1y ago

Lemmy is popular nowadays, yet is losing its active users

Similar to Mastodon's spikes last year, it seems. Anyways, there is data to think about. Source

475 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  And FOMO. New users gravitate towards the large instances because they think they will miss content, not knowing they can easily access said content on any instance as long as it hasn't defederated from them.
  
  Of course it's not about centralisation per se, but the problems that a centralised platform does not have to deal with.
- 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.
  Because decentralization, at least as it is now, runs counter to what people are looking for in a social media platform; mainly discoverability.
  
  Does it though? My instance has very little locally, but if I browse 'All' it really isn't any different than being on any other instance, even a big one.
- It's not that users want to centralize everything. It's Lemmy's design that promotes it, because despite federation, there are still advantages to choosing big instances and communities.
  Joining the largest instance makes searching, joining, or opening communities much more seamless.This can be addressed by:
  Improving the search so that it can find communities, or even content, that no one on the instance has subscribed yet.
  Making it easier to open a community in your home instance.
  In addition to Sub/Local/All feed, you can have a "moderated" feed (with communities selected by admins). The "local" feed is most useful for instances on a specific topic. But for very small instances, it'll be too empty at least at first. So a moderated feed can create an on-topic feed that's more lively.
  For most topics, only the largest communities are large enough to have good content, so everyone wants to join them. To address this, you need some easy mechanism to subscribe to all communities on a topic. For example, we can let communities follow other communities. Then people can create topical meta-communities that aggregate content without centralizing it.
  
  This is the big one to me. It's much more difficult to search for specific content if it's isolated amongst communities on different servers, all trying to fill the same niche and splitting the potential userbase for said niche up between them.
  If there was like a tag system in place that communities could use to tag themselves as being for a specific thing, like cooking, for example, and then you could aggregate/search posts from all communities under the cooking tag across all servers federated with yours, it would greatly simplify finding content for less tech literate users while also increasing the resilience of the entire network by allowing more communities for a specific niche to exist, which would prevent content loss if one server goes down without discoverability being an issue.
- You also don't have the content of Reddit. It doesn't take too long to scroll through all top six hours and get to the single digits of upvotes.
  
  Kinda cozy though, if you pay attention you kinda see who's active.
  Like you, only user on my instance who has more comments than me.
- It's hard to find instances that offer what world offers, so I get it.
  OTOH, I ended up moving or handing over most of my communities that I had created on world because this instance is TOO popular and bogged down all the time. Plus, they make arbitrary and drastic decisions without discussion on matters like defederation and often banning. It's smart to go to a smaller instance but it's also risky because any instance could go down at any moment. That's why many of my communities are duplicated (across world and infosec) because it would be devastating to lose all of those quality links and engagement.
- It's that everyone wants to create the same community on different instances.
- I think more people need to make communities they are interested in that might already exist on beehaw/lemmy.world/lemmy.ml/etc but on other instances. We really need to not keep everything on a few instances… I agree it contradicts itself. I tried by creating fallout but hard to get activity. Even its main community is quiet so that makes sense. I might try something a bit less niche.
- I think there is a gap in understanding how Lemmy works and how it differs from reddit, in particular with the less technical crowd. We definitely don't want people sharing giant instances, but that matches more with the sign up for reddit, use reddit logic many people are used to.
  I think it's also why we have seen such drama over Sync for Lemmy and its ads and pricing. To the techy crowd that was the majority of Lemmy users, that all seems antithetical to what Lemmy is and how it works. To the people who came to Lemmy from reddit, and especially those who may have tried out Lemmy because of Sync, the criticism sounds maddening because that's the way it always worked on reddit.
  So in some sense all of this is expected. Lemmy will lose some users, but maybe it will find an equilibrium. The key focus these days imho should be outreach about smaller instances, and outreach about donating to your instance (if you can) to keep it running.
- I like the idea of federated social media platforms conceptually, but ai absolutely want to make my home on the largest instances. That's just an artifact of how I use social media, though, I always gravitate towards the busiest platforms because interacting with so many people is the real joy of it.
- 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.
  Is that any different on Mastodon and other Fediverse projects?
- Same shit happened with the 'temporary' mass migration to Signal.
  
  Signal
  Interesting what do you mean? I use signal but I can't get anyone other than my ex wife to use it with me. It is so much nicer than google voice or the texting app, regardless of the end to end encryption.

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Why I'm encouraging anyone who will listen to participate in their fledgling niche communities here. Even if it's just a little bit.
  One can simply lurk on the niche subreddits. Growing fediverse communities need active participation.
- 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.
  
  the average user doesn't care about FOSS or open source software. They want something that looks nice and just works.
  Truer words were never said.
  
  I got super frustrated with Mastodon because of this. I've tried a couple of instances with no luck. And hilariously, I have to think that the furry folks are either having the same problem finding a home, or they are stalking me, because everywhere I move, shortly after, a ton of furries appear and do introductions. Furry stuff is not my thing, but I can appreciate how they might have a hard time finding a good place to settle.
- Am I being retained?!??
  
  Sigh... You're free to go sir. Have a nice evening Mr sovereign user.

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.
- 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.
  
  we don't need more memes, we need people to start going to the games, movies, shows, and hobbies they like and making posts.
  
  I'm in the process of making some stuff, I just worry that the community I post it to on lemmy isn't big enough to get the word out community-wide.
  For context, I've been working on a very long dogelore thing. But in the same way, I feel like this hurts any bhj or mtcj stuff I might do. The community on lemmy isn't big enough to get traction, so what's the point?
  I'm not going back to reddit, and discord is annoying, so it's just a little discouraging.
- It feels like it's mainly talking one way or another about Reddit, or describing how one of the 3P apps is now available for Lemmy. The content is super stale, but it will grow. Fuck, Reddit back in the day was not exactly the thriving metropolis it was maybe six or so years ago. And reddit peaked and came down to how it exists today. So it'll take time.
  That being said, I don't check Lemmy anywhere near as frequently as I did Reddit, and mainly because the subs I frequented most have smaller footprints here for now. Which is what you said, but in fewer words.
- For what it’s worth, memes have helped me stay. I doubt I’m the only one.
  They’re quick and easy to browse and some get a bunch of topical comments and links to other relevant communities.
  It’ll take a while to reach a level that’s known in the public eye like Twitter and Reddit, but the low-hanging fruit helps keep people interested while more niche communities are forming.
  
  We don't want to be in the public eye. Let's enjoy what we have while it lasts
- Also, liftoff kinda sucked, but I just figured out some features of Sync, and it's fucking beautiful.
  
  Lol what? Liftoff is fantastic, and FOSS. Are we blaming liftoff for the downward trend/lack of growth? Cause the oh-so-amazing Sync does not seem to have reversed it, to spite all the claims I keep seeing.
  
  I’m still using wefwef. What am I missing?
- Yeah, I really want r/sysadmin on here.
  They have a Discord but Discord is so incredibly annoying to use for this.
  P.S. change the sort mode to hot or top (x hours) to get more content. The default of active sucks.
  
  hot is completely useless because its filled with content that's less than an hour old with virtually no comments. its very poor quality content.
- The two biggest ones I know of are startrek.website for trekkies and blahaj for all things trans/lgbtq. But even those don't see to have much activity. We need better advertisement to smaller communities somehow.
  
  its not about the instances, those are actually hindering growth by dividing communities across instances and defederating them. lemmy is basically several copies of reddit in a trench coat pretending to be a social network.
- I will say I was looking for some opinions on new Internet browsers.
  Posted on Reddit and here.
  Already got responses on lemmy, but my Reddit post is just being ignored.
  
  Also, Lemmy posts tend to get real conversations going rather than reused meme templates.
  
  If you're interested in the right (tech) topics I can see Lemmy being better yeah
- I think I've blocked the biggest meme sub or two. Helps a lot with that.
- I've been posting on the HP and Tolkien communities and begun modding them too. I'd encourage people to post, and if necessary take up a little responsibility too.
- Which site?
  Lemmy.world? Lemmy.ml? Lemm.ee? Programming.dev? Lemmy.ca? Lemmy.nz? ...

Some dropoff after initial hype is normal. Now we just continue as usual until reddit pisses people off again.
- We have to wait until tomorrow?
- 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.
- exactly this right here. we saw the same phenomenon with threads and mastodon before it inre twitter annoying its userbase. depending on how engaged each wave of incoming users ends up, i'd guess you could expect it to look something like:
  spike
  drop off
  plateau
  spike
  drop off
  plateau above the last plateau
  etc etc
  sometimes the drop off is really bad. sometimes its just people getting bored with the initial hype while others stay. rinse and repeat until the platform succeeds or dies.
  
  I'm not sure what else will be able to cause a spike again. Reddits behavior over the past month is pretty much as terrible as it can get. If people aren't moving to Lemmy anymore, it's going to take something apocalyptic to cause Lemmys usercount to grow again.

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.
- 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.
  
  I used to be a reddit lurker. I would go into a thread for a post and look for the thing I would have posted, and upvote it.
  I can't do this on Lemmy, I actually have to write stuff now I guess, otherwise it doesn't show up. I don't like it.
  Feels weird man.
- I try to comment when I can. Even if it's not insightful. A small compliment keeps a community going.
  
  Hell small compliments keep people going let alone an abstract sense of community
  
  I try to browse and upvote in new also
- I’m to tired to make quality posts.
  There's room for shitty posts too. 🫂
- Get out of my head!
- How mildly opinionated of you.
- Thanks for pointing that out! High quality content takes time to craft. It's being skilled and/or knowledgable, being able to convey that across on a digital platform (where basically everyone's anonymous and of unknown backgrounds), and being engaging while you're at it. It definitely can be demanding for some.
- Beans on toast are better than vegemite on toast!
  
  Noodles on toast is better than both

I'm actively lurking, I just have nothing of value to share 🌝
- 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.
  
  At least it's less likely for your boss to find you here on the Fediverse.
  
  Just emphasizing my upvote on your comment through my comment.
- To be honest, I do the same thing. A couple of simple rules to keep the web entertaining:
  Filter everything that triggers you
  Ban porn
  Never, never look at comments on politics, religion and family. You're like to want to erase humanity afterwards
  
  Yeah it took a long time for me to finally curate Reddit to something I enjoyed using, I've started increasingly working on my filters and it just gets better and better here.
  Like Reddit, I find trying to find communities I'm interested in a little difficult so I'm just defaulting to all and continuing to filter for now. At some point soon I'll be able to just default to subscribed.
- Yup. Exactly.
- there's always something of value to share at least on c/lemmyshitpost

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...
- Yes, most people give up as soon as something does not work first time.
  Maybe there are enough of us to be enough abd to fix those annoying little things that make lemmy complicated to use.
  A lot if issues got resolved, apps are here,it is getting better fast.
  
  I doubt it - too many people with different preferences they aren't willing to let go, I'm afraid.
  If you're asking me, it's "good enough" the way it is. I'd gladly have some more content filters, but even without them I perceive it as a platform with enough potential to consider it good.
- I think those issues will be solved though. Apps will increasingly make onboarding simpler so Lemmy will be as simple to use as Reddit.
  At that point really its just a case of waiting for Reddit to fuck itself, which it absolutely will do eventually via corporate greed, and there we go, all the Lemmy content anyone could ever need.
  
  I don't think Reddit will fall, sadly.
  It harbors too many people, who go there for a specific content and don't care about the internal dramas, or who leads the place and what he thinks about the userbase. In addition... Eh, it hosted Obama, Arnold, plenty of actors, celebrities.
  My assumption is that it will simply evolve into something different, but no less popular.
  After all, Facebook was caught redhanded on such abominable practices that it should be burnt to a crisp long time ago, and yet it's still there, led by that automaton, what'shisname...
- One thing that bugs me is people asking for/using tools that replicate the look and feel of Reddit instead of learning the ropes. I left Reddit, I don't want another one. I get it, familiarity is comforting, but when the user base is a fraction of the other platform, no UI or app will ever give you the same experience. I say move on, get out of your comfort zone and participate.
  
  Amen to that.
  I don't imagine staying on some site that resembles a drowning wreck, because "I got used to how things work here".
- I’m just here because I like the pretty 3rd party apps.
- I think I am on shitjustworks.. i don’t know how big my instance is I just chose it because it has a cool name.
  It has gone down a few times and at first my reaction was to go to is it down dot com to see if the problem was with my app… but then I had the realization that ohhhh, it’s just my home server is down… I thought about making a separate account on another instance but instead just decided to do something else with those few minutes I would have spent here….
  No big deal…. It’s happened a few times in the couple months I’ve been here, but it always works eventually… I really like this platform, and the philosophy behind it, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to understand all the inner workings and how the instances work together, but I don’t feel like I need to.
  But I can see how people who understand it even less than I do might get frustrated and so that is going to be a limiting factor with new growth here I would assume…

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
- This alone will make a huge difference with other platforms that will hide that info under seven wraps an report any and all accounts as active users.
  
  Reddit with their "subscriber" counts
  Who cares your community has 100000 subs. 90000 of them are duplicates or gone.
- I really just want to lurk.
  
  You made a comment just now. You're not lurking according to the how they're categorizing a lurker.
  Honestly, how about this? Every single lurker, commit to making at least one post or comment a day. Call it a social experiment
- This is me, lurking 👀

I'm not too worried. Graphs dont only go up. :)
- Graps are delicious and I love the wins they make.
  
  :) I erased any evidence of any misspelling that may or may not have taken place here tonight.

Joined today. I’ll likely just lurk in the background…
- They said while commenting...
- Used to say that too,but now Im commenting too.
- I thought so too but I don't mind leaving a comment or making a post here and there.
  even if it's stupid it's still something for ppl to downvote lol let em think of something better. or make content mocking mine
  
  If you comment on posts you think are under-rated and upvote, you'll push them up the activity queue and it'll reach more people.

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.
- Also worth noting is Lemmy only counts posts/comments as "active users". Lurkers who only read and up/downvote aren't counted.
  
  That's interesting, I would expect people who vote to be accounted
  
  wow, I lurk so much more than I post stuff.. one would think they would track this
  
  I think this is the biggest factor. Most people only lurk. How many people signed up and only lurk?
  
  So true. This is straight from Lemmy’s documentation:
  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
  
  In this case, I have a theory. I remember a month ago people were posting a lot on Reddit and the !reddit@lemmy.ml community was extremely active. It was like group therapy for refugees. But now the new reality is setting in and people are actually having real and meaningful conversations, which means more lurkers.
  So it doesn't mean that active users are down per se, it's just that it's stabilised because people are mostly over Reddit.
  
  I wonder if lurkers were counted in reddits active user data

I'm generally a lurker so here. I posted.
- Me too. Gotta keep them numbers up though.
  
  Indeed. Up they go.
- Okay okay, I'll join you in commenting.
- I suspect doing this on posts with less upvotes will push them up the queue, so if you see any under-rated posts go upvote and comment on them.

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?

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

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

Some people might have made multiple accounts and chosen one possibly?
- My guess is a lot of people came in saw that Lemmy was kinda dead a lot of the time but suspected it would continue to grow so they left it temporarily to go back to reddit while they waited for Lemmy to catch up
  
  But if everybody things that, it will never grow
- Yeah i did something similar, though mostly bc i was confused about the whole instance thing. Made three or four accounts over the first few days. I kept forgetting the password, or didn't really understand what an instance meant, or how to log on via Connect. Now that's done with, I just stick to one account
- I did it too. I had like 4 or 5 accounts and used 2 or 3 actively until recently if my main instance went down. Now I'm just using 1.
  
  I'm moving to lemm.ee personally for similar reasons. I'm keeping the dotworld account as backup and may be creating communities here.
- This is me. I bounced between a couple of instances before I settled on lemm.ee; I also am generally a lurker because I don't want to comment or post unless I know that it will generate quality conversation.
  
  I'll personally post as long as it's relevant. Ideally it's an interesting comment but not always. I stay away from reddit-type inane comments with no substance, though I'm sure they have their place here as well.

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

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.

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.

can't maintain 90% uptime
why are we losing users?

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).

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.

It is expected that there are corrections in numbers after a huge spike. The bigger goal will be to sustain this community.
- I'm pretty sure it's kida going already, even when the post only had 200upvotes and 10 comments they where good posts and the comments made up in quality for what they lacked quantity

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.
- Ads are coming. (Well, more ads.)
  
  Old.Reddit will be killed too. I know they said it’s not going anywhere but they have shown to be full of shit in the past.

Dude I was away on vacation chill. :-)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.
- Try infinity dude. It's alpha but tyyyyyyyte

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

Didn't they purge a shit ton of bots recently? Those could account for the decline.
- There is a continuous decrease in number. That incident should be seen as a reverse spike.
  
  Why would it be a spike if they're timed to go off and/or they work by having conversations with people?

The problem with lemmy is that it's not 100% stable. I like it more than Reddit but at least 20% of time lemmy is overloaded, down, not refreshing or else.
- I haven't had that problem at all. Maybe a month ago, but now its stable. On the other hand I suppose if might be relative to the instance you joined?
  
  There always some issues. It was unusable a couple days ago for me. Whilst I can tolerate it for now, that’s a huge barrier for people especially newcomers.
- Unlike Reddit, where no users have ever seen a message that said "you broke Reddit" with a sad snoo...
  Reddit is also not 100% stable; Lemmy is just experiencing growing pains. Here's to hoping it only gets better
- Lemmy isn't overloaded. Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml are.
  People need to move to other instances. Lemmy was never designed to have main central instances. There are supposed to be many smaller and more specific ones and people choose the ones that fit their usage.
  
  Yes and no. Bigger servers can see more posts and communities on other servers because of how the federation works. I have an account on a small instance and an account on lemmy.world, and my All feed has way more content on lemmy.world. I've also run into issues finding and subscribing to communities on the small instance.
  If you're on a large instance, there's a much higher chance that someone else has searched for the community you're looking for already and the server knows about it.
  Less technical users aren't going to understand any of this.
- That's a problem especially with lemmy.world . They took the brunt of the Reddit migration and had to massively adjust their servers to accommodate the influx of users and communities. Other instances have been more stable
- Basic shit like linking to comments doesn't even work on the website, let alone the apps. If I click the link icon on your post, it links to the top comment to it instead. Clicking Show Context on that page also does nothing.
- also the apps often have a lot of bugs or issues in general. i would love to use lemmy more, but Liftoff can't even sort my profile comments by new. i click on it.. nothing happens. and if i just quickly switch to another app (clicking a link that opens the browser etc), and come back.. everything is reset and i have to search the post i was again etc.
  because such things i don't use lemmy as often i would like..another issue is that lemmy isn't supported on older browsers and the devs just tell you to update or get another one.. yeaahh nah thanks. not gonna switch or destroy my browser (newer browser versions are often shitty.. just look at chrome who nags you all the time) just because of lemmy. so.. i wait for this issues to be fixed to then be able to use it more. before this happens, the user experience is just too frustrating.
  
  I know it's like beating a dead horse, but sync is actually pretty fantastic and hasn't skipped a beat for me yet. Connect I was afraid to comment on posts because it would refresh the whole page on me and lose my spot.
  
  another issue is that lemmy isn't supported on older browsers and the devs just tell you to update or get another one..
  Does old.lemmy.world work with older browsers?

“Chart go down” isn’t necessarily bad.
For example, this could be due to general disinterest, or it could be from troll removal/defederation too, no?

Sadly, there's just not a critical mass of users in most of the communities I'm interested in. I pop in here every once in a while to see what's going on, but it's currently lacking the diversity of content that you get on Reddit. I'm still rooting for it to succeed.

These are natural growing pains of any new platform. A lot of people will come over, check it out, and then go back to Reddit.

I just swap between lemmy.world and lemm.ee whenever one of them goes down. They're the first two options on the app I use lol

With the fediverse known for its opposition to infinite growth, this feels ironic
- What opposition? I see folks complaining about excessive size of individual instances (mostly out of concern that power imbalances could develop), but basically nothing against the growth of the network as a whole.
  
  I think the "infinite growth" here is referring to our expectations of some systems we use growing infinitely, even when the system itself is bounded by finite terms, such as population or hype.
  For example, US Social Security works on the assumption that there are more people working and inputting money into it (via payroll taxes) than retired people taking money out. That assumption requires a growing (or at least very stable) working population, as a shrinking working population means that there will be more people taking money out than there are people putting money in. This growth, inevitably, will have to stop at some point. However, many retired people expect, and in some cases financially rely on, Social Security giving them money.
  A large portion of the Fediverse have expressed their disdain for such systems, and molave here is finding it ironic that they'd expect this platform to infinitely grow, as well. The initial hype from the whole Reddit shenanigans are dying off, and the platform will soon stabilize, at least until Reddit pisses off its users again.

Hard for me to be active when my home server is down most days 😂

I'm on the fence about sticking around. I don't see myself going back to Reddit, so I'll probably just leave and be productive.

Maybe it's just my feelings but conversations and participation is booming. I rather a small and active community than a millions of users who lurk.
- Communities are getting seeded so when next wave comes, we will be ready. Build decentralized economy won't happen over night.

I keep forgetting you have to comment or post to be considered active
- Upvotes don't count?

It's natural progression once initial hype wears off. As long we manage to keep core amount of users it should grow slowly over time.

It's way better than the relative numbers of Threads. I expect a decline of active users, since a lot of Reddit users registered to a Lemmy instance expecting a similar experience that couldn't be fulfilled. It will stabilize and grow up again with peaks when, for example, old.reddit.com is ditched.

Here! I'm another active user!

A big issue was loosing all the .ml lemmy instances. I lost mine and had to create a new account. lemmy.ml is the only one that's still up.

Lemmy has already hit equilibrium as far as I'm concerned if your on lemmy world I suggest changing instances my instance midwest.social was down alot in the beginning when lemmy was getting alot of new sign ups but has since then been updated a few times and been rock solid since now it only occasionally goes down for maintenance

I was an early Reddit adopter and can remember how lonely it felt back then. It took years but it got better in ways and worse in others. I believe in Lemmy because it isn't susceptible to the pressures of a company trying to be profitable. Sure it'll have its own challenges but I've personally had enough of idiot CEOs running social websites into the ground.

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