lemmy.fediverse.observer

interdimensionalmeme, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

There are many fatal problems on Lemmy, worst of all is you can’t click this link /c/books and see every /c/book on every Lemmy instance of the fediverse. This is out of convenience to moderators and it is killing Lemmy. One people figure out communities only exist on a single instance, the promise of federation is broken and they fuck off.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Good point indeed

meldroc,

Having multi-communities, akin to multireddits, would be handy.

Die4Ever, (edited )
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar
interdimensionalmeme,

See github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3033It’s won’tfix/notabug

SeborrheicDermatitis,

Very good point-a way of connecting communities on Reddit that seems fairly innocuous but is actually a massive means of the “transmission” of users between communities, allowing users to find communities they like quicker and thus making them more likely to stay.

Very good point that I didn’t think of tbh.

interdimensionalmeme,

See github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3033It’s won’tfix/notabug

7heo, (edited )

expired

interdimensionalmeme,

Propagation and agglomeration is a problem for clients not servers. Server only need to propagate a “we have new stuff” message and it’s up to the clients to pull it and cache it. In any case, users should be able to click /c/books and see the content of all /book/ on all instances in a single location. Unless most users can do this with one click, there will not exist a fediverse wide community.

7heo, (edited )

expired

Die4Ever, (edited )
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar
interdimensionalmeme,

“multireddit” are nice to have but they do not address this problem Which a common view for all user of an entire community across the fediverse. “Multireddit” require client to pick and choose individual communities. This means less than 1% of users will every use it. This means there will never exist a fediverse wide community around topics.

stalinblows,

There is no way for a user to block whole instances, there is no way to know if you’ve been banned from a community or instance, it’s extremely easy for people to evade bans and blocks, you can’t make private communities, armies of extremists are brigading other instances and they’re exploiting Lemmy’s flaws to do it, the list goes on and on.

Lemmy blows, but give the rubes time. They’ll figure it out.

interdimensionalmeme,

That’s a trivial problem to fix client side. Same as any regular spam filter. If Lemmy gives that power server side to be moderators instead of clients, then Lemmy will become a North Korea style dictatorship like Reddit.

wanderingmagus,

There’s instance-wide blocking on the Connect for Lemmy app, including the option to block everything or only block the communities of that instance and not users. You can make a private community by not federating with anyone on a private instance.

bitsplease,

does this also block comments, or only posts? Sync has a similar feature, but only for posts, once inside a post you’re still subjected to their comments. Which for troll communities is honestly the worst part

wanderingmagus,

Connect for Lemmy has an option for blocking both. The comment still shows, but as “blocked by filter”, which hides the content until clicked on, and can be re-hid.

CoderKat,

IMO ideally there’d be two separate options. I want to block stuff like foreign language instances or some niche instances so that I don’t see communities hosted on them, but I don’t want to block the users from those instances when they post in other communities.

stalinblows,

Those are just cop-outs. They need to be hard-coded features on the original Lemmy app. If we have to rely on third-party apps for it, we can and should just use another fediverse app entirely.

I hope someone forks Lemmy at some point.

Chapo_is_Red,

armies of extremists are brigading other instances and they’re exploiting Lemmy’s flaws to do it

It crazy how these people can get their bs to show up in my main feed, and then if I comment on it they call me a troll

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

I would love to see something like this where it shows you content from communities with the same name across whatever your server is federated with.

BrigadierEssie_ScalpTakerOfLemmyUsers_NoMercyForLiberals,

Like an all feed but in a community would be lit but idk how that would ever be added. Too much work

JackbyDev,

Why do you think communities with the same name will have the same content?

BrigadierEssie_ScalpTakerOfLemmyUsers_NoMercyForLiberals,

It doesn’t need to have the same content. Same subject. Names are descriptive

interdimensionalmeme,

They don’t but they get aglomerated together anyway for having the same name . The community is the whole, which specific instance is hosting a particular /c/book post doesn’t matter. That it is on /c/book is what matters, not that it is on Lemmy.world

JackbyDev,

But just because !books hypothetically exists doesn’t mean !books or !books have similar enough content. You can already view these communities from any instance. You’re essentially trying to apply something like federation on top of something already being federated. They can all have very different rules and different content.

interdimensionalmeme,

If people have to hunt each post storage location individually, then it will be as if they don’t exist to 99.99% users. What will happen is there will be one big one, and they most likely be all on the big instance, and federation becomes just a weird thing that does nothing because functionally that will be just like Reddit. Centralized servers, centralized servers under the control of a tiny priesthood.

JackbyDev,

Not at all. Reddit has communities that are similar but with different names, rules, and culture and different people use them because they want different experiences. The same is true here.

interdimensionalmeme,

The crucial difference is that those are differentiated by having a unique name, note a unique hostname. Which hard drive a community is stored should not be considered an important aspect of that community. It only specifies who is allowed to delete and edit content posted to that harddrive

JackbyDev,

That’s like saying everyone that lives on 123 Main St is the same regardless of the city or everyone with the email “Bob” is the same regardless of what their email provider is.

interdimensionalmeme,

Lemmy has nothing to do with email. I’m sick and tired of this incorrect analogy being used to explain how Lemmy works and people stubbornly not understanding why it’s broken because of it.

If you think it through, what you’re asking is that the communities will exist only on one server. That’s Reddit with extra steps.

JackbyDev,

Goober, I am literally not asking that and yes this is very similar to email. My home instance is programming.dev. We are both still talking. I did not have to make an account on lemmy.ml to respond to you here. I did not even have to go to lemmy.ml to see or respond to this post. This community does not “exist only on one server” by any means.

interdimensionalmeme,

Yes because we’re in a server default subscription. A server decided list of viable communities, probably a list shared across the fediverse. Again a gayekeeping system by the system elites

We are in the !fediverse! community, only big one that exists.

It’s double centralization. This is recreating Reddit.

JackbyDev,

You’re moving the goal posts, you’re talking about default subscriptions being a problem now. That’s totally different. And besides, it wasn’t on my server and yet I found this.

clearleaf, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

Tankies and American democrats are scaring away the hoes. Source: I’m a hoe that has barely been coming here lately. There’s not enough people here for niche communities to thrive, and the front page has been getting worse and worse. Today I saw this post on the front page, pretty close to the top.

lemmy.ca/post/3725038

I’d like to be clear that I don’t care who americans voted for 7 years ago, but that’s not why I don’t think I should be seeing this. It’s just, sheesh man. THIS is what the community wants and thinks is important in 2023? I’m trying to find a niche amongst THIS?

It’s very similar to my problem with Gemini and every other “alt tech” platform I’ve tried to join. Worst case scenario it becomes a sewer for everyone who got banned from other sites for political extremism. Best case scenario, you end up with nothing but the demographic of upper class americans who do nothing but sit on their computers all day, which is not my scene either.

I’m starting to wonder if I should just leave the internet altogether.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Sorry you had a bad experience.

I am myself trying to get out of the tech/politics/memes bubble with communities like !chat , !casualconversation , !moviesandtv , !personalfinance , etc.

I’m afraid at some point a lot of people like you will just leave and we’ll be left with Linux memes (and I use that OS)

clearleaf,

Thanks for the community recommendations, they seem like great points to explore from. I also love Linux and tech in general, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here. But I have other interests too. That’s something I find to be decent about tildes surprisingly, considering you need to be a massive tech nerd just to access one.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

You are welcome!

There is also !trendingcommunities that has a daily report of rising communities

AmosBurton_ThatGuy,

Yeah the amount of American bullshit that infests all social media is fucking cancerous.

Katrisia,

It’s so silly. People around the world explain their culture and don’t assume everyone knows about it, give their location appropriately, and do not believe they are the center of the world. It’s like:

Random question posted: Why is eating octopus more and more popular?

Random user: In my region, we really don’t eat much octopus. I am from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. We eat red meat much more. But I guess octopus is growing in popularity worldwide due to [expanation].

Another random user: Where? Here in Portugal it has always been “popular”.

Average American user: Midwestern here. I don’t see octopus much and I don’t like it. Call me stereotypical, but I love my meat and T-Ravs. Anyway, I believe the popularity is due to Biden’s administration. [Details about Biden’s changes]. …So that all America has seen this rise, especially on the East Coast."

🤷🏻‍♀️ …Why?

ScreaminOctopus,

I’ve been getting around this by being really free with the community block button. But I’ve also had decent luck finding alts of the communities I used to use on reddit

rar,

It’s true, the front page, as it stands, is awful. I have to filter out so many trump/elon crap and (for nsfw accounts) so many sexual fetishes I didn’t even know it existed. “Active” and “Hot” are infested with (sorry guys) low effort memes, and I have to click for “top 6 hours” or “top 12 hours” for something that starts looking interesting. Yes, I know the big R and other social media have the same problem, but that’s not the point.

Now, this is where the content “sorting algorithm” becomes a thing to “boost engagement”… but sure we can do better?

Personally, I would like to see more active posts from small communities or instances over most populous ones. Self-posts, even better. What if there was a user preference for frontpage sorting?

Die4Ever, (edited )
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

I’m surprised so many people browse All, I only look at Subscribed

gammasfor,

I’m currently doing it mainly because I haven’t worked out what I want to subscribe to yet.

rar,

I switch between subscribed and all sometimes. Finding new communities is nice.

DLSchichtl,

Too many tankies

Okay, I’m with ya

and American democrats

Lol, ya lost me. Too many righty whiteys thinking this is their new “free speech” home where they can be all bigoted and protected from dirty leftist ideals like feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healthcare for all. You know, horrible people.

And honestly we aren’t sad to see less of you.

clearleaf,

This is what I mean. It’s not healthy to be surrounded by so much hate all the time.

DLSchichtl,

Not hate. I don’t hate anyone but racists and nazis. This is more of a distaste. We’ve tried your concoction and found it off putting. No thanks, no more. Please leave.

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

Regardless of platform, if you don’t want to see politics then block the political communities from your feed. The article itself is pretty factual and I don’t see why any real conservative would support the clown show that is the GOP right now.

danielton,
@danielton@lemmy.world avatar

This is a problem on a ton of different sites, not just Lemmy. And the ones that are not like this tend to be echo chambers for alt-right racist and anti-LGBT bullshit. It’s impossible to have a civilized discussion these days.

DLSchichtl, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

https://media.tenor.com/VUZb3A8zX6EAAAAC/harrison-ford-who-gives-a-shit.gif

Like really. Who cares about numbers going up and down. You have a nice little community here. Cherish it. Because more people rarely makes things better.

schema,

Exactly. It’s enough active users to have a stream of good content compared to what it was a few month ago. I’m enjoying my time here right now.

Prethoryn,
@Prethoryn@lemmy.world avatar

These kinds of comments are why my usage has gone down. There is an inclusive we are different vibe and this mentality that people just shouldn’t have an opinion if it doesn’t fit the Lemmy opinion. It’s just weird.

DLSchichtl,

Entirely self imposed. I see people disagreeing all day on here without issue, so I often wonder what tame opinion folks like you have that gets rejected whole-heartedly here. However, I tend to eventually find something nasty at the end of that particular hedge maze. Perhaps you need to take that overwhelming disapproval of your ideals, and reflect on whether or not the toxic path you have chosen is the correct one.

eee,

When you’re talking about an Internet forum, yes, more people makes things better.

The magic of reddit is being able to find a community for the most obscure niche interest ever. You can’t do that with just a few thousand tech-savvy nerds like us here.

DLSchichtl,

It sure made reddit better. You guys can’t go 5 min without bitching about “reddit culture” stinkin’ up the place. Guess what, more people ruined reddit. More people does not make a community better. Better people make a community better. As for the niche stuff, it’ll find a home. It may not be here, but it will find its place. Not everything on the internet needs to end up on a handful of sites.

eee,

More people does not make a community better. Better people make a community better.

Every community is going to attract good and bad people. With more people there’s going to be more good people AND more bad people.

Patches, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

Password reset is broken. I can’t get back into any of my accounts as a so I have to either lurk, or make a new one every time.

Soon enough this one will die, and Lemmy will lose yet another “another active user”.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That’s bad.

On which instances are you other accounts?

Patches,

So far just Lemmy world and Lemmy Ml. Reset password seems broken for all lemmy not just those instances. Here’s hoping I don’t forget this password to.

itadakimasu, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)
@itadakimasu@lemmy.world avatar

JFC there’s only 60k of us? And that’s a good thing? 😳

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

When there’s too much people on the social media site, it becomes noisy and unfriendly. I can’t remember any subreddit with more than 20k users being any good.

Quality > quantity

hitmyspot,

Yes, but larger variety of active communities is better overall.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

True, but it will be better overall with a small growth, not what we saw during reddit exodus. And this drop is just a logical end of this rapid migration, and now we’ll see a slow but stable growth in Lemmy usage.

EssentialCoffee,

Depends. My main community on Reddit was effectively a link aggregate for a niche hobby that’s well over a million subscribers at this point. And when the reddit blackout happened, it became extremely clear that there isn’t another community out there that aggregates just as much content as they have there.

Lemmy just doesn’t have the tools in terms of tagging and wiki to be able to replace what they’ve got yet.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

Tags would be so good for Lemmy actually. Instead of creating new extremely specialized community we could use tags to help those who want this kind of content find it in a less focused community, preventing segregation of small Lemmy user base. And when certain tag gets enough traction we would create a community for it.

Instead we have sorting mechanisms that actively punish small communities and big communities mostly driven by news (e.g. c/technology).

NuPNuA,

Some subs on Reddit were practically unusable due to the amount of users and the noise they created. Especially if you weren’t in an American timezone so missed the early chatter before everyone piled on. I’ve come to appreciate less users being here.

Peppycito,

There’s a happy medium between sitting in an empty bar and eternal summer.

cubedsteaks,

Exactly. More people need to understand that this isn’t a black and white issue. We need that happy medium.

CoderKat,

Yeah, especially since you could have smaller, niche subs on Reddit, but those largely don’t work here. The niche subs were some of my favourite.

There’s also some niche subs that need the site to be popular. Eg, AITA or BestOfLegalAdvice (which required LegalAdvice to be mainstream).

ToucheGoodSir,

If we had been 60,000 strong at Helmsdeep, Rohan would have fallen

wahming,

But how many MAU did Rohan have?

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, it’s not a good thing and I’m getting sick of people on here trying to gaslight themselves into thinking it is. The same people saying that this is good are also mocking X and threads for losing users. Nobody’s claiming that’s good for those platforms.

We want growth, more users and more instances is better for Lemmy overall.i don’t buy this arguments of “people are just not using their alts”, I mean fuck off, that statement was pulled from OP’s arse with nothing to back it up.

Blaze, (edited )
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Do you need to be so agressive?

Maalus,

I mean, if you are saying the sky isn’t blue, why not? A drop in users is a bad thing. Lemmy needs people and it needs content. This smells of the “good for bitcoin” meme all over again.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I edited because it seems it was too controversial, but anyway.

I commented saying that this should probably be a signal for people to start focusing on a few core communities instead of spreading like crazy.

It seemed that people were thinking that users would magically come to every community and make them active, but we are seeing the opposite. Which for me was a good thing because it would make people realize platform growth doesn’t happen magically.

Rambi,

Yeah I think people have what happened to Digg in their minds and think there’ll just be one single huge Exodus and Lemmy will explode over night, but that’s unlikely. We just have to keep trucking and overtime reddit inc will make more and more stupid decisions and each time Lemmy and the dedicated will grow a but larger. Not to mention Twitter is imploding even faster, maybe we’ll gain users from there.

Having a small community in the meantime isn’t so bad anyway, there’s less low effort comments and you can recognise people sometimes which is cool. There’s positives and negatives to both small and large communities.

cubedsteaks,

I commented saying that this should probably be a signal for people to start focusing on a few core communities instead of spreading like crazy.

I mean this place only really seems to have activity in meme pages, porn, and news.

Feels more like a well behaved 4chan instead of a well behaved reddit.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

There is !trendingcommunities to discover new ones.

But I mostly agree, you have to look up for content outside of those 3.

I tried to revive !personalfinance , !casualconversation and !moviesandtv, but that’s harder than planned

cubedsteaks,

yeah I’ve been using the lemmy explorer and most places are just one person posting into the void with no additional interaction.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Indeed…

patatahooligan,
@patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

The same people saying that this is good are also mocking X and threads for losing users.

These are not comparable. X and threads are businesses which maximize their profits by making their platform as big as possible. That is not true for Lemmy and even if it were, the average user does not care about the platform’s profits. So you can in fact make fun of the failures of big companies while being happy being part of a much smaller platform.

Rambi,

Also Lemmy is becoming a larger platform and Twitter- or “X”- is becoming a smaller platform. Sure total users might be down since right after the Exodus but that is obviously normal, a new baseline will be established that’s still significantly above the pre Exodus baseline. Then reddit inc will do something else stupid and people on the site will be talking about Lemmy again.

I think there’s positives and negatives to having a small platform, and there’s positives and negatives to having a larger platform. With a smaller platform, the quality of the comments in general is much higher with less low effort jokes which usually you’ve already read 500 times. With larger platforms, the smaller communities are much more active because there’s a larger pool to draw those people with niche interests from.

Die4Ever,
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

and people on the site will be talking about Lemmy again

honestly I wonder if it would be more effective to be talking about lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, compuverse.uk, beehaw.org… pretending they’re just their own things and not talking about Lemmy or Federation or anything like that

might be good to get some users to just signup to the given instance, and slowly realize they’re actually communicating with people from many servers and now they’re in the rabbit hole lol

Rambi,

Maybe, people do talk fondly about the days of forums that were dedicated to specific subjects with small communities where people all know each other and an instance can be much like that. Although sometimes what people actually want is different to what they really want, you know? Although I also do remember forums mostly too.

I think it’s still good to talk about Lemmy and the fediverse is still good, I joined Lemmy earlier this month and the way ActivityPub works was quite appealing to me and really made me want to switch. It was slightly unintuitive at first but someone described it as being like the email protocol where you can view emails from anyone even if they’re on say gmail and you’re on Yahoo mail/proton mail/ self hosted email/etc and that made it make complete sense.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

The average user cares about the health and quality of the platform though and a declining user-base is not good for either of those.

Sure, we don’t want to be flooded with millions of users either but that’s because we have a distinct lack of mod tools and features to deal with it. The solution is better tools and better ways of handling those users, not to keep the platform isolated and haemorrhaging users.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

This drop in users is natural though - not every person that got here with a hype train was expected to stay here, just like users who joined Lemmy just to wait until protests are over. Some users may switched from lemmy to kbin and are still with us, just using another software.

Before the exodux Lemmy was really empty. That’s why people are so optimistic about the future of the threadiverse.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

A slower growth trend would be “natural” as you describe it, but a drop in users should only be concerning at this stage, especially as the platform is still so young. Even a small amount of growth is still growth but a decline in users means more people are leaving the platform than joining it.

Again, you’re pulling explanations out of thin air - go ahead and prove that those users are switching to kbin over lemmy, use some data to back up your claim.

Or accept that we have a problem with adoption and as a community we need to fix it.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

User growth hasn’t stopped, check this.

Again, you’re pulling explanations out of thin air - go ahead and prove that those users are switching to kbin over lemmy, use some data to back up your claim.

I said “Some users may switched” - I claimed nothing.

Or accept that we have a problem with adoption and as a community we need to fix it.

Lemmy is improving, mobile apps are in rapid development, and seems good (never used one so am judging from what I’ve heard), communities are being created everyday. No one in this thread said that Lemmy is in perfect state and we have nothing to improve. If you have some ideas on how can we make Lemmy better, you’re free to share them.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

User growth hasn’t stopped, check this.

Are you referring to the graphs here? The ones that show:

  • Monthly Active users in decline
  • Daily active users in decline

Those graphs?

Sure, 6-monthly users is increasing (and plateauing) and people sure are posting more comments, but those graphs do not paint a good picture and do not suggest positive user growth.

No one in this thread said that Lemmy is in perfect state and we have nothing to improve.

That’s exactly what some people in this thread are claiming. Every time someone says “Good, less users is a good thing”, they’re saying nothing needs to change because that’s what they want. I am saying that is not the case and I stand by that.

Lemmy is improving, but it clearly needs to go a lot further to start attracting users again.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

Sure, 6-monthly users is increasing (and plateauing) and people sure are posting more comments, but those graphs do not paint a good picture and do not suggest positive user growth.

Yep, this graph basically shows that growth hasn’t stopped, it was just overtaken by the drop in Lemmy users. I will return to it a bit later.

Every time someone says “Good, less users is a good thing”, they’re saying nothing needs to change because that’s what they want

Only if it’s taken outside of context. Okay, I admit I shouldn’t claim “No one said that”, but in many cases people aren’t celebrating the decrease of Lemmy users. For example, OP clearly stated:

It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping. Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.

From my perspective, this decline is a consequance of a rapid growth during last months: people were promised with a new reddit, but they got lemmy, with its quirks and issues. Of course, some people weren’t satisfied with it - and when protests on reddit came to an end, they could finally abandon lemmy for the platform they were actually interested in.

That’s why I pointed out on the fact user growth never stopped - Lemmy’s still attracting new users, just people who weren’t interested in lemmy in the first place decided to leave.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

growth hasn’t stopped, it was just overtaken by the drop in Lemmy users

Can you explain to me how this isn’t a complete contradiction? How has growth not stopped while users have? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Are we saying there’s user growth or not?

That’s why I pointed out on the fact user growth never stopped - Lemmy’s still attracting new users, just people who weren’t interested in lemmy in the first place decided to leave.

I’m trying to understand your viewpoint here, but I’m just not getting it. Overall users are in decline, that’s not good. Sure, I have no doubt that we’re still attracting new users but we’re still losing users as well - more than we’re attracting. We’re at a net loss of users and that’s not good.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

You said Lemmy can’t attract new users at this point, I provided the evidence new people are this getting into the platform, it’s just that statistics is overrided by people leaving us since reddit became usable yet again. It’s one-time event though, just like reddit exodus was, so user growth will be positive again soon.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

You said Lemmy can’t attract new users at this point

Can you please point out / quote where I said this?

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

here:

but it clearly needs to go a lot further to start attracting users again.

from this comment

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

From the same comment:

positive user growth

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

Side note: OP did originally have the phrase “And that’s good for lemmy” (or something very similar to that) in the title of this post, but they’ve since edited it. I don’t know of a way of recovering what the original title said to be certain but it’s worth knowing this, as that’s a lot of the context behind this thread around why people (like myself) are decrying those that are saying it’s a good thing.

cubedsteaks,

You’re not the only one who saw that. I saw it too. In fact, that’s why I clicked the link.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the “good thing” part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as “it’s a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it”. That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

cubedsteaks,

oh in my feed I’m seeing this discussed a ton now. I didn’t think you were baiting.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That’s nice, have a good one!

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

Yeah, I saw it too. Seems like OP wanted to bait to read the post text and not just scroll away with dreadful thoughts.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the “good thing” part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as “it’s a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it”. That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

Lucia,
@Lucia@eviltoast.org avatar

It seems the discussion moved to a doomy direction though. People kinda just read the title and then say that lemmy is basically dead and we should move back, etc.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Well, that’s what I wanted to avoid by having a positive spin, but I got so much negative feedback that I changed it.

That’s life, I guess

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the “good thing” part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as “it’s a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it”. That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

Good, I’m glad you’re not actually trying to spin the whole thing

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Glad to see you’re glad!

Have a good one

prole,

A decline seems natural. Of course there are many people who came to lemmy to check it out, and not all of them stuck with it. That is to be expected, no?

cubedsteaks,

Okay but how do we fix it? Are we allowed to solicit on reddit just to get people here? Are Lemmy users even getting the word out about Lemmy?

This isn’t exactly the easiest platform to use. The term “instances” is probably intimidating to the average reddit user who has to do nothing more than type “reddit.com” to get to where they need to be.

spaduf,

I think the honest answer is to become active and solicit on Mastodon. Those users are not only far more open to the pitch of “Mastodon but with threaded discussions” but are far more legitimately engaged and active than Reddit users.

EDIT: Not to mention they can literally participate from their existing accounts. Super easy to get your foot in the door.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

Okay but how do we fix it?

I think you answer your own question -

This isn’t exactly the easiest platform to use.

I quite like lemmy, but the barrier to entry is far too high to enjoy the platform. Assume your user doesn’t give a flying monkies about federation and things like that, they just want the memes and content - if we can crack that, we might be onto something.

cubedsteaks,

I was just hoping for something more than a meme/news site.

You can get that anywhere. So Lemmy isn’t exactly standing out.

strypey,
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

@itadakimasu
> there’s only 60k of us? And that’s a good thing?

A centralised platform is a numbers game. The money for upgrading servers for growth has to come from one company, and if the platform shrinks it gets harder to get a return on that spending.

It just doesn't matter as much in a federated network. The cost of growth is spread across many servers. Some of which will end up shutting down, for a range of reasons. But others have room for growth.

(1/2)

@Blaze @Kushan @patatahooligan

strypey,
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

@itadakimasu
Plus, the Lemmy servers are part of a much larger network; the fediverse. Not just other forum apps like KBin either. Right now I'm replying to this from Mastodon.

I have an alt on a .nz Lemmy server, but haven't got into the habit of using it yet. So at least some of the perceived shrinkage is due to that, rather than any failure of the network. Also due to spam and troll accounts being purged.

(2/2)

@Blaze @Kushan @patatahooligan

Rambi,

Sorry this is unrelated, but how come your username says @null? Just curious

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

For me it says @strypey, not @null. Clicking on your comment’s Fediverse button to take me to your instance still shows the same.

Rambi,

Huh that’s odd. It must be an issue with Sync related to them posting from a Mastodon instance.

Tudou,

It does explain why all the niche communities I visit have gone from quiet to abandoned.

spaduf,
@spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

That and the sorting at this time really doesn’t allow for niche communities to grow.

cybermass,

This is one of the biggest issues with Lemmy right now.

I’m gonna keep holding out cause I hope that Lemmy will have improvements like sorting algorithms and mod tools and such, users have stabilized.

If the users keep going down I might have to go back to Reddit, a man can only laugh at the same Linux meme so many times.

cubedsteaks,

Same and I hate that I would have to go back to reddit. I like that I can have decent conversations here but I also miss being able to talk about niche shows I like and quote things with people. The niche interests that Reddit offers isn’t really on Lemmy.

Like I’m also no longer keeping up with my favorite radio show cause they have a sub Reddit and the people who listen to that show, aren’t the kind of people who can just switch over to Lemmy. They don’t know the first thing about changing platforms.

I already talked to someone else on here on providing my own content and being the change I want to see. But I’ve found so many communities where its just one person posting into the void and there’s lots of posts from like a month ago and zero comments on every single one. Some communities seem to be just people posting news links to other sites. Which makes Lemmy seem like a directory- not a community.

Blackmist, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

“This is good for Bitcoin” vibes there.

14specks,
@14specks@lemmy.ml avatar

Key difference is that Bitcoin people want/need their numbers to go up,up,up as a measure of success.

Here, we are hoping to cultivate a healthy community (at either/both the instance and fediverse level). From my experience on various subreddits, focusing on growth is not a good way to do this.

Communities are defined more by who is not allowed in than by who is in the community. Lemmy phase 2 kicked off back in June, and it still needs some time to find its footing at a sustainable rate of growth.

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

I said it somewhere yesterday, but community building is more about moderation and organic growth than it is getting everyone on board all at once. The threadiverse is fantastic but its also running on a pair of software with substantial bugs and basic features missing

SwingingKoala,

Key difference is that Bitcoin people want/need their numbers to go up,up,up as a measure of success.

Nah, you’re making the mistake of only paying attention to bitcoin short term when the price goes up, so you only perceive people who get in short term while the number goes up.

14specks,
@14specks@lemmy.ml avatar

If I’m making a mistake, I don’t think that would be it. I’ve been observing Bitcoin and its community since 2011.

echoplex21, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

I’m loving it here but yeah hope there’s a bit more engagement. I think the main thing people need to focus on is building up the more common communities. From there we can slowly branch out as more people join. If we spread out too thin we’re just going to get graveyard communities.

As we grow we can focus on expanding and getting more of those niche communities going .

Sackbut,

Maybe lemmy.world shouldn’t have defederated from the more active instances. I dunno. Seems counterintuitive to establishing a growing community.

Master,

To many small /one person / abandoned communities. People need tolbe posting more to the popular ones until more people show up. But just like early reddit days people wont.

rusticus, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

I can tell you the drop in active Lemmy users was NOT from hexbear and lemmy.grad. Those trolls are worse than the_donald was on the other platform.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

They are indeed very much active

alcoholicorn,
CARCOSA,
@CARCOSA@hexbear.net avatar
PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS,
@PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net avatar
ToxicDivinity,
@ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net avatar

Active users=bad trolls

Zrc,
@Zrc@hexbear.net avatar

jealous of our posting power?

thoro,

Might as well say Beetlejuice three times

UnicodeHamSic,

You know they were gonna make a seccond one?

thoro,

Think they still are but maybe that’s on hold with the strike?

UnicodeHamSic,

If it helps almost none of us are trolling

MrFagtron9000, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

The problem is that Lemmy never hit that critical threshold of users where I can just stop using Reddit.

Like one of my favorite subreddits - gaybros and askgaybros - zero activity on the fediverse, so I’m going back to Reddit for that.

PP_BOY_,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Same. Half my reddit activity was on r/femboysDM and sissykik2. How is lemmy gonna replace those??

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Lemmynsfw.com is getting some traction.

But yeah, otherwise that’s very true for a lot of niche communities.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Lemmynsfw.com is getting some traction.

But yeah, otherwise that’s very true for a lot of niche communities.

Chriskmee,

Yeah, if the sub was fairly small on Reddit it’s basically non existent here. I’m using both Lemmy and Reddit for now, hoping lemmy gets some good traction.

HawlSera,

I can’t go back to reddit, I was hit with one of their arbitrary bans

marathon,
@marathon@social.freetalklive.com avatar

@HawlSera Me neither and I was a paid subscriber. Good luck with their pending IPO, hope it fails miserably. @MrFagtron9000

Disgusted_Tadpole, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)
@Disgusted_Tadpole@lemmy.ml avatar

I believe the lack of apps (that offer 100% of what Lemmy on browser has) is also playing its part. Many people will return or be more tempted to come here when apps will come out. Some are ready with a million more well on the way.

Farman,

No. Nobody likes apps. People prefer their browser. This app thing corporate bullshit.

mah,

based take. and to this i would add: if it’s not on the open web, it’s not to be used.

Disgusted_Tadpole,
@Disgusted_Tadpole@lemmy.ml avatar

“Nobody likes app” Hm.

carl_marks_1312,

On Firefox Mobile when on your Lemmy instance hit the three dots > install

Kerensky1101,

Honestly, I didn’t really start using Lemmy until Sync for Lemmy was out. I know it’s a closed source app which gets a lot of hate around here but it is already very full featured and a great browsing experience. The developer listens to user feedback and is invested in making the app the best he can.

marathon,
@marathon@social.freetalklive.com avatar

deleted_by_author

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  • Kerensky1101,

    I actually don’t mind that it is closed source, just pointing out that for some reason, there is a lot of hate towards non-FOSS apps here on Lemmy for some reason. I’ve used Sync for reddit almost since it first came out so migrating to using it on Lemmy was amazing

    Tasha, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)
    @Tasha@lemy.lol avatar

    I’m quite new to Lemmy and I have to say I like it less each time I log in.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    What is getting worse according to you?

    preludeofme,

    There’s just not enough content posted, it takes several hours if not longer for top stories to pop up and that’s not even counting that I see the same posts over and over at the top for days. I get it’s smaller and such but it’s harder to really get into. I’m still here cause I’m not going back to Reddit but I just wish we could get more people in

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Which filter do you use, Active?

    Hot and Top 6 hours / 12 hours / day might work better

    Yerbouti,

    We all have to start posting more content and interacting we each other. I prefer to use the filter with “Top past 6 hours”, you get to see more new content.

    moonsnotreal,
    @moonsnotreal@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Brother you gotta post content

    thoro, (edited )

    After you scroll through active, use hot, use new, use new comments.

    It’s not going to be a direct Reddit replacement after just growing its userbase to that of a small subreddit.

    Tasha,
    @Tasha@lemy.lol avatar

    I don’t know if it’s getting worse,

    but the more I get to know it the less I’m motivated to be here.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    It’s okay, Lemmy is definitely not for everyone in its current state.

    If you are looking for communities, you can have a look at !newcommunities

    Tasha,
    @Tasha@lemy.lol avatar

    as near as I can tell the technology is great, but the people are horrible. Almost every interaction is unpleasant, and when I do get some interesting conversation going some troll reports me and an admin nukes my account. So I am not optimistic about the future.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I see, that’s unfortunate.

    I try to avoid communities with a lot of toxic / troll people (mostly politics and news communities), it’s working more or less so far

    Tasha,
    @Tasha@lemy.lol avatar

    If I only wanted to look at pics of cats then Twitter or Instagram would do just as well. If Lemmy survives as a forum for vacuous fluff then it’ll have to do so without me :-)

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    There’s a spectrum of topics between cats and politics / news. To each their own :)

    imaqtpie,

    I think Lemmy is going through some growing pains right now. Many of the integral members of the platform, the developers and admins, are overwhelmed with work, because the platform is still in an early stage of development and it’s not as functional as it could be.

    Additionally, the original servers are clashing with the new servers as they attempt to find common ground. A month or two ago, things were much more chill because people were just starting to explore. But now people have strong feelings about other instances and those feelings need to be hashed out. I am confident that we have enough reasonable people on all sides to reach a pragmatic compromise.

    I feel the vast majority of interactions I’ve had with people on Lemmy have been positive. I hope that Lemmy can be a space that transcends the toxicity of the discourse on other social media platforms. But it will probably take some time to achieve that goal.

    bloodfart,

    What are some of your old accounts?

    lemmyingly,

    Do you not feel the same is true with Reddit?

    • Downvoted perfectly good and reasonable comments. Some are the correct answers because you know a lot about a particular thing in the world.
    • Downvoted perfectly good and reasonable submissions
    • Reddit mods shadow banning your submissions/comments
    • Reddit mods deleting your submissions/comments and/or locking them.
    • People in general just being asses.

    I’m not saying that Lemmy is perfect but it feels like both can have a similar vibe. A lot of Lemmy people were/still are Reddit people and so it makes sense that both have similar vibes.

    CaptainStrider, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

    At the very least it’s less engaging than reddit. Makes it easier to scroll less frequently and focus on other more important things.

    Sunroc,

    Yeah, honestly outside of sports subreddits I have preferred the Lemmy experience to Reddit.

    creed10, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)

    commenting to show I’m still active lmao

    AdolfSchmitler,

    Lol. I came from reddit after 10 years. It was nice to see the lemmy connect app get an update soon after the influx. I’m still trying to get a handle on navigation but I’m hoping to become more active here.

    spaduf, (edited ) to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)
    @spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Regardless of where the loss in users is coming from the major takeaway here is that we are firmly in a reinvestment phase. This will likely last until Reddit does something stupid related to the IPO but in the absence of that we will probably not see a significant uptick in growth again without major improvements to the threadiverse as a whole. That means that those of us who are personally invested in the growth of the threadiverse should be taking this time to develop the tools and features necessary to weather the next wave more gracefully than the last.

    One of the biggest issue I see here is still community growth. Growing certain communities is significantly harder than others and if you don’t have a lot of crossposting potential it can be damn near impossible. As it stands, I do not see a way to fix this situation without a hot and active ranking system that takes into account the number of users active in the particular community. As part of a change like this I think we would be best served by consolidating a significant portion of the small dead communities. I think we should also strongly prefer specialized instances like lemmy.film or literature.cafe to truly take advantage of the special attention these sorts of instances are capable of providing particular topics. As it stands only a handful of them have enough broader threadiverse activity to be truly useful.

    Another thing I would like to suggest is a change in recruitment strategy. At this point it seems like we are unlikely to pull a significant amount of users from Reddit without more reddit-policy-driven migration, but there are tons of highly educated and engaged users over on Mastodon that would make serious positive contributions to the tone and quality of the discourse over here. For some reason there seems to be minimal overlap between the two communities and that blows my mind. Not only that but I actively see folks disparaging Mastodon in fediverse related communities on a regular basis (and even sometimes in the Mastodon communities themselves). As far as I can tell, these are largely lingering sentiments from a Reddit/Twitter dichotomy. Remember, as things develop the lines between threaded social media and microblogging are likely to blur. A significant number of Mastodon apps already provide a threaded view and one of kbins explicit goals is very much to bridge the gap. With this in mind, Mastodon (and federated microblogging more generally) seems like the best source for new potential users.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I think we should also strongly prefer specialized instances like lemmy.film or literature.cafe to truly take advantage of the special attention these sorts of instances are capable of providing particular topics.

    Definitely

    MBM,

    The small comms I’m subscribed to don’t show up in any sorting, I have to actually visit them to see there was a new post. I heard the devs are doing something to improve it, so hopefully that’ll make small comms more viable

    ShittyKopper,

    Another thing I would like to suggest is a change in recruitment strategy. At this point it seems like we are unlikely to pull a significant amount of users from Reddit without more reddit-policy-driven migration, but there are tons of highly educated and engaged users over on Mastodon that would make serious positive contributions to the tone and quality of the discourse over here. For some reason there seems to be minimal overlap between the two communities and that blows my mind. Not only that but I actively see folks disparaging Mastodon in fediverse related communities on a regular basis (and even sometimes in the Mastodon communities themselves). As far as I can tell, these are largely lingering sentiments from a Reddit/Twitter dichotomy. Remember, as things develop the lines between threaded social media and microblogging are likely to blur. A significant number of Mastodon apps already provide a threaded view and one of kbins explicit goals is very much to bridge the gap. With this in mind, Mastodon (and federated microblogging more generally) seems like the best source for new potential users.

    A thing to look out for is that the microblog fedi (outside the big handful of instances that fill .world’s role there) is strongly in favor of stricter instance-level moderation compared to the more “individualistic” view a lot of the Reddit migratees tend to have. If we want people from the microblog fedi to participate we (collectively) need to up our moderation game. (And in my personal opinion instances like .world have grown too large to accomodate any reasonable expectation of moderation, except for select individual communities set up there)

    spaduf,

    This is a good point. Maybe indicates that recruiting to instances like beehaw.org would be more effective. Once they’re here though I think that is exactly the sort of community that would be likely to take on moderator positions.

    Die4Ever, (edited )
    @Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

    stricter instance-level moderation compared to the more “individualistic” view

    I definitely think letting users block posts and/or comments from specific instances is way better than full defederation (maybe the instance admin could set a default block list for new users)

    but now I’m thinking maybe communities should be able to block instances too

    found a feature request for it github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3022

    ALostInquirer,

    If we want people from the microblog fedi to participate we (collectively) need to up our moderation game. (And in my personal opinion instances like .world have grown too large to accomodate any reasonable expectation of moderation, except for select individual communities set up there)

    Improved moderation tools would help, however are you familiar with the filtering/muting tools available on Mastodon/Firefish/Misskey? These, coupled with an ability by individual users to block entire instances, help relieve some of the need for more moderators to help by enabling individuals to essentially self-moderate/curate their experiences as desired.

    I think both improved moderation and individual filtering/muting tools would help greatly both to encourage microblog folks to join in, and make the experience better for those already here.

    lagomorphlecture,

    The standard web UI also needs major improvements. Nobody logs in through an app for their first time and first impressions are critical. It needs to be easier to navigate and use without downloading an app so people will stick around long enough to get involved and have a good time.

    spaduf, (edited )

    I actually think the web ui is fine but we all have our own blindspots. How do you feel about Alexandrite and Photon? I had good initial impressions of Alexandrite but some minor issues with Photon. Instances could just make those defaults.

    Xylight,
    @Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev avatar

    What issues did you notice in Photon?

    spaduf,

    Oh man this is what I get for running my mouth. I’m not sure if my issues are reproducible or if I can even remember well enough to go about trying to reproduce them. I know that’s not very useful and I apologize. I will say that I think a sans serif font option would be nice to have.

    Xylight,
    @Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev avatar
    spaduf,

    That’s probably just broken on my system then because it is definitely not using my system font. I’m on a chromebook if that’s useful at all.

    Xylight,
    @Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev avatar

    Is it fixed on phtn.app? I pushed an update that hopefully fixes this. It uses system-ui so hopefully it isn’t broken

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thank you so much for your work

    spaduf,

    Yep fixed now!

    Lyricism6055,

    Yeah I am a software dev and was even confused for a bit. Reddit has /r/all and things that make it easier to find subreddits, I still struggle with lemmy sometimes. Sync made it a bit easier, but I wish I could seamlessly browse all instances and their comments under 1 profile

    Sir_Kevin, to fediverse in There is a drop in monthly active Lemmy users (from 65k to 57k)
    @Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    lemmy.world being down half the time probably made a lot of people think that this platform is trash and left.

    TheMadnessKing,

    The number of times Lemmy.world was down made it unusable for me to use. Switched to Lemdro.id and it’s so much better now.

    Rambi,

    I am on Lemm.ee and haven’t had a single issue

    Dirk,
    @Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

    lemmy.ml was also down recently for half a day or so. But lemmy.ml was never knwon for being reliable, even it it works fine since some time now.

    BallsInTheShredder,

    Tbh it did affect me, I had just joined and it was out often, & it seemed like a hassle (being new) to find and join new instances or w/e especially when I had to create a new account for every one. Didn’t necessarily think it was trash just buggy and unreliable especially for that to be happening during such a big migration (after Reddit changed the api’s)

    Idk it’s nice here but that did reduce my usage. Something that I’m new on being down for a day or two means I’m less likely to use it the next day and incorporate it into my daily routine

    Turun,

    You probably figured it out by now, but you don’t need to create a new account for every instance. You can just go to www.yourinstance.com/c/[email protected] and comment or subscribe there.

    JTheDoc, (edited )

    I think a good third of what I have typed or posted so far on Lemmy has never succeeded as submitting them would cause it to stop responding and never compete. Refreshing will bring the page back up and allow me comment, but it’ll not work most the time.

    Their downtime has been pretty severe… growing pains, I get it, but it’s not just that.

    After several attempts at retyping it all, then trying to copy and paste to try to post again just got to me a bit. It’s taking a lot out of me as I’m personally struggling in life to try to communicate with people, with it being flakey all the time, it’s feels like when you have to repeat yourself, then just give up.

    It’s a shame because I wanted to post in me communities, but I couldn’t. I keep seeing “View reply” on my comments, but they frequently never load or just vanish. I do wonder if they’re broken/incomplete replies.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    You should probably move instance.

    github.com/CMahaff/lasim can be useful

    TimewornTraveler,

    you should have left lemmy.world a month ago. those issues dont happen elsewhere

    JTheDoc,

    You are definitely right that it’s not that common an occurrence on the other instances. But yes, I should have clarified these issues are with lemmy.world.

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