I don’t know if others are experiencing a similar situation. My all feed is very sparse with engagement. If I sort top six hours or by top 12 most posts have between 5-10 comments. I feel like there was more in the past? Is engagement dropping off? I’m on lemmy.world as my instance.
I’ve noticed a downward trend, not necessarily “dropped off suddenly”. One of the most notable signs I’ve seen is from the new comments sort.
When I’m interested in seeing what’s actually active and where the action is at, one of the things I will do is click to sort by “New Comments” and change my view to Comments. Typically I go to that page, see if any of the headlines or comments catch my attention, then go read or reply.
In the past couple of months, I’m seeing more and more new comments on that first page of results that are 5+ minutes old. When I get to the bottom of the page and click to refresh the results, there are times now when I don’t even get a full new set of comments because there haven’t been enough new ones to bump the prior comments off the first page.
That didn’t used to happen much at all, it was rare enough that it really sticks out when it does happen. Typically, the comments on that first page would be anywhere from seconds to maybe 2 or 3 minutes old and every time I hit refresh (I wasn’t spamming the button), I’d have a completely new set of comments to peruse (other than a bug in older versions of Lemmy that would cause some comments to get stuck at the top of that page even when they were significantly older than anything else).
My overall interpretation of this is that it appears there’s less commenting, at least during the times of day that I tend to be most active on here. Of course that’s not the only possibility. But like OP, I’m noticing a lot fewer posts in those top 6, top 12 filters with lots of comments than I used to see. So, those types of observations do have me thinking things are on a bit of a down trend. It could be a seasonal thing, perhaps a temporary lull.
Yeah. Hard to say. It’s interesting to see other perspectives. Thanks.
Wouldn’t surprise me. If you’re not into ragebait, tankieism, linux smugness, the painful minutiae of corporations fucking everyone, US bullshit, or all of the above… this place is really pretty slow.
I only really browse “all” on this site and it does seem like fresh content trickles in at a fairly slow rate. At least part of that is that it needs to squeeze by what is now pages and pages of blocked communities just trying to avoid the doomposting.
Have you ever considered lowering the amount of doom in the world to post about?
It’s so obvious!
Ooooh! No, my bad, I’ll have that fixed in a jiff now that you’ve pointed it out. Thanks!
Nobody ever said it was going to be smooth sailing. It’s going to take a while.
I agree…I’m just comparing to previous months.
Yes, it’s gone down a lot. Most people went back to Reddit with the, “but my niche community!” As an excuse then just main-lined the enshitification.
The problem with getting niche communities started here is the average user doesn’t want to be a mod.
I’m not sure if I’ve seen a drop off lately. And I wanted to say hi :)
I’ve noticed that some instances, including lemmy.world, are getting more aggressive with blocking other instances (also due to assumed “spam”). At the same time, the /all/ feed is only populated by the communities that other users of your instance are subscribing to. I’d look in some newcommunities communities to subscribe to more interesting communities so that they pop up in your /all/ feed. Another reason is probably also that many people are moving away from lemmy.world to smaller instances.
This is how I see things as well. I moved away from lemmy.world because one of their updates completely fucked my account, and since then I’ve noticed more people doing the same, or complaining about issues with federation.
Anyone who expects Lemmy to become the new reddit is both setting themselves up for disappointment and missing out on the enjoyment of a smaller community imo. People can use reddit/facebook/twitter for doom scrolling if that’s their thing.
When people say they want Lemmy to become the new reddit, they are not talking about the reddit of today, more like the one from <2015.
I miss the crazy shit that there used to be on reddit. Not that I liked or agreed with all the subs at the time but it really did feel at the time that there was a sub for everything. Now reddit feels stale and sanitized which makes me feel bored when scrolling through or searching for random subs.
Reddit just feels like Facebook these days. Niche subs are not affected as much, but the vast majority is just low quality trash, gossip, selfies and unhinged political discussion.
Some people probably mean that, while others want a literal transplant or reddit without spez pulling the strings. Part of the challenge of new communities is figuring out what you are, and I think Lemmy is still deep in that stage.
I am enjoying the slower pace of posts, and higher level of quality engagement. I also enjoy zero ads, far less toxic behavior and general niceness on Lemmy compared to Reddit.
I like this. Quality > Quantity.
When it warms up I tend to spend less time on my devices. This is the case where I live and will be for the next 3-4 months.
Probably a good suggestion it’s time to go out and touch some grass. 🥲
Damn, missed my toxic comment opportunity 🙂↔️
Honestly, lemmy isn’t that welcoming. Read through comments and you’ll notice most of them are kinda snarky and rude. Look at no stupid questions (idk the name of “subreddits”) you ask a serious questions and almost none of them are on topic just people giving you shit for asking. If you have tech problems it’s “install linux,degoogle,stay away from that brand” for someone new reading through them they’ll probably leave because of the toxic community.
I agree about the tone of most responses on Lemmy being rude.
I want to be nice. 🙏
A part of me feels like the .ml instance is working on behalf of meta and reddit to drive people away.
Obviously that isn’t what is happening, but when one of the largest instances’ user bases is turning every post into Palestine debates and allowing coordinated harassment against anybody who disagrees with them, clearly people are going to leave.
Sir, but have you heard about the Peele commission? Allow me to introduce you to 150 years of Palestine -Israel historical context before we can move on with this discussion about user engagement on Lemmy…
It is really unfair of you to call us abti-semites when we purposefully aren’t using the word Jew when we call for death to Israel.
/s
Seems about the same to me, but maybe a bit less? I have noticed, for a while, that the comment count on posts doesn’t match how many are actually displayed when I open comments. It’s not about my instance being de-federated because we are federated with all other instances. I think there’s a bug in population.
Are you sure you selected English in the languages list? When I first started my account I left it on the default “Undetermined” and that made it where comments set to “English” would not appear, but still counted in the comments number. Need to choose both Undetermined and English.
I was missing dozens of comments on posts sometimes and for awhile thought I was blocked by hundreds of people (understandable… I know I post cringe) before I figured it out. I don’t know if the onboarding process made this clear, I obviously missed it if it did
Hmm… I just tried setting it to English and can’t tell if it helped, but I hope this finally fixes the issue. Thanks for the tip!
Make sure it’s set to English and Undefined. Cheers!
I noticed that it didn’t solve the issue on a thread yesterday. I think my instance has an issue syncing comments. Oh well, thanks for the tip regardless. Maybe I’ll see comments that I otherwise wouldn’t have.
I’m fairly new. Finding it hard to get truly into the experience given some of the more extreme takes that Lemmy seems to allow (or at least some federated servers)
Seems like Lemmee is sadly becoming a fairly isolated echo chamber for certain opinions only.
All is not a “for you” feed, it contains posts from the whole fediverse. You are supposed to add the filter yourself. Find the communities you are interested in, subscribe and then browse that.
That’s interesting. I came to Lemmy because I want open debate and not moderation which I view as a form of censorship. Interesting to know that not everyone shares that view!
nice attempted rage bate
There’s a massive difference between sharing views, IE: “I don’t like billionaires”, and Making threatening remarks, or calling to violence (not ok).
trying to frame me pointing out that calls to violence are NOT a good look for Lemmy, is not me calling out censorship. That’s you trying to rage bate the conversation into some argument about your rights (which ends where my nose begins)
Your words are strong but the content is weak. Welcome to the emerging new normal…
In a favourable reading, “killing” a billionaire is as easy as taking their money away.
That said, I think the biggest catch-all instances of Lemmy should be defederated from Lemmy.ml and hexbear. The users of these sites just ruin the experience for anyone with half a brain and a less than spectacular appetite for bullshit.
I do not want corporations to be unprofitable; I want them dismantled and their boards executed
Favourable reading my ass.
I don’t get it, can’t people just join a instance that best reflects their values?
You also see this sort of thing about cops. I just learned ACAB, all cops are bastards, today. Which I’m getting increasingly tired of. When you try having a discussion with people they are just as stuck in their ways as the right and don’t realize it.
Do i think all cops are saints no. But demonizing entire jobs/professions/whatever right wrong or indifferent is the same reason i stopped watching some news. All doom and gloom.
I’ve been saying this for quite a while. It’s impossibly to get people on lemmy to understand nuance. I was the same way when I was young which is why I really feel like the average age of a lemmy user has got to be around 16-17 years old.
Most of that shouldn’t be considered extreme. Yeah “eat the rich” style rhetoric is inflammatory, but the rest is just pretty bog standard leftist stuff. There’s far more extreme stuff on Reddit, on all the political fringes.
They believe in the q-anon child blood theft thing. It’s not rhetoric or hyperbole, they literally want to murder people. The ‘eat the rich’ rhetoric isn’t just inflamatory, it encourages people to actually commit violence, whether that’s what you really want them to do or not.
I’m not familiar with the q-anon blood theft thing, so I’ll take your word on that one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon#Child_sex_trafficking_and_satanic_sacrifice
Added to this is the belief that politicians and Hollywood elites engage in “adrenochrome harvesting”, in which adrenalin is extracted from children’s blood to produce the psychoactive drug adrenochrome.
One version of the QAnon theory posits that the child abusers use adrenochrome as an elixir to remain young.
That’s what they’re referencing when they mention drinking children’s blood.
You’re literally proving their point. You’re saying “I don’t see anything wrong with this, it’s perfectly normal to me and I’m fine if this kind of thing dominates my feed”. Their entire complaint is how normalized this kind of rhetoric has become and how pervasive it is and your response is basically “this is fine” dog.
That last paragraph dips into q-anon stuff, too, despite otherwise being extreme left.
I find it impossible for me to take people like that seriously at all. I keep picturing them as 16 year old kids that recently read an op-ed piece and now thinks they should whine about it to anyone that will listen.
Well then let’s increase our engagement! Make some dank memes and post them, create more text content, ask more questions. Just no more weird anime shit, jesus christ
Haha ok. I try to post in niche communities. I’ll do my part!
I think it comes in bursts. You get all the content followed by an afternoon of doom refreshing with nothing new.
I don’t pay super close attention to the numbers, but I glance at the daily users and subs now and then in the comm where I’m pretty much the only poster. I feel I’m down about 25% in daily users and new subs have felt slower.
I’ve tried posting a second or third post a day to try to catch anyone in a drastically different time zone, but the second post gets less likes than the first. Comments feel down, and more importantly, I don’t see near as much growth of “regulars” who comment. I got used to seeing a few names every day or 2 in the comments, but many of them I don’t hear from anymore. I do have a few new regulars, but most seem to comment less frequently, and if I’m not holding onto them long term, activity is never going to snowball.
It seems consistent with what I see when I browse All, Top 6 Hours. I’m always worried it’s something I’m doing wrong, but I seem to trend pretty consistent with what I see of Lemmy as a whole. I do block essentially all meme communities, so I don’t know how their popularity is holding up. I keep Science Memes unblocked for now, because some are actually funny or educational, but somedays they hog up too much of the top posts.
I try to keep posting more in depth and original things, but it demotivates me as a poster to keep working hard and putting in hours when the audience seems like it’s shrinking. I try to post more than just cute pics, I try to share news, research, and facts, and I’ll do reports on research papers or books so everyone else doesn’t have to dig through all the dry stuff. That stuff takes up a good bit of time. I’m trying to keep a popular niche comm alive, and I think it’s fun as it’s typically positive stories and non-political 99% of the time, so it’s what eeeeeeveryone says they want here, but how long are posters supposed to post to what looks like an empty room?
I still try to comment back to anyone who leaves a comment, so they know I’m seeing it and that I really appreciate it. But I can only do so much. I’m really holding out, but I start to wonder what Lemmy will be like at the end of this year.
With a project like this, I think it’s important to take a long-term view, and not burn yourself out too early by putting too much early-term effort in.
I think the expectation some people may have had that the Fediverse was going to take off like a rocket and become the “next big thing” was a little bit of wishful thinking. The real process will take years imo, and we’re just keeping the lights on in the meantime.
Development continues. That’s the important part to remember.
I agree. It seems to go through spells were people just want this to be Reddit with a different page banner and they expect it to be or try to make it more like Reddit, but I thought we were here to move on?
I’d be cool with less comments overall if they are solid anyway. I don’t care about “first” posts, the “i also choose this guy’s wife,” or people fighting with each other or spouting nonsense (looking at you, current state of news/politics subs).
I go back down to a single daily post when it starts to get to me. I’ve thought about taking breaks, but I still like learning the things I post for myself and for the joy it brings to the people that do check in every day. I’ll still take what we have now over Reddit any day. I wouldn’t be posting at all if I was there.
This
Sorry!!! Couldn’t help it. But I agree. There is s something to be said about not reducing to the median
Smarty-pants 😜
I loved the quality of posts and comments we had around Sep-Dec as the fellow Reddit migrants got the swing of how it worked here and could make awesome contributions. It was a really good signal to noise ratio and everyone was getting along and posts and comments were helpful and supportive.
Starting this year, I feel the part of Reddit we enjoyed being away from crept in along with enough angry far-left that they could regularly get in the top of All. When we started to see all the “why is no one swearing in here” threads and when the anti-work and anti-Trump groups made it over here.
I think these things should be talked about, but these groups just feel like rage bait to me, designed to get people worked up. They’re all going to either end up either echo chambers or full of gatekeeping and downvoting. It isn’t the bonding experience that was being built before that.
I’m an adult, and don’t want to be lectured to by any militant conservative, leftist, evangelist, vegan, Linux fanboy, or whatever. I want cordial discussion, and if I’d walk in to what All is now, I probably wouldn’t have hung around as long as I have.
But there’s still a good number of people trying to make this place inviting and fun. If this just turns into liberal Parler, I’ll probably just quit social media altogether. I don’t know what’s really left to go to after this that hasn’t been absorbed by a big company or a political movement.
I think the advantage of larger user bases (not always) is that the more nuanced discussions often bubble to the top. That is impossible here because the user base is so small. That’s why it’s a flatline of ACAB, extreme leftie eat the rich, etc. There is a big void in the middle left by that in-depth conversation: Nothing seems to get past that surface layer analysis. If we want to talk about Oct 7 well be prepared to hear about the Peele commission and apartheid state. On and on. Unless of course maybe I’m getting old and all social media is converging into vacuous and hollow content. Were da 30+ at??
Lol, Lemmy Silver, for the old lemmings. I suppose it’s part of getting older. We’ve all had these high level conversations for decades and anything we’re still interested in, we’ve had decades to get really granular on them. But the young ones are learning this guy Reagan did some shit once upon a time or there was a guy named Lenin that said regular people are important, etc for the first time, and I’m glad for them, but the access to data we have I’d hope you’d do a little more reading before shouting the same crap over and over. “Doing your own research” once and then never exploring any further or checking out other sides makes you just as annoying as that anti-vaxer.
Now I sound too damn old! 😧
Welcome friend! Your AARP subscription is being processed and bingo is at 7:30. 🥲
I hear you though.
deleted by creator
I try not to think about the cumulative time I’ve spent posting! 😆
It does truly suck though when you think you’ve done your best work and it falls flat. Then when I’m sulking afterwards, I’ll post something real low effort and it will be the top post of the month, never fails.
A lack of engagement is a solvable problem. Become the engagement you want to see.
No
Gotem.
“Be the change you see you want” - Abraham Lincoln
“Do not blindly trust quotes from the internet” -Aristotle
That’s actually a misreferenced quote by Genghis Khan, my great great great great great great grand uncle.
He’s everyone’s great great great great great great grand uncle.
Even his own.
Did you ever think to shut the fuck up and post? I’m tired of you little bitches whining “No one is entertaining me…” Wahhhh.
“Are you not entertain ??!!!” - Alberto Antstein
Thanks for being one more ass hole standing up and screaming “block me”
Thanks for playing alone cunt.
