I feel like that is more or less to be expected. A ton of people found Lemmy during the reddit protests. Now that the protests are gone and Lemmy has had its growing pains some users are leaving, going back to reddit or other places. If we keep using it and making content users will grow organically.
Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.
Having recently jumped from the largest instance to a small unknown one, I will say that it’s nice not having to deal with downtimes roughly 20% of the time when I try to use Lemmy.
LASIM can copy your current subs to another instance, as others have said. I wish there was a way to migrate posts/comments over. I guess you could just link to your old account in your bio though.
I appreciate World’s transparency but it’s been a lot nicer on lemm.ee for me. Not having a way to kill time when I need to isn’t the end of the world but definitely annoying.
I don’t think it’s about a craving for centralisation but for newcomers and people still learning the core ideas about decentralisation it’s about a promise of more active engagement and more varied content.
And FOMO. New users gravitate towards the large instances because they think they will miss content, not knowing they can easily access said content on any instance as long as it hasn’t defederated from them.
I’m barely seeing any content at all, I often see a post click on the community and it shows either 2 other posts and nothing else or nothing at all. It constantly seems like the majority of posts just disappear into the void.
It is much much more of a pain to access content on small instances where it hasn’t synced yet. It means visiting those larger instances anyway to check if it’s worth subscribing to communities. And then trying to actually subscribe is a lesson in patience while it gives you no search results and errors out if you try to visit an unsynced community directly.
Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.
Because decentralization, at least as it is now, runs counter to what people are looking for in a social media platform; mainly discoverability.
Does it though? My instance has very little locally, but if I browse ‘All’ it really isn’t any different than being on any other instance, even a big one.
You are only shown what your server has stored. Your server only stores what people of your instance have subscribed to. If you visit bogger instances, they all have different Hot feeds, because each server pulls different content. There is no one way to see what is going on in all of the fediverse. You are only ever shown a part.
Sure but above a certain user count, your instance will usually have at least one subscriber to just about every active community. (I may have used a bot to help this process…)
It’s hard to find instances that offer what world offers, so I get it.
OTOH, I ended up moving or handing over most of my communities that I had created on world because this instance is TOO popular and bogged down all the time. Plus, they make arbitrary and drastic decisions without discussion on matters like defederation and often banning. It’s smart to go to a smaller instance but it’s also risky because any instance could go down at any moment. That’s why many of my communities are duplicated (across world and infosec) because it would be devastating to lose all of those quality links and engagement.
I think there is a gap in understanding how Lemmy works and how it differs from reddit, in particular with the less technical crowd. We definitely don’t want people sharing giant instances, but that matches more with the sign up for reddit, use reddit logic many people are used to.
I think it’s also why we have seen such drama over Sync for Lemmy and its ads and pricing. To the techy crowd that was the majority of Lemmy users, that all seems antithetical to what Lemmy is and how it works. To the people who came to Lemmy from reddit, and especially those who may have tried out Lemmy because of Sync, the criticism sounds maddening because that’s the way it always worked on reddit.
So in some sense all of this is expected. Lemmy will lose some users, but maybe it will find an equilibrium. The key focus these days imho should be outreach about smaller instances, and outreach about donating to your instance (if you can) to keep it running.
I think more people need to make communities they are interested in that might already exist on beehaw/lemmy.world/lemmy.ml/etc but on other instances. We really need to not keep everything on a few instances… I agree it contradicts itself. I tried by creating fallout but hard to get activity. Even its main community is quiet so that makes sense. I might try something a bit less niche.
There are a lot of parts of Lemmy that are rough around the edges or aren’t there at all. Hopefully it improves over time, especially as new front end apps can free developers to focus on the back end, but we’ll see.
It’s not that users want to centralize everything. It’s Lemmy’s design that promotes it, because despite federation, there are still advantages to choosing big instances and communities.
Joining the largest instance makes searching, joining, or opening communities much more seamless.This can be addressed by:
Improving the search so that it can find communities, or even content, that no one on the instance has subscribed yet.
Making it easier to open a community in your home instance.
In addition to Sub/Local/All feed, you can have a “moderated” feed (with communities selected by admins). The “local” feed is most useful for instances on a specific topic. But for very small instances, it’ll be too empty at least at first. So a moderated feed can create an on-topic feed that’s more lively.
For most topics, only the largest communities are large enough to have good content, so everyone wants to join them. To address this, you need some easy mechanism to subscribe to all communities on a topic. For example, we can let communities follow other communities. Then people can create topical meta-communities that aggregate content without centralizing it.
Interesting what do you mean? I use signal but I can’t get anyone other than my ex wife to use it with me. It is so much nicer than google voice or the texting app, regardless of the end to end encryption.
I like the idea of federated social media platforms conceptually, but ai absolutely want to make my home on the largest instances. That’s just an artifact of how I use social media, though, I always gravitate towards the busiest platforms because interacting with so many people is the real joy of it.
Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.
Is that any different on Mastodon and other Fediverse projects?
That doesn’t seem weird to me. Honestly it seems weird that it’s that active. I would’ve expected a sharper, quicker decline. Retaining active users is hard.
Exactly. Users who are involved in extremely niche communities will probably not find a place on Lemmy/Kbin yet. In 2008, reddit was the same. The politics subreddit only had 50,000 subscribers.
It’s all about momentum. The more users we have, the more engagement in niche communities, the more it’ll attract and retain users.
And loads of people hear the buzz, try it out and leave when they grow bored. I think the reason for the downward spike not being worse is that the threshold to take part in Lemmy communities is higher than many social media sites, and invested time registering makes people more likely to stay.
Just to chime in, please correct me if I’m wrong, but Lemmy only counts activity as someone who’s posting or commenting (citation needed), so as more people go back to their old ways of lurking, activity will drop as browsing isn’t counted as activity
Lemmy is a much closer analog to Reddit than Mastodon is for Twitter. While Mastodon has similar basic functionality to Twitter, it lacks a lot of the features that make it easy to find new content and new people to follow.
Pair that with some very polished third-party mobile reddit apps with large, loyal followings transitioning to Lemmy and it became way easier to abandon reddit for Lemmy than it was to leave Twitter for Mastodon. I’m a huge open source supporter, but the average user doesn’t care about FOSS or open source software. They want something that looks nice and just works.
I got super frustrated with Mastodon because of this. I’ve tried a couple of instances with no luck. And hilariously, I have to think that the furry folks are either having the same problem finding a home, or they are stalking me, because everywhere I move, shortly after, a ton of furries appear and do introductions. Furry stuff is not my thing, but I can appreciate how they might have a hard time finding a good place to settle.
until personal interest groups are populated people will not use this site. its basically 1 big meme sub right now with some tech and politics sprinkled on top.
It feels like it’s mainly talking one way or another about Reddit, or describing how one of the 3P apps is now available for Lemmy. The content is super stale, but it will grow. Fuck, Reddit back in the day was not exactly the thriving metropolis it was maybe six or so years ago. And reddit peaked and came down to how it exists today. So it’ll take time.
That being said, I don’t check Lemmy anywhere near as frequently as I did Reddit, and mainly because the subs I frequented most have smaller footprints here for now. Which is what you said, but in fewer words.
Lol what? Liftoff is fantastic, and FOSS. Are we blaming liftoff for the downward trend/lack of growth? Cause the oh-so-amazing Sync does not seem to have reversed it, to spite all the claims I keep seeing.
Not by a long shot. Connect is good, don’t get me wrong, but Sync has some major points that others usually just completely gloss over or ignore entirely–including Connect.
Like tablet-friendly UI.
And no, Infinity, “tablet-friendly” does not mean like 5 columns of independently scrolling content which take you to one big comment section which is a mobile UI stretched to screen size.
Tablet UI–let alone good, productive tablet UI like Sync has with pagination and all–is always overlooked.
I’m in the process of making some stuff, I just worry that the community I post it to on lemmy isn’t big enough to get the word out community-wide.
For context, I’ve been working on a very long dogelore thing. But in the same way, I feel like this hurts any bhj or mtcj stuff I might do. The community on lemmy isn’t big enough to get traction, so what’s the point?
I’m not going back to reddit, and discord is annoying, so it’s just a little discouraging.
The two biggest ones I know of are startrek.website for trekkies and blahaj for all things trans/lgbtq. But even those don’t see to have much activity. We need better advertisement to smaller communities somehow.
its not about the instances, those are actually hindering growth by dividing communities across instances and defederating them. lemmy is basically several copies of reddit in a trench coat pretending to be a social network.
For what it’s worth, memes have helped me stay. I doubt I’m the only one.
They’re quick and easy to browse and some get a bunch of topical comments and links to other relevant communities.
It’ll take a while to reach a level that’s known in the public eye like Twitter and Reddit, but the low-hanging fruit helps keep people interested while more niche communities are forming.
I’ve been posting on the HP and Tolkien communities and begun modding them too. I’d encourage people to post, and if necessary take up a little responsibility too.
exactly this right here. we saw the same phenomenon with threads and mastodon before it inre twitter annoying its userbase. depending on how engaged each wave of incoming users ends up, i’d guess you could expect it to look something like:
spike
drop off
plateau
spike
drop off
plateau above the last plateau
etc etc
sometimes the drop off is really bad. sometimes its just people getting bored with the initial hype while others stay. rinse and repeat until the platform succeeds or dies.
I’m not sure what else will be able to cause a spike again. Reddits behavior over the past month is pretty much as terrible as it can get. If people aren’t moving to Lemmy anymore, it’s going to take something apocalyptic to cause Lemmys usercount to grow again.
exactly. a little bit of elbow grease and greed is what got us all to the fairly awful future we find ourselves in, who’s to say it can’t get worse? never let the hope die. lol
I think there are a combination of factors intermingling, situations like the API backlash just jostle things a little harder and that’s when you see big spikes. Once a platform like Lemmy begins to see more and more traffic and, in turn, content, it starts to become a viable alternative.
Lemmy existed for at least a couple years before I joined, for instance, and I came with what I would guess was the biggest wave so far (June 2023). Provided the userbase can keep up a respectable momentum generating discussion and content, the next wave could be bigger or it could be more resistant to leaving because there’s enough content here to consume and interact with.
Reddit could take years to lose substantial portions of its userbase or it may shed some and stay solid, but Im not one of these people who obsesses over it’s ruin. If they survive long term, God bless, whatever, who cares. What’s interesting to me is seeing an alternative sprout up and actually generate traffic and start building a community, whether that’s Lemmy or something else built on ActivityPub or something else built on a different federated framework or even something else entirely that’s centralized… I think Lemmy is one permutation of this and it has undoubtedly got some traction.
I sometimes wonder if/when I’ll start getting random Lemmy links from people instead of ones to Reddit.
edit: I should also add that considering reddit is trying hard to get value on paper and probably still hoping to ipo, we probably shouldn’t put it past them be shitty once again at some point in the future.
There are also conscious efforts to weed out bots and other measures that try to remove potential cancer from spreading.
There was a post recently that outlined bot weeding efforts on a couple dozen instances that tanked user number by something like 1/5 - clearly visible on graphs.
Lemmy’s doing great. Even if plenty small communities are still not big enough here.
I started out looking for an exact replacement for Reddit (where I mostly lurk). Initially I thought the lack of content and traffic on Lemmy was a bad thing, but I now see it as early days of a community and lack of content means I have a chance to make a post or comment that is valued and gets engagement from other users. Reddit was so mature that anything I wanted to post was either already there, not welcome or buried under an ocean of other content/comments. If you use both you could even find good content on Reddit to crosspost on Lemmy.
It’s quite nice being part of a small community now. Even just an up/down vote from you will be worth more here. It’s great.
Just a joke. I used to just read the comments in reddit threads and be satisfied with the conversations already being had. The subreddits I usually visited were busy enough that I had plenty to read. Rarely did I ever feel like logging in to add something. (I’m also unoriginal, so if I thought of a joke I’d go find it in the reddit thread and upvote it, ha).
Lemmy has less comments, less to read. But I also don’t pointlessly scroll forever, so I guess that’s probably good.
Thanks for pointing that out! High quality content takes time to craft. It’s being skilled and/or knowledgable, being able to convey that across on a digital platform (where basically everyone’s anonymous and of unknown backgrounds), and being engaging while you’re at it. It definitely can be demanding for some.
I feel like people just want to hang out and talk about stuff. We don’t always need to be wowed by some crazy high quality content or new OC. We just want to hang out with friends and shoot the shit. Most of us are on here to distract us from whatever bullshit we should probably be doing instead.
Yeah it took a long time for me to finally curate Reddit to something I enjoyed using, I’ve started increasingly working on my filters and it just gets better and better here.
Like Reddit, I find trying to find communities I’m interested in a little difficult so I’m just defaulting to all and continuing to filter for now. At some point soon I’ll be able to just default to subscribed.
People are obsessing over numbers like bitcoiners do. Stop it.
Of course it’s going to die down after the novelty effect has passed. Do we aim for the “fediverse” to be as big (and as toxic) as the likes of 4chan, twitter or reddit? I don’t know about you, but I’m glad it’s not the same thing.
It’s a FOMO, bigger is better, kind of thing. I think some people came here looking for a replacement, which can’t happen, instead of looking for a community, which can.
It’s funny that you say that. Although it’s not I guess replacing Reddit in terms of scale, the browsing experience on Lemmy and that community feeling is actually an improvement for me.
So, I guess for me Lemmy is a more than adequate replacement. I don’t want all of Reddit here though, I think that would cause a whole lot more problems than it would solve.
Well, to keep a user is way harder than to attract his attention.
I think that the key differences between this platform(s) and the more known alternatives are part of the problem - people are very dumb these days and lazy. Often the first reaction to something new and not working in the expected way is to skip it, or demand the solution, rather than look around, try different approach and such.
I doubt it - too many people with different preferences they aren’t willing to let go, I’m afraid.
If you’re asking me, it’s “good enough” the way it is. I’d gladly have some more content filters, but even without them I perceive it as a platform with enough potential to consider it good.
I think those issues will be solved though. Apps will increasingly make onboarding simpler so Lemmy will be as simple to use as Reddit.
At that point really its just a case of waiting for Reddit to fuck itself, which it absolutely will do eventually via corporate greed, and there we go, all the Lemmy content anyone could ever need.
It harbors too many people, who go there for a specific content and don’t care about the internal dramas, or who leads the place and what he thinks about the userbase. In addition… Eh, it hosted Obama, Arnold, plenty of actors, celebrities.
My assumption is that it will simply evolve into something different, but no less popular.
After all, Facebook was caught redhanded on such abominable practices that it should be burnt to a crisp long time ago, and yet it’s still there, led by that automaton, what’shisname…
I mean Facebook is actually a perfect example though no? I don’t know anyone below 40 who uses it. Eventually people get fed up of these stupid websites and move elsewhere.
Reddit will be around just like Facebook sure, but somewhere else will pick up the slack.
In Facebooks case that was Instagram largely which you know, also they owned. In Reddits case it may be Lemmy it may be elsewhere, we will see.
But that’s the point I’m making here. Facebook didn’t fall and Reddit won’t either. It’s going to evolve, cater to different clientele, offer different content/experience. But it won’t fall.
I mean fair I guess we’re on the same page there then. But if it caters to a different clientele then the existing clientele will move elsewhere was really what I was getting at, and that may possibly be here.
This is both a blessing and a curse. Already there are some… less welcome, Reddit behaviors visible here. I’d rather people leave their old baggage at the doorstep, heh. 😬
I think I am on shitjustworks… i don’t know how big my instance is I just chose it because it has a cool name.
It has gone down a few times and at first my reaction was to go to is it down dot com to see if the problem was with my app… but then I had the realization that ohhhh, it’s just my home server is down… I thought about making a separate account on another instance but instead just decided to do something else with those few minutes I would have spent here….
No big deal…. It’s happened a few times in the couple months I’ve been here, but it always works eventually… I really like this platform, and the philosophy behind it, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to understand all the inner workings and how the instances work together, but I don’t feel like I need to.
But I can see how people who understand it even less than I do might get frustrated and so that is going to be a limiting factor with new growth here I would assume…
One thing that bugs me is people asking for/using tools that replicate the look and feel of Reddit instead of learning the ropes. I left Reddit, I don’t want another one. I get it, familiarity is comforting, but when the user base is a fraction of the other platform, no UI or app will ever give you the same experience. I say move on, get out of your comfort zone and participate.
FYI, Lemmy doesn’t count lurkers as active users. Here’s how Lemmy counts active users:
An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.
Also, this graph does not take into account kbin which is essentially the same kind of software as lemmy but tracked seperately. Better data can be found here: fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse
Also, instance hopping and users registering on multiple instances before picking only one/being active on only once may be an explanation.
Me as well. I only remember this because around July 1st there was a post about it, which lead to a wave of “doing my part by posting my daily comment to count as an active user”-comments.
So true. This is straight from Lemmy’s documentation:
An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.
In this case, I have a theory. I remember a month ago people were posting a lot on Reddit and the !reddit community was extremely active. It was like group therapy for refugees. But now the new reality is setting in and people are actually having real and meaningful conversations, which means more lurkers.
So it doesn’t mean that active users are down per se, it’s just that it’s stabilised because people are mostly over Reddit.
Absolutely, and also keep in mind that many who were lurkers on Reddit and came over here maybe made one or two comments immediately saying something like “Happy to be on Lemmy!” and then went back to lurking here and haven’t commented since. They would have counted as monthly active users for July, but not August.
Don’t you have an account on another instance? Lemmy.world was down a bit that one time. Lemmy.ca was down once briefly for me due to site maintenance.
I have a second account on lemdro.id. It’s smaller and mostly android focused but its my main account most days. If world is having issues I don’t even think about it I just switch over 😂
Between lemmy.world and sync having issues I almost went on reddit. Then I remembered this is the fediverse, jerboa and lemm.ee exist and I’m back and more active than ever.
I’m not sure why they’re not using elastic servers. Maybe because of the cost. Idk how Lemmy server dudes get their money, but it can be expensive running a server with 5-7 million visitors per month.
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