In recent weeks, I have posted an absolutely staggering amount of content on Lemmy.

My goal is simply to support the platform. I hate huge corporations.

Now I’m taking a break. I won’t post anything or I’ll post very little (I still feel a little guilty!! Who will post new content 😢?)

But I need to focus on improving my own life and relax.

However… I’m just curious.

Is the number of Lemmy users actually increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Is that data even available?

Edit: I will still post stuff. I’ll just post a lot less!

  • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
    0·
    23 hours ago

    Lemmy will never really grow beyond what it is now. Even if there was another influx of users, the retention rate is going to be low and the amount of active users is going to be even lower. It will forever remain a niche platform for 3 reasons:

    1. It’s made by and for people on the far left, tech/privacy nerds, and people who have been kicked out of Reddit. Because of this, the actual active users on here tend to fall into of these 3 groups, and they define Lemmy’s culture, and this includes the developers. Because of this, much of content on here revolve around niche topics and so there isn’t much here to appeal to the mainstream.

    2. It is fundamentally flawed by design. There are bunch of different communities on different instances about the same topic, and there is no way to consolidate them. Because of this, you have a bunch of dead communities that operate as independent nodes, instead of having centralized communities that are big and active. This issue would’ve been solved if Lemmy was designed to have each instance be a community in of itself (AskLemmy has its own instance and so does tech, gaming, and so on), but instead we have the current implementation.

    3. Lemmy has many of the problems that drive people away from Reddit. Sure, Lemmy isn’t a greedy corporation, which is nice, but it still has terminally online powermods with little to no accountability, a hostile and negative community, weird/extreme echo chambers that make most people cringe, and so on. If you sign up for Lemmy, you’re going to get the same problems but with a worse experience because it’s way smaller and has less content, so why would you come to Lemmy instead of making another Reddit account?

    I just don’t see Lemmy every becoming mainstream or overtaking Reddit. It’s already been 6 years since the start of Lemmy’s development, and 2 years since the big influx of users from Reddit’s API fiasco, and it STILL has to rely on the same dozen or so people spamming the platform to keep it barely active. Lemmy won’t collapse, but it also won’t be more than what it is now, at least not any time soon.

    • ruan@lemmy.eco.br
      0·
      20 hours ago

      About #2: you have any suggestion on how you could achieve that and still be federated?

      It seem like you would need a central “oficial” instance that defines who is the “real” AskLemmy, etc…

      But yeah, I really want to hear if you have ideas on how achieve this and maintain it as a federation.

      • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
        0·
        15 hours ago

        If I were to redesign Lemmy, I would design it be like Reddit, but without the corporate centralization, so basically each subreddit would be it’s own instance, and they can federate or defedarate with other subreddits. I wouldn’t design it to where each instance tries to be it’s own full fledged Reddit alternative like right now. That’s a much cleaner design, but the big issue with it is that hosting the instances is a pain and so most people can’t do it.

        Therefore, my much more realistic alternative, is to add tags. Each community would have a limited number of relevant tags (could be required to create a community), and users can view and follow these tags. These tags would help streamline all these different communities across Lemmy under one label, which is the result we’re trying to achieve. I would also add another tab on the home feed called “tags” where users can view and filter all the posts from the all tags they follow.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
      0·
      20 hours ago

      I feel like part of it also is that Lemmy isn’t designed for anywhere near the traffic that Reddit gets. For instance, Lemmy maintained Reddit’s mod power structure based on mod service length.

      Also Lemmy hasn’t really done a lot to build spam fighting measures. If the user base grows 10x the current size, I can see spam becoming a bigger problem which could affect usability.

    • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 day ago

      One thing I’ve noticed is that on reddit, if I post a comment it’ll get either zero votes or a thousand, with next to no correlation between the number and how useful or well thought-out the comment was. On Lemmy it seems a lot more consistent, as though people here are actually paying attention? That and/or The Dreaded Algorithm hits a lot harder on Reddit.

  • autocaret@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    I would agree. And I’m spreading the word. We need to break our dependency on huge corporations. It’s just laziness.

  • hatsa122@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    Its the perfect size right now. Big enough to have a good variety of content and discussions while still small enough and niche to not be plagued by bots or targeted by corpos

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
    0·
    1 day ago

    not really, since the great purges in the spring thats where we had a huge boost, the shadowbans and sitewide ban seemed to have died down for now, although the SB are increasing in the background, we might see another increase if reddit does another major purge. although instances dying ive seen less content overall(especially with ee gone)

    • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 day ago

      One of the main things that drove me away from Reddit was the sense that they’re really pushing the buttons to hone it into a pure content creation service for AI bros and advertisers.

      That is to say, most subs do not want you just hanging out and chatting to people like they’re your friends. You have to generate content, and you have to do it in the approved sub format, and if you don’t like it you can fuck off. So, I fucked off.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        0·
        8 hours ago

        its also harder now, if your a new user, or inactive user who suddenly became active. so subreddits have cqs scores, karma,content history requirements. you can easily get shadowbanned if you somehow trigger the filters, also the fact that they do it so indiscriminately it catches innocent account. i was visiting the shadowban sub recently, and someone posted they were unbanned because reddits AI mistankengly shadowbanned them, for “assuming and misconstruing his posts, as offensive”

        • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          8 hours ago

          yeah I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I did notice that all my comments in one popular sub all had exactly 1 view and vanished if I logged out. And my post history there isn’t much different from here, it’s not like I’ve been going there to troll and spam. I guess the wrong mod (or bot) decided that they didn’t like people objecting to genocide? My posts in other subs still appear as normal.

            • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
              0·
              5 hours ago

              What’s disturbing about it is the effect it has on the actual dialog. The mods have basically zero public oversight, so you have no idea when you read a sub what kind of manipulation has happened to the conversation you’re reading, both directly and indirectly (chilling effect).

              It turns out that the Capitalism version of internet censorship is even more insidious and manipulated by shadowy forces, than even the Chinese government’s version.

              For added scarytimes, consider that all the LLMs are being trained on this shit.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    2 days ago

    Nobody is recording long-term stats yet AFAIK, so you have to find a workaround. It seems the rest of Lemmy is growing relative to Hexbear, at least.

    Edit: Nevermind, there are sites being linked here. It looks like by MAU it’s more or less holding steady. Which maybe means Hexbear is dying from toxicity and infighting?

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Been here since November. Seeing a lot more upvotes and comments on posts than when I got here.

    • NogMan@reddthat.com
      0·
      1 day ago

      That + I have begun to loathe the average “user” there + the Admin AI bot decided my comment making commentary on Reddit’s generally poor culture through very thick ironic language constituted “harassment” and perma-banned me. My 14 year old account - 2 “offenses” (one was valid) and it’s gone. I’ve appealed but it has been 8 days with no action.

      It’s also just “people” parroting the same cold take like it’s hot over and over to farm karma. Yes Trump sucks, yes Epstein files need to be released, yes progressive policy, but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys? IRL is miserable enough lmao.

      Ban-happy power tripping mods, recycled low-effort content, a generally discouraging attitude toward nuanced takes and critical thinning, and an absurd amount of bots and propaganda has really made me want to migrate. Anyways I’m here now, and I hope to contribute to this platform in a constructive and positive way! I welcome any pointers or advice!

      • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
        0·
        20 hours ago

        Welcome!

        There are good Lemmy apps if you don’t have one yet. You can search “for Lemmy” to see most of them (in the Android play store at least). I like Voyager for Lemmy.

        but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys?

        You might want to block some keywords then, as there’s also a lot of American politics on Lemmy. You can filter most of it that way.

      • Nikls94@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 day ago

        Well, I myself still use Reddit for my hobby since on lemmy there’s like 4 of us FPV pilots.

        But generally: spread the word, if there’s a community you’d like that doesn’t exist - make it yourself

  • Cyniez@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    It appears that Twitter users are migrating to Bluesky, while simultaneously engaging with Reddit and Discord. Meanwhile, Reddit users are making their way to Lemmy or maybe not I exacly don’t how but LEMMY IS GOING UPP.

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
    0·
    2 days ago

    Thank you for your service.

    Also, thank you for asking. Yes, I’m increasing, and I’m eating more salads now to help prevent it, OK?

  • junble@feddit.dk
    0·
    2 days ago

    Haha, det betyder ikke så meget. Lemmy har ikke fået min virksomhed til at tjene penge.

  • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Its been at a pretty consistent 50k which means we retained 25% of the users from our peak. Its 37.5k at the moment with 1.8k on piefed. There is another 18k users once NodeBB federations integrates.

    Its a decent little community, enough to be self sufficient and enough for new users to feel like they arent joining a ghost town.