downloaded relay yesterday, I was always a RIF user but using relay in "sure drawer" mode is a pretty similar experience. Everyone here seems very chill and nice
  
  This is my experience as well. I haven't found lemmy to be difficult to navigate on my computer, but on my phone it was a bit messy - but with sync back everything is as it was for me.
  
  Same, long time SyncPro user here (10 years), I stopped using reddit in June, I spent all my July on lemmy with PWA, Jerboa, Connect, etc, there was so much problems in the beginning with crash, network errors, etc. it was a jungle, dozens of new instances per day, etc. It is all stable now, I used Jerboa the most. First day Sync for Lemmy was out I installed it, it was like I never left the old site, same layout, colours, functionalities, gesture, etc. Sync for Lemmy is a saviour for sure. I didn't want the subscribe, I bought the noads version the minute it was out.
- Yep. It's like reddit never shat the bed and just spontaneously split into dozens of smaller sites.
- Yeah, this.
  I tried a bunch of apps when I moved over to Lemmy. Some were really good however Sync just felt like home. Instantly back to normal from a user experience perspective.

3.9 million of those comments are people complaining about the price or that it's not FOSS.
- Think a fair few comments on it's price is warranted considering it's 25 USD (where historically sync for reddit was significantly cheaper)
  
  I mean you don't have to pay for Ultra. Sync is mostly free. It's just a few extra features that are premium, so what are you all complaining about.
  
  No, no, no. You're not allowed to complain about a price hike from £2 to £19 even though the apps are basically the same in UX and concept and LJ was able to push out a semi functional beta in a matter of weeks. Because complaining about it makes you a 'baby' apparently and everyone should be willing to part with £19 without blinking, to buy an app to use a service that has barely gotten off the ground and nobody knows will be around in a year at this point. I understand people are excited, and people want to support LJ (I have, loads, over the years) but this community doesn't seem to even want a proper discourse about this and prefers to resort to shitty insults. Not sure that's the kind of community I can see myself growing into, personally. To me, that asking price is insanely greedy and a bit delusional considering there are other strong alternatives already popping up. I've been loyal to Sync for 10 years I think, but times are tough money is tight, and nobody knows if Lemmy is going to succeed yet. We need big numbers on this platform and keeping costs down would surely aid in that effort. But he must have done his calculations so I respect his decision. If he doesn't revert I'll have to look at the alternatives.

Its almost like having good third party apps can benefit a community! Who would have ever seen this coming! I sure didnt!
- +1 from Infinity

Yeah, but 2 million of those comments where "Yay, Sync!" and the other 2 million were "REEE, Sync!"
- 5 were compliments on cute pets.
  
  But were they cute?
- Yeah lot of talking about using sync vs foss. I think that giving people more options is good for lemmy as a whole at the end of the day.

Lemmy has become my main social media app already. Mastodon is painful to use for me. I just don't like the Twitter format, and the lack of algo is unbearable.
- Lol yeah I agree with Mastodon. I checked it out and it's like...yep looks like Twitter, and I fucking hate Twitter, just feels like some weird celebrity and brand worship platform. The focus on Lemmy/Reddit at least is the content, and nobody really cares who posted or created it for the most part. Everyone is equal and content speaks for itself, it's a far nicer concept to me.
  
  Completely agree, I hate how it's user worship centric like that.
- This is me. I don't know why I thought Mastodon would click for me when Twitter never did. I can't bring myself to yell into the void. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, idk. Much happier here.
  
  Yeah definitely a different kind of social media. I come on here to browse the trending content and see what other people are saying about it. It's content focused, rather then Mastodon where it's focused on a person's single post and gets easily buried among low effort posts.
  
  I feel the same, I stopped using Twitter in 2010 when I realized I was neither funny nor popular and nobody cared about what I had for breakfast or how far I ran. Gave mastadon a try recently because I am interested in Fediverse but the feeling is same
- Yeah honestly completely the same here, I had no clue how to actually find anything, and I far prefer engaging with communities, not people
  And Mastodon has no top sorting or anything, is it was kinda useless to me
  
  Never enjoyed the twitter style. But following hashtags and not people, made the content much more interesting atleast.
  From the website (not the app) search a hashtag, select it and click follow.
- Even I kinda find it very hard to find good content on Mastodon.
  It's just a plain timeline which I'm not sure I like atm.

Sync definitely made me a regular on Lemmy
- Same. And I started commenting in Sync since I kept getting errors when trying it in Jerboa.
  
  It doesn't work on Sync either. We don't see your comments.

I still don't know how this all works, but I'll just keep blindly using it because I like Sync, and Laurence deserves our support.
- You'll catch on. It's just like using Reddit, except each subreddit includes a web address in the name. Other than that, it's mostly the same.

I actually switched to sync too. But still think the prices are nuts and they need to come down for me to pay for it.
- Would love to support the developer but definitely not at those prices. I block ads anyway, so I never see any.
  
  Remember the instance owner too if you can :)
  
  How to block ads on sync?
- I'm going back and forth still between Connect and Sync. Two reasons: can't post from Sync yet and 2) lots of failed to load image bugs in Sync (which oddly enough, preview works fine for those images that failed to load).
  
  The second one might be related to lemmy.world being dosed. I don't get any issues (anymore) on feddit.de
  
  No issues for me on my instance. Probably Lemmy.world rate limiting or something.
- Waiting for the one time payment to get rid of ads. Paid it on reddit, will (probably) pay it on lemmy.
  
  Wdym? There's currently two one time payments. Ultra lifetime removes ads and, shockingly, "Remove ads" also removes ads
  
  It already exists. It's $20.

it's people arguing about whether or not they use sync
.. honestly tho I wouldn't be surprised, I'm using it a lot more now 🤷‍♂️

Well the sole reason now my account exists and has so many replies is coz of sync.

I would suspect it is another burst of Reddit users. I've just joined from Reddit because the third party app I used there (RiF) has stopped working this week. I can't have been the only one whose app had zombied along for a month, died and then left me googling for Reddit alternatives.
- I really do wish RIF dev would make a lemmy app version. I absolutely loved that app for over a decade.
  
  Likewise. When RIF died, so did my reddit habit. Lemmy has filled the void nicely, and better every day
- It was the same for me
- yeah I came here because RIF finally stopped working
- Boost still works for me (I've created a subreddit to moderate)
- you can make sync look A LOT like RIF. Now for Reddit may be good for you but fully switching to lemmy is better
- All third party apps went offline AFAIK.
- Welcome!

Imagine when the dev adds the ability to post from the app
- It still puzzles me why it was not added at release.
  It is one of the most basic features for a social media app.
  
  Because building features takes time, and sync is useful in it's current state. Why not release it?
  
  It's a core capability, but it's a lot of work due to all the different types of thing you can post.
  An app that can read posts and write comments is still useful without submitting posts, but an app that can submit posts but not read them is pretty useless. So, when you're making stuff you do reading posts first, then you do writing comments, then you do submitting posts. That makes sense, right?
  Let's say it takes a few weeks to do each, and you've got to the stage where you've done reading and comments, but not submitting. That's useful already! You're not done, but what you've got is still useful for people and people want it, so why not release it at that point? Then carry on working and release the remaining features after.
  Releasing as early as you can is good for everyone - the developer starts getting income for the work they're doing, they learn about bugs and issues earlier in the development process and we get to start using it sooner. For me Sync without submitting is still better than the other apps, so I want to use it.
  
  I hop over into Jerboa to make posts, can imagine the other sync users have probably been getting by using whatever app they were using before.
  It's probably a good thing though IMO, having a bunch of redditors storming in and making new threads about Sync could take over /all more than it has already
  
  Not important. The amount of comments:posts is probably >10:1
  So having comments being 10x as important than a post is kinda self explanatory.
  But the sync app is still in beta so for 1.0 it will probably be done.

I'm on lemmy significantly more since the sync launch. Both jerboa and liftoff were pretty half baked in comparison... Really hoping more people from Reddit will join
- Same boat as you, used to encounter multiple bugs and crashes with Jerboa... Since switching to Sync I haven't encountered a single crash.
  I really like how it auto translates links to comments on other instances and has lots of other small QoL features that show the dev really cares about the app.
  Other users who are just choosing apps by how the UI looks and Lemmy's stock features have missed a lot of the things that make Sync stand out 🤷‍♂️ I've customised mine to resemble Infinity (the app I used for reddit) and I'm pretty damn satisfied rn with the gestures, performance and much longer battery life when browsing.
- I just got here 2 days ago because of Sync. More will come.

Boost for reddit is also releasing soon, expect this chart to blow up once again.
- Yep can't wait! Has the dev given any ETA?
  
  No, only "soon": https://lemmy.world/comment/1988014

I'm using something called connect. I'm not sure why I picked this one but it works quite well. Is sync so much better? The hype around it is so impressive I feel I must be missing something.
- It's a very emotional thing for many of us. I've beed using reddit on sync exclusively, I just couldn't be arsed to use the web version any more.
  So when they killed third party apps, reddit was dead to me. Not only because of the terrible user experience of the web site and official app, but mostly because of the way they treated the developers after all those years.
  After the lemmy version came out, I opened it up and everything was back to normal (except for the missing content).
  I'm really hoping that the devs of other apps succeed in the transition as well and they manage to get a good portion of their users to join as well.
  As for the FOSS fundamentalists: I really don't get it. I've worked on open source projects in the past, when I felt I could contribute. I don't get all the hate being directed towards sync though. You like your FOSS-app? Great! I prefer sync and I'm happy to support the author.
- I used it for years on that other site, so when it came out for lemmy it felt like coming home. Not sure how much is just muscle memory and being used to it, but the design and interface are really well done.
- Before Sync I settled on Connect, it's a really nice app. But Sync is a great app, one of the best implementations of Material I've used. And its UI is the result of years of work on the Reddit app, so it's got a lot more features and is already more polished than the others, despite being in beta.
- Connect is perfectly fine. I just used sync for a long time and like some particular things about it (e.g., being able to jump from one comment tree to the next reliably and quickly).
- Sync has a better ui and customization (in my opinion) and more functions ALTHOUGH at the moment posting and hiding posts doesn't work, so I don't know if I can recommend it at the moment
- Sync has a lot more features. Direct imgur upload from commenting, live comment mode (if Lemmy ever gets big enough for game threads), open communities in new windows are some of my favorites.
  
  A lot of the functionality isn't ready yet including submitting posts - but it's coming. Connect is currently more complete but Sync will get there soon.
  
  Direct imgur upload from commenting
  Is that new? I'm on beta 26
  
  I think some sports communities could sustain game threads here. The soccer community seems to have mostly stayed on Reddit, but Formula 1 definitely is active enough here for live threads for races.
- Connect is actually heavily inspired by sync. Sync's nice, but maybe only a bit more polished then connec, otherwise the interface is very similar. When I tried sync the other day the search wasn't working, so I think I'll just stay with connect. Honestly, I never used sync for Reddit so when I tried it after hearing all the hype I was kinda let down. It's nice but it's in the same league as like 3 or 4 other apps imo (assuming they fixed search)
- If it weren't for Sync I'd still be using Connect. Connect is, in my opinion, the 2nd best app for Lemmy right now.

It's not only because of Sync alot of other FOSS apps were released or got an update around the same time.
- Yup. And most of the new comments are about these apps for Lemmy 😂

On my side (writing from Sync) I was using Native A and basically using the web version of Lemmy, and when I clicked on a post it meant going all the way up and losing where I was in my feed, so I stop responding for a long time
- Also, whenever I clicked on a post from the browser there was about 50/50 chance the comments would even load in the first place. Since Sync was released, it's like I'm back home on Reddit. The browser works perfectly. I can hide posts I've already read. I can open the comments. I can leave comments.
  People might not like Sync because it's not FOSS or whatever but I don't care. I barely even notice the adds and don't give a shit about Google getting some of my analytics. I just wanna browse and forget my shitty existence.
  
  Od day for now the level of adds Is correct, in not certain yet on which App I will end up only using, I am nor pro Sync not against, I simply want to use Lemmy and have a good time

Checks out tbh. Around 90% of the web's overall traffic is viewed from tablets and mobile devices. Having a good mobile/app experience is essential for user traffic - how many of us are on the web while in bed, on the toilet, eating breakfast, half-watching TV, on break at work, etc...?
- yeah I often browser lemmy at work but I just use the web site
- How many of us are sitting in front of the computer looking at our phones?

Yeah, I feel right at home since I started using Sync. I also try to be more active to improve Lemmy in general. I wish I could create threads but the function is not working for me.
- The Sync dev said we should have that ability within a week. I think he posted that comment two days ago.
- Yeah will be nice when we can create posts. Its pretty easy on mobile web browser though the UI is clean enough for just that task in the meantime.

I tried using Liftoff and Connect. For whatever reason they didn't recognize my login 99% of the time. So far Sync works well and actually allows me to comment.
- Yeah, had that same issue with connect. Just waited it out knowing sync was coming soon. Now that I've switched I don't seem to be having any of those problems. Feels just like when I was using sync for reddit.
- This is the only app that doesn't log me everytime I close it

Sync definitely has me commenting more personally
- Eh, not for me. Not for me.
  Sent from Sync
- That's interesting, I've been waiting for sync since the reddit shutdown but in the mean time I've just fallen in love with Jerboa, I paid for the sync subscription but I'm still using Jerboa instead, the only feature I'm missing is direct share on pictures and videos
  
  I like Jerboa and I was happy using it until Sync arrived. Still, there's just nothing even close to the Sync experience for me.
- Here's to posting from Sync being available soon. Still have to go to other lemmy apps to post.
- yeah me too, it's easier than the other apps

I would love to have the designer of RIF put their talents back in to making something that works out here free from the matrix.
- They are working on an app for Tildes, another forum kind of website. It's called Three Cheers for Tildes! Currently in alpha on android, iOS currently under development.
- To put it bluntly, RIF is absolute garbage. The design is completely outdated and feels like a step backward from where we were even a few years ago

I'm certainly here after that

Honestly, I learned that I like how sync presents content to me,and it's really less about what site it's for

I was skeptical when people were saying "just wait until sync launches". I've been using Lemmy since the blackout and feel like there has been a noticeable jump in the quality and quantity of comments in the last few days. I'm not actually a fan of the app (Voyager and Summit are my favourites, Summit has the edge just now), but whatever the reason I'm pretty happy.

Because a lot of us like having a sleek app.
- Objection! Speculating.
  I'm here just to say I still use Liftoff. Shall this comment be also counted towards the stats.

I was using Jerboa before and was unable to comment. So yeah Sync.
- I am still using Jerboa. It's better than before, but still has glitches. I am sticking with it to spite myself.
- Yeah, I never had good luck with jerboa... it worked sometimes, but I was mostly using liftoff (which is pretty good, in my opinion).
- Same here. I could log in, but I couldn't switch away from the anonymous user. I wrote out a few detailed comments and found that they couldn't be sent, tracking down the thread on the browser version to paste the comment I wrote in was a terrible UX, so I stopped bothering.

Doubt it, otherwise day 2 would have a high rate also. I think it may have been a dodgy instance federating.

It's why I am here

Some people seem to be interpreting this to mean 11 million comments per day. I think it means the numbers are updated daily.
The numbers also don't make a lot of sense to me. Front page of lemmy.world says 620,000 (local origin) comments. And Lemmy sequentially numbers the comments for an instance, mixing both local and federated and the recent numbers look like 2,122,067. Lemmy.ml says 253,000 on the front page, and their index key is showing 2,321,959 for a comment made today. I have to imagine that these two servers are subscribed to a lot of stuff (including each other). I'd be surprised if there were more than 4 million unique comments in Lemmy. And there would be some kbin messages in the Lemmy.world index.
- Hmm, yeah I see what you are saying. I mean you're right that would be an insane number of comments wouldn't it.
  I wonder then where that figure is from and why it jumped so much?
  
  Probably the sum of local origin comments on the federated instances.
  Should be possible to make a per day graph by graphing the diff per day.

It's nice to be able to open a post and then get back to where you were before opening it quickly and easily.

To be fair, didn't a few Lemmy and FOSS apps get released during the same week?
- Yeah, Infinity was released too.

I'm here after installing Sync. I have used it every day for years with Reddit but I stopped using Reddit completely when it was disconnected from third party apps. It's so familiar it makes Lemmy an easy transition

I'm a simp for slick ux...

Not a sync user but i found infinity for lemmy so i have my old reddit client back too

Decided to join Lemmy after having issues with the Reddit app and Relay not getting along. Facebook groups as of late have been flaming garbage. Twitter is now an.. X. I'm not touching Reddit again unless Google sends me there. Sync seems to do the job quite well.
I've tried Mastodon before. It just wasn't my cuppa. This is my new public facing social home I think.

I either crashed or error editing out using any of the existing Lemmy apps for me personally. Sync has a better sorting algorithm too.
- Also the infinite scroll never worked on them.
- I don't believe Sync has proprietary sorting algorithms?

11 million comments per day? Am I the only one surprised by that?
That's 5 times more than Reddit in 2015: https://www.quora.com/How-many-comments-are-made-on-reddit-each-day.
- Is that 11m including everything on the fediverse, or just Lemmy instances?
- Yeah as I discovered in another comment chain it's more than reddit had in 2020 even which was 'only' 5.5 million daily - the chart unfortunately is rather confusingly labeled and useless and represents total comments and not daily. I can only assume a random bot spike happened or something.

I went from 1 comment a week to a few a day, I can't be the only one.
Sync definitely helped with that.

Sync for Lemmy ftw!
- seems to be acting up for me, feeds not loading correctly, etc.

If only Sync didn't display lemmy.world as the main instance.... .world is barely keeping up lol
- Yeah it's a tricky one isn't it. There hopefully will become a better solution for helping people onboard to different servers that suit them but without making too big of a hurdle.
  I must admit I joined .world without understanding anything and it was prompted to me so yeah the default choice has a big say. I have donated to server costs though, felt like I should do my part at least!
  
  How do you choose a server? I just clicked the first one.
  
  Same. I also joined world as it was the first option shown. Are there any differences between world and the other servers?

I know I've been commenting a lot more w/ sync.

I'm one of them. Never used lemmy because none of the available apps werent as sleek, stable, and functional as the reddit apps of old. But now sync is a great app so I use Lemmy a lot more.

I've been trying to comment more to add to the communities that I'm a part of. On Reddit I was a lurker and never commented because the communities were so large and by the time I got to the post it had already blown up. Now on Lemmy the communities are much smaller and I want to foster some discussion or at least add something to these smaller communities to help them grow. Most posts have less than 10 comments or frequently none so I think it's important to foster some additional engagement. I've completely stopped using Reddit and yeah I do miss it from time to time, but I don't see myself going back unless significant change takes place.

Bro ask the Apollo dev to create Apollo for Lemmy. That'll be a deathblow to reddit.
- Not from the Apollo dev, but Voyager is very Apollo'ish.
  
  That's good to hear but isn't that for android?

Sycn launced 4 days ago though...🤦

I made my lemmy and kbin accounts a couple months back, but I never ended up using them. I'm not new to the fediverse, but I only use services that have native mobile apps.
Yesterday I remembered to check if the apps have been released yet, and here I am, first comment!
I never used sync for reddit, but I am using sync for lemmy now, and it's seriously impressive. I feel so nostalgic

"Reddit Won"
Context: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-news-blackout-protest-is-finally-over-reddit-won-1850707509
- Not really? They won short term. In a couple years most of their content will be reposts and bot comments.
  It sounds like they've won, and sure the people in charge might catch a payday, but once the Fediverse gets more user friendly (which is happening at a rapid pace), and more of the long term reddit creators move over here, their platform will die.
  They have restricted which apps you can use, they are trying to make it so you can't use the mobile site, they'll eventually kill old.reddit. I guarantee they'll implement some sort of subscription service so you'll have to pay to be apart of a community, etc.
  Once the porn creators leave and come here, then reddit will start dying
  
  It'll just be digg again pretty much lol. Just bot memes stolen from here or people struggling to let go of a dying site.
- Reddit probably thinks it won. They killed all the apps and now they will increasingly force feed monetisation down the necks of the userbase until everyone decides to leave just like they left Facebook.
  Which is their goal too probably that's how IPOs go, and how corporations handle tech companies, buy it milk it and let it die. Nobody cares about long term It's all about profit this quarter then ditch the shares to the next sucker.
  Reddit will go the same way as Facebook. Never die, but it will be like visiting a retirement village.
- Maybe. Time will tell, but either way Lemmy won too. And me. Having a better time here; there's at least the potential for meaningful discourse here unlike the firehouse of pointless pseudo-conversation on the larger subreddits.

I just started using lemmy now that sync is available

300 comments