This is an expected statistical artifact given the “last month” aggregation and a huge influx of new users of which many don’t stick around. I am saying they don’t stick around, because that’s generally just what happens with a lot of new users (e.g. they checked it out, decided it’s not for them) and also due to the federated nature they might have switched accounts and similar things. Then the bit about “last month” aggregation: Have a look at the “Active 6 months” graph - it’s still trending upwards. Those are likely a trailing average aggregations, so a maximum is reached when that 1-month-window starts (roughly) at the beginning of the huge user influx. For the 6-month window that hasn’t happened yet, so still going upwards. Assuming nothing changes (similar amount of new/leaving active users) the graphs gonna be interesting in the next few weeks: After the initial wave of influx the balance was most likely negative (more users from “the wave” dropping out again than added users afterwards), however I’d hope it’s gotten positive since then. If that’s the case the graph should start trending upwards 1 month after the balance became positive. It’s unclear when that was the case, but some towards end of July might be a reasonable guess? The same graph with a smaller window could shed some light on that (or just expose useless noise ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ).
Another sign I’d consider good: The active user ratio is trending upwards.
Disclaimer: I don’t know how the data is aggregated, nor how exactly “active” is defined - the gist of the above very likely applies though. I was too lazy to look it up in the code - if someone knew how these graphs are aggregated and were so kind to let me know, that’d be appreciated :)
I couldn’t figure out how to log on here with my other Fediverse creds. Rather than, like, Google or something? I just created new accounts for each instance. I’d say it’s a boon for anonymity, but I used the same username, soooo
As of right now you can’t access the “front page” of each instance, so that would be a valid reason to retain several accounts (among many other perfectly valid reasons).
How you go to different servers is just by subscribing or following a link to a community hosted on another server. So !Canada is hosted on lemmy.ca instead of lemmy.world, but if you follow it on a web browser you might notice it takes you to lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
this way you haven’t “left” lemmy.world, lemmy.ca has no access to your credentials but you can make a post or comment there which is shared with lemmy.ca who posts it for everyone who connects to lemmy.ca to see.
The problem with lemmy is that it’s not 100% stable. I like it more than Reddit but at least 20% of time lemmy is overloaded, down, not refreshing or else.
Lemmy isn’t overloaded. Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml are.
People need to move to other instances. Lemmy was never designed to have main central instances. There are supposed to be many smaller and more specific ones and people choose the ones that fit their usage.
Yes and no. Bigger servers can see more posts and communities on other servers because of how the federation works. I have an account on a small instance and an account on lemmy.world, and my All feed has way more content on lemmy.world. I’ve also run into issues finding and subscribing to communities on the small instance.
If you’re on a large instance, there’s a much higher chance that someone else has searched for the community you’re looking for already and the server knows about it.
Less technical users aren’t going to understand any of this.
There always some issues. It was unusable a couple days ago for me. Whilst I can tolerate it for now, that’s a huge barrier for people especially newcomers.
That’s a problem especially with lemmy.world . They took the brunt of the Reddit migration and had to massively adjust their servers to accommodate the influx of users and communities. Other instances have been more stable
also the apps often have a lot of bugs or issues in general. i would love to use lemmy more, but Liftoff can’t even sort my profile comments by new. i click on it… nothing happens. and if i just quickly switch to another app (clicking a link that opens the browser etc), and come back… everything is reset and i have to search the post i was again etc.
because such things i don’t use lemmy as often i would like…another issue is that lemmy isn’t supported on older browsers and the devs just tell you to update or get another one… yeaahh nah thanks. not gonna switch or destroy my browser (newer browser versions are often shitty… just look at chrome who nags you all the time) just because of lemmy. so… i wait for this issues to be fixed to then be able to use it more. before this happens, the user experience is just too frustrating.
I know it’s like beating a dead horse, but sync is actually pretty fantastic and hasn’t skipped a beat for me yet. Connect I was afraid to comment on posts because it would refresh the whole page on me and lose my spot.
for most parts of old lemmy.world, it does. it’s the only way for me of using lemmy on my normal browser. before that i used the portable version of firefox.
Basic shit like linking to comments doesn’t even work on the website, let alone the apps. If I click the link icon on your post, it links to the top comment to it instead. Clicking Show Context on that page also does nothing.
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.
What opposition? I see folks complaining about excessive size of individual instances (mostly out of concern that power imbalances could develop), but basically nothing against the growth of the network as a whole.
I think the “infinite growth” here is referring to our expectations of some systems we use growing infinitely, even when the system itself is bounded by finite terms, such as population or hype.
For example, US Social Security works on the assumption that there are more people working and inputting money into it (via payroll taxes) than retired people taking money out. That assumption requires a growing (or at least very stable) working population, as a shrinking working population means that there will be more people taking money out than there are people putting money in. This growth, inevitably, will have to stop at some point. However, many retired people expect, and in some cases financially rely on, Social Security giving them money.
A large portion of the Fediverse have expressed their disdain for such systems, and molave here is finding it ironic that they’d expect this platform to infinitely grow, as well. The initial hype from the whole Reddit shenanigans are dying off, and the platform will soon stabilize, at least until Reddit pisses off its users again.
Despite popular misconception, growth is logistic, not exponential. Nevertheless, Lemmy is so close to the beginning of its growth cycle that it should look exponential for a long time yet.
I will admit, I was hard into Lemmy at first, but then gradually slipped back into the Reddit habit. This is my first visit to the site in a few weeks.
i think that's a very reasonable prediction.. furthermore, i believe it indicates that the people who try it, clearly WANT to keep using it.. this is a very good quality to have in this game..
Not surprising that the initial hype from the Reddit meltdown is wearing off, the question is how much momentum can be retained and how to attract users organically.
I think people who’ve only ever known reddit/instagram/twitter will find it dull, but this is still a relatively active place with quality users and mods.
The bigger and more reddit-like it gets the harder it will be to moderate and the more expensive it will be to run. Things are fine right now.
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.
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