Remote View

2y ago

Lemmy's total users exceeds 740k today, up from 540k yesterday

Source: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=7

In other news, Sync is coming to Lemmy.

247 comments

Whatever the number, I've definitely noticed in the past few days that there are getting to be enough people having conversations and posting content for this place to feel like a legit community instead of a ghost town. I'm really glad to see more people joining and taking part.
- Agreed. It's really nice to see top posts having a lot of thoughtful engagement. Hopefully we'll have enough to start seeing people branching out to smaller niche communities too.
  
  The small niche communities are pretty much dead, sadly. But there for sure is hope!
- For example, your comment is the first one I have seen that has over 30 upvotes since I came on board a week back.
- It's been amazing to feel like we're part of something that's growing so fast. I'll miss Reddit but I expect Lemmy will fill in the role sooner rather than later.

I don't doubt there's a great amount of user growth, but it appears that many of those are account creation spam on instances with 1 active monthly user though.
Edit to add a comment I made on another post Basically there might be about 200k real users right now including lurkers, growing at a rate of basically 13.5k per day.
- Yeah, no idea whether this is spammers trying to stake turf or someone trying to inflate the user count to stick it to reddit (or something) but the numbers from the 18th on are clearly inauthentic.
  
  TBF reddit's numbers are also inauthentic.
  Hell, fake it till you make it isn't that bad a strategy to attract new users.
  Of course, you also need content. I hope people start making bots which steal content from reddit, which bots on reddit steal from twitter/insta/tiktok/snapchat. That way we can all cut out the middle-man.
  On a side note, I think it's really cool that I'm on kbin and commenting on something on lemmy.
  
  Conspiracy theory: what if Reddit is using it’s not army to make a bunch of dead/spam accounts to try to make Lemmy instances more expensive solely to try to price them out of their space so they can then turn and point to how “Reddit alternatives aren’t viable/stable.”
  On one hand, that’s obviously stupid and not true. On the other hand, I can see Huffman being petty and malicious enough to do something like that.
- Im doing my part!
  
  starship troopers.gif

July 1st is going to be interesting.
- Yes, I expect some instances to have some difficulty coping with the traffic in July
  I sometimes go to Reddit again, mostly by habit, but once Relay stops working, I'm done.
  
  Hello fellow Relay enjoyer!

I understand the bot concern, but when I look at the comment and active user figures, they're all in the same trendline of exponential growth. This is the exodus just beginning. Personally I'm finding Lemmy to be a refreshing alternative that serves far better than what Reddit has become. I think it's what we've all been waiting for, and the secret's starting to get out.
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3200
  https://geddit.social/post/25346
  
  It's actually pretty badass to see how quick the response is developing and the awareness being so immediate. What's really cool is to see what gets done about a problem with full transparency, instead of Reddit Admins' chamber of secrets.
- Yep it's nice an alternative getting popular

This is my first comment on Lemmy , excited to be here as we embark on a new journey away from Reddit.
I'm excited for Sync coming to lemmy , my go to app for reddit browsing was Sync.
And obligatory fuck spez
- Just heard the news about Sync and instantly registered here. I'll still be hoping for Boost to cross over, but Sync is infinitely better than Reddit's app. A decent client was all that was missing for me to make the plunge, let's hope that's the case for more people.
  And yes, fuck Spez

Soon, the novelty accounts are going to start showing up here again.
something something undertaker mankind cage something.
- I want to see shittywatercolors here in the fediverse!
  Where are you shitty? We want your colors of water
- We'll know Lemmy truly is the future when we have the first shittymorph post.
  
  Hey, I'm just here to shitpost and promote "Barbie", OK?
  
  ???
- I read shittymorph's most recent Undertaker post in a thread the other day. It felt like a semi retirement post; at least that's the vibe I got from it.
  https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14d27a0/til_the_undertaker_was_engulfed_in_flames_during/joo8djg/
  Maybe some will migrate here, maybe new ones will pop up. End of an era either way though.
  
  He moved on from being a redditor, and we should too.
- /shrugs. I got my old username. I'm happy.
  
  Not https, your account will never be secure
  
  I got my old old OLD username...AIM style...hotmail account too lol. My Reddit name has sunk with the ship. It was just after cheezits anyway
  
  And I'm happy for you too.

How easy is it!
I just used my Reddit name and continued here.
No effort what so ever.
Bit to wrap my head around the idea of subs being completely different communities on different servers, but I LIKE that idea.... no Fascist Overlords to control the groupthink.
I guess (if this is how the Lemmyverse/Fediverse works) is some AWS/cloud instances are going to be spun up hard and fast!

Ngl, I'm gonna miss these early days I think. Hopefully we have instilled some type of decent, thoughtful culture on here that can keep us grounded and keep flourishing.
I really like getting in on these big threads later at night when everyone is chopping it up and making me think.

Line goes up?
You failed to continue multiplicative growth therefore your investors are going to pull their money... Wait there are no investors, there is no ipo. I'm going to donate 10$.

@MicroWave
There is a huge bot issue right now (started 3 days ago). All the numbers are worthless.
It’s a known issue, all admins should add captcha to the subscription page, delete the bots and re-compute the actual number of users. Unless we do that, we won’t have a correct number.
We can still look at the Monthly Active Users. Bots don’t post (yet)
- Just check https://lemmit.online/c/itookapicture . Sadly only bot posts
  
  This is a bot made to repost from reddit to generate content for remade subs, thought i don’t know if that’s the right thing to do, it’s not made purely to spam communities afaik
  
  They're supposed to be bot posts. That's what lemmit.online is for. To copy Reddit content into communities on lemmit.online.

the interface is just so clean. it feels like early internet and I love it.
- Exactly! I’m so happy it finally seems to be an alternative to Reddit, which has mutated into such a weird monster
  
  I've tried moving away from Reddit several times with varying degrees of success, this time though it's felt really easy - the more i learn about Lemmy the more i like it and look forward to seeing it evolve. There are some really nice communities here too, feels like a lot of the most interesting people have come here but the spammers, bots and trolls haven't yet -- i'm sure it'll change as things grow but i'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.
- Were you using new reddit? I don't find it that different from old.reddit (which is fine by me).

Lets fucking go. Fuck you spez.
- AND MY AXE!
  
  AND MY BOW

we are already at over 1 million, there’s gonna be bot spam soon
- +100k since i made this comment https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
  
  The 38k monthly active users is much more accurate
- Im here to spam too ;)
- I hate to break it to you about who or what is making up the majority of those 1 million "users" if you think the spam bots are coming "soon".
- I’ve seen a single bot so far, but that doesn’t bode well for the future if it’s starting already.

Sadly those are bots, real amount of users is around 150k. Source: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/176547
- Apparently a lot of those bots are just farming reddit and reposting here. Which I think in the short term is a good thing. People are more likely to join/stay if they see content. On the other I hope lemmy has the tools to prevent bot content from overwhelming user generated posts to the point that it loses the authenticity.
  
  I would love to have a bot/a few scripts to migrate a lot of the useful posts that were on reddit over here for a few of my hobby communities instead of having to move them manually. I can definitely see a lot of use cases for those.
  
  That's an interesting take, but I could definitely see it working out. As long as the reposted content isn't ads or spam, it could help the fediverse have content while it grows.
  
  We know nothing. We say nothing.
- I don't understand. Are you claiming that the first 150k users that signed up are all real and that since the rate of growth has increased exponentially that it couldn't possibly be real users signing up? I don't dispute that some of it is bots for sure. There are clearly places that have 20k users and 2 posts and stuff like that that are very suspicious. But I don't think it's at all reasonable to assert that all of the growth that has occurred are bots. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that. In fact, I would argue that the amount of activity (posts and comments) increasing alongside the user count is evidence to the contrary. I understand that bots can make posts too, but apart from the obviously labelled bots that are reposting content from reddit and stuff like that, I haven't seen any bot spam accounts posting links to suspicious sites or anything like that at all. Unless you're claiming that the bots are posting normal looking comments so that people think they are human? I don't understand.
- before lemmy blew up the count was 150k but many joined in the last few days. sure many are boys but until an effective way to filter them out is there we can't know the precise numbers.
- I don't see the proof in that link, although maybe I'm missing something, it just seems to imply that is the case.
  
  Agreed. It's literally just them saying "there are a lot of new users and theoretically they could all be bots, therefore they are all bots".
  
  Captions and applications are not default enabled on an instance. There is no rate limit on the creation of accounts. Many new instances have 0 posts but 10,000 or 20,000+ user accounts. Startrek.website purged something like 20K fake accounts from their instance after enabling registration protections.
  Active users will always be the better metric.

I think it's either bots or some spooky spammers that are falsely reporting the number of users. e.g. lemmy.k6qw.com currently claims to have 44k users with no posts...
- Yeah that's a bad instance.
  
  There are many more bad instances like this in the statistics. I think it will become a problem for Lemmy sooner or later.
  
  I think with the extreme novelty, there will be LOTS of devs trying out new scripts and auto-doings.
  I suspect that will be learned pretty fast, published to a group, then many of the bots will simply die out.

Notice the disparity between monthly active users and registered users. These are bots. I'm very tempted to block these instances outright.
- Just block them. going to have to with the number of bots on it.
- How can a user block instances?
- Might be necessary. I don’t see any good coming from hundreds of thousands of bots.
- Does Status Count in the chart mean number of posts or comments?
  
  I think so.

This is my first post on Lemmy and I just want to say that I'm so happy to be here guys. Finally my dream of seeing a decentralized social media platform gaining unprecedented traction is coming true.
- This has been a dream of mine as well! I kept saying “why hasn’t someone created a better social media platform, especially an anonymous one like Reddit?” I didn’t know Lemmy existed until I went to post a negative review for Reddit and saw it plugged in someone else’s negative review for Reddit. I’m so happy it exists!
  
  Its better for everyone :)
  
  I'm about to go drop a negative review and share Kbin there too!

The growth is insane, fediverse is coming!
- I've been on Lemmy since last Monday (like 10 days). It's meteoric!
  Back then, simply posting ANYTHING automatically meant you made the front page.

Bot accounts......so many bots......
https://149455152.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/BotBots-Featured.jpg

I'm super excited for Sync for Lemmy.
Also tinfoil hat on for a second. If there are really as many bots as people keep suggerting. Who has an interest in sabotaging lemmy?
But then it's probably the same bits which are everywhere now interested in lemmy because it gained users.
- I assume its a target for bots because its a lie hanging fruit.
  Also it's harder to find bots down the road

So now I just gotta build up a new feed from scratch, that's the part that sucks the most. So many nice niche communities I've discovered over the years on reddit... But it was time, reddit has been going downhill for years.
- I'm in the middle of doing the same. Its a shame when you go through your list of subreddits and can't find an equivelant community on here. Nevermind niche subs, there will still be plenty of 1mil+ subs which are missing from here.
  Nor do I want to create and be the only mod of about 20 different subs. I feel like that requires a special sort of person lol.
- I am building my wall of Subscribe Pendings, which I tend to like a butterfly collection.
- To help you the rebuilding.

Honestly the only thing missing now is a good app for iOS. However I’ve been using the mobile browser version and it works just fine. I hope Apollo’s dev sees an opportunity here and goes for it.
- How are you using the browser version? I just can't browse /all without having a new post pushing down the feed every 5 seconds I find it unusable.
  
  set it to new instead of active on the top. Active refreshes whenever a comment is made while new only refreshes when a new topic is made.
- There's a couple iOS apps in development right now (Mlem and Memmy). Can't wait for them to hit the app store.
- Artemis for Lemmy/kbin looks like Apollo's spiritual successor
- You should grab memmy and join their discord. They've posted some screenshots of what the UI overhaul will look like in the short term and it looks incredible. If you love Apollo, it should be a pretty easy transition
- I'm sure it will happen. There are already a few apps for Lemmy, and I know Sync is in development. I'd be rather surprised if no other apps are coming..
  I don't use iOS, but I know there's an app for it, named Mlem. You could give that a shot, even if it's just a placeholder while you wait for something better. :)
- Lot of apps in developemment for IOS but not Android

How do i stop lemmy from spewing out new 1 point posts when I'm viewing the top posts like weekly or daily
- It will be fixed in the next update says a developer, here
- Far and away the biggest problem at the moment, lol.
- On desktop in the address bar change the end from /page/1 -> /page/0 ;)
- replace the "1" in the url with "0" -- so "/page/1" turns into "/page/0"
  it's an easy bandaid until they fix it!
- Just a wild guess - but those "front page" algos must be tough to master, especially when a site doesn't have real data to play with. I'm sure the situation will improve soon!

Tons upon tons of spam accounts on spam instances:

And some, I assume, are real users.
- If you want to see stats of real instances, the "All lemmy nodes" table on this page actually lists the real non-bot instances at the top: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
- The situation has worsened. I counted about 2 million new "users" in 3 days.

Love it, and we’re not even at 1st July, when all 3rd party apps stop working (shame or not I still go back to reddit with Apollo to enjoy the drama).
Also, we don’t need 400 million users to have a variety of communities with good discussion and content - a few million is more than enough, probably.
- I keep seeing new communities daily and we're already the size of a decent city and much larger than the city I grew up in. We had all types from punks to queer kids to commies and fascists. We've got enough users to fill any niche I can think of and probably a lot more. And we're still growing, I don't remember reddit when it was this young, but there's a bit of an early 4chan (minus all the racism and homophobia and hate) vibe going on that I totally dig!

I came here in search for an alternative for reddit. I am glad I found this place
- Same, and I'm already loving this place

Unfortunately most of the communities I'm interested in are ghost towns
- Give it sometimes and post yourself
- The best way to solve that is post some links and get the ball rolling. Can't get engagement without something to engage with. (I am guilty of not posting links myself lol)
  
  I'm doing that but I don't know for how long if I'm the only one doing the effort
  
  error loading comment

I just joined lemmy and this is the first social media service where I could grab my short username instead of a longer one no one uses I'm very glad
- You could always host your own instance and be the only user with your special user and connect to other instances' communities.
- I typed my old Reddit username in at first then said “wait a minute…”, somehow nobody took my simple first name in the first several hundred thousand accounts created!
  
  Usernames only have to be unique on each instance, kind of like email. Even if Lemmy is growing exponentially, not all that growth will be on lemmy.world.
- I've always been able to grab my username. Of course, I originally (in a different context) tried "timholt", which was taken, then "thetimholt", which was also taken.
- Ditto!
- You're very grad

I kind to want to jump to a smaller instance
- I self host! Very nice having an instance all to myself.
  
  I'm planning to self host - but just have one question, mostly a confirmation, as long as you're not hosting communities, you can comment and interact with others, without needing other instances to explicitly sync with your insurance, right?
  I kind of want my own instance just to control what communities I sync for my own account, but not going to host any myself, so defederation of some instances doesn't affect me (unless I myself want to block them)
  
  Same here. I love owning my own identity.
  
  How do you self host? Is the always free AWS package an option to do this?
- You could self host :)
  
  I aim to self-host myself, one of these days. I'm having analysis paralysis picking a VPS tho, because I'll want to move my other online socials there too.
- i really love the smaller communities, going to be so interesting to see how they all evolve and interact. Anyone that hasn't i really recommend going to the various other smaller instances just to look and get a feel for them, it's a great way to find interesting communities and you can subscribe from the instance you're on (assuming its federated).

I wonder if these are real users or if someone wrote a script to register users via the lemmy API… 🤔
- I can confirm that after a week of people posting links, I - a real user - finally took the plunge to sign up today.
  -Sincerely, cdipierr-bot
  
  HELLO A REAL USER. I AM ALSO A REAL USER AND LIKE TO DO NORMAL HUMAN THINGS LIKE CONSUME, SCROLL, LIE MOTIONLESS FOR 8 HOURS, AND MANY OTHER NORMAL HUMAN ACTIVITIES. I PARTICULARLY ENJOY THE HUMAN ACTIVI
  Segmentation Fault

I'm really not sure these are spam bots. I suspect it's actually mostly people playing with the exploit that was recently posted on their personal instance. Definitely still bots though.

Oh man, I hope this server can maintain. Support if you can. There is no CEO but there is a server admin who has to pay for us to be on it. No centralization means its up to us to keep it going. I don't know the history of lemmy world and I'd hate to see it go because it was too expensive for it's popularity. Something to think about.
- It's run by the same guy who runs mastodon.world (Ruud) so he has experience with huge servers. Apparently this server is currently set up to handle a million users. Here's the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodonworld
  
  Awesome, thank you.
- Just signed up! Any advice on where to go to donate?
  
  Sidebar on your frontpage.

HOLD DIAMOND HANDS
- Oh shiiet, my fellow apes are here!
  
  And my wife's boyfriend.

I joined in the last few days. Seems like this site has much better content. Less bots and reposts. Plus, the user base seems a lot more intelligent in general at this point.
- hello I'm actually really dumb
  
  If you acknowledge it, you're already smarter than the majority of the Reddit user base
  
  Another dummy reporting in.

Lemmy is fantastic

@MicroWave the fact that there are almost a million people that are users on lemmy shows that there are a million more on the fediverse as a whole. i am very glad lemmy federated on activitypub. so i can use mastodon to communicate to lemmy communities.

The good news is that bots seem to be joining particular instances made for them. This will make preventing them from ruining the fediverse easy, just defederate from instances like k6qw.
If they start joining instances such as this one, then that is its own issue, but each instance can solve it to their own needs. I'm not too worried about bots on Lemmy at all really.

I joined like 10 sec before
- Welcome!

Hi all, here from Apollo.
I'm glad I caught this username
- Nice username. I wish the Apollo dev would create a version for lemmy.

Fuck you Spez, most may be bots right now but those bad boys will eventually become real users.

Holy shit. Welcome Lemurs.

I am one of them! Hello!
- Hello!

200k bot accounts.

I think it's possible to belong to more than one form of social media, it isn't an either/or situation. Also it's way too early to project how any of this is going to end, it reminds me of the early days of the internet in miniature as people scrambled around trying new things. I say throw everything at the wall and lets see what sticks and if beehaw makes people happy and gives people that don't feel safe other places somewhere that they can be online I think it's great. Not everything is for everyone and that's OK, if we all liked the same thing vanilla would be the only ice cream flavor.

Holy cow. That is insane growth. I love it! Happy to see such a large influx of users. Hopefully most stay.

First post on Lemmy! Ummm, what is sync?
- "Sync for reddit" was one of the more popular Android apps for reddit

Unfortunately looks like a massive amount of bots. 40k for lemmy.k6qw.com and only one post.
- Sounds like a good candidate for defederation tbh
  
  My understanding is that at least some of these instances are probably being attacked by bots that are auto-signing-up accounts on instances with open aign-up, because someone looking into it said that the instances are also banning a bunch of them. Probably not complicit (though that will presumably also be a long-term concern to deal with).
  The instance admin at lemmy.dbzer0.com was apparently working on some kind of tool to monitor it. Had a start on GitHub, IIRC.

Hi there!
- Hello!

Just arrived here, does anyone know how to change the interface language? It presumed I wanted the language from my region, but I prefer English.
- Click on your profile, and go to settings. Then change interface language to English. But this seems like the wrong kind of thread for posting support questions.

Love to see it.

Hello everyone! Waiting for the mobile app so i can leave reddit for good
- Jerboa is a mobile app for Lemmy!
  
  I really hope they make it better. I have really weird issues while using the app some random technical errors while I'm just browsing the feed

247 comments

Tons upon tons of spam accounts on spam instances: