Rant - it's always frustrating to see people considering 38k monthly active users as "no users"
6mon 2d ago by piefed.zip/u/Blaze in fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com from piefedimages.s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com
It's okay, if Reddit is what "has users" looks like, then I'm perfectly happy to have "no users" over here on the Fediverse.
It would still be nice to have more than one active poster on topics as general as
You're not wrong. I think we need to start de-specializing some in compensation on the Fediverse. Like maybe there's not enough content to specifically support a television community at the scale you'd like, but maybe there's enough content if we rolled them together into entertainment or media.
But also, no community happens out of a vacuum. If we want a viable community here, sometimes that means putting in the work of regularly contributing posts knowing fully well they'll be ignored and receive no engagement until doing so has proven enough continual activity that people feel worthwhile investing into.
But yes, in general I agree, it would be nice if we had a little more activity around here. But I'd still rather us be on the smaller size than the too large to manage size of Reddit, given the option.
You’re not wrong. I think we need to start de-specializing some in compensation on the Fediverse. Like maybe there’s not enough content to specifically support a television community at the scale you’d like, but maybe there’s enough content if we rolled them together into entertainment or media.
When I originally set up television on lemm.ee I made it the largest community on the instance within 2 months lol.
It works on its own
I think we need to start de-specializing some in compensation on the Fediverse. Like maybe there’s not enough content to specifically support a television community at the scale you’d like, but maybe there’s enough content if we rolled them together into entertainment or media.
This is a valid concern for other communities, but interestingly enough in the case of two two, there are enough posts and comments to still keep them separate, the issue is that most of the posts come from a single poster on each topic.
If we want a viable community here, sometimes that means putting in the work of regularly contributing posts knowing fully well they’ll be ignored and receive no engagement until doing so has proven enough continual activity that people feel worthwhile investing into.
Indeed, look at the weekly posts on fedigrow@lemmy.zip
Even some of reddit biggest comms like games, still have one primary user posting
Interesting, I never noticed
Ye, it's underestimated how many communities are reliant to one passionate enthusiast.
yeah also the r/MarsSociety community for example. mostly one user posting all the news article, though maybe 5-10 people actively commenting.
That's true, but I am not interested in any of those. I'm mostly fine with the topics here, and I'm happy that the idiots of Reddit stay on Reddit.
I don't post because nobody is posting there lmao
There are at least 5 posts a day on both communities, with usually 50-100 comments total per day
If you want to see an actual inactive community there's movies@lemmy.world
I think that says more about the state of movies and TV than it does lemmy.
Exactly. Assholes like that can stay on Reddit and suck more spez corporate bot cock.
I think it's more just that most of the users are bots or marketing interns.
Reddit has about 38,000 people on it, the rest are bits as far as I can tell.
Lemmy is reddit without the bot swarms
People are so stubborn that they're still using Twitter lol. It'll be many years before anything overtakes Reddit, I just hope it's decentralized
I don't need anything to overtake Reddit. We don't need one platform to rule them all. I like our small corner of the internet. I like it to grow slow and organically. And it's already decentralized.
I like it too, but it would be nice to have more than one active poster on topics as general as
This is what they mean when they say no active users. Effectively, there are no active users. (And yes, the problem would be solved with more active users but for anyone who makes the plunge, they come to a fairly barren alternative.)
You open asklemmy@lemmy.world and find random threads by all types of people, on all types of topics
Absolutely, there are some communities that have some users.
But in anything, even not so niche, its a ghost town. Half of Canada just watched baseball playoffs and even in the final round, the game threads had maybe 3 people.
I don't think denying the reality of a new user's experience is helpful. It's a frustrating and solveable reality (much like our economic problems) but approaching them clear eyes seems the best approach.
You're talking to someone who's active on football@sopuli.xyz , the most popular game on the planet, and where nobody really discussed the Euro final, one of the most prestigious tournaments worldwide.
Everybody is aware that there are topics where we miss people. I say it several times in this thread were people say they are happy with our current population.
I'm not, which is why the community we're in exists, its sole purpose is to get more people here.
All of that being said, it's still an unfair assessment to say that there are no users. It's frustrating, and that's why I posted it here.
To each their own! I think, especially to someone on reddit, we effectively count as no active users. I don't expect people to be literal especially when they are talking about the user experience. (Heck, myspace still has millions of visitors but in common conversation, almost everyone would call it dead.)
If we want more people, we should think about how others view us, and instead of being angry that they aren't being literal, maybe we can think how to play to our strengths.
I dunno, rants like this just feel like we're being angry at people for a completely reasonable take on the fediverse.
If we want more people, we should think about how others view us, and instead of being angry that they aren’t being literal, maybe we can think how to play to our strengths.
- https://buy-european.net/en/post/lemmy-a-decentralized-community-for-the-buy-european-movement
- https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1j49ucs/lemmy_a_decentralized_community_for_the_buy/
Post got removed by Reddit: https://rl.huuu.biz/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j0xkqa/lemmy_as_an_alternative_to_reddit_using/
The original text: https://www.reddit.com/r/BoycottUnitedStates/comments/1jrcrh6/lemmy_as_an_nonus_alternative_to_red_dit_using/
We've are thinking on how to promote the platform and do it every week.
A post like that gets 13 comments. People aren't interested in this stuff. It's tedious, it's boring, they don't care.
But when you post about the frustration of the process, you get 107 comments.
We've done the work, but nobody cares.
A post like that gets 13 comments. People aren’t interested in this stuff. It’s tedious, it’s boring, they don’t care.
But when you post about the frustration of the process, you get 107 comments.
Ha, very fair. For what it's worth, I imagine a good chunk of the comments are because, well, for me at least this got caught up in the "hot" sorting, which then snowballs things.
Conflict etc generates clicks and engagement, even on alt social media!
Appreciate you trying to do the work! For my part, my hackles go a little on edge whenever I see what feels like another fediverse user blaming the normies for not hanging out for our community despite being rich in Star Trek/linux/bizzare memes and (sometimes extreme) Leftie politics.
I imagine a good chunk of the comments are because, well, for me at least this got caught up in the “hot” sorting, which then snowballs things.
That's probably what happened.
Next time I'll just rant in the Matrix Fedibridge room.
To be fair, I'm the main sustaining poster of television@piefed.social and I hate superhero stuff.
Superhero movie kids aren't on Reddit, they're on Instagram or Tiktok
I agree, however we are currently shrinking not growing
Just FYI, lots of instances are implementing anti scraper/ai tools so the numbers are going to look wacky depending on the tracker.
Where can you monitor it?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
you can also count Mbin and PieFed, but they aren't as big
Comments have been rising but users decreasing, could this be that people have settled to one account or that bots have made more comments?
Also the wave of speculative users and tourists who were only ever going to just check it out has died down while the actually invested users have settled more in.
It's not about how many people are here, it's about how engaged those who stay are.
True, I think as long as the comments are not from bots it’s looking fine. And I haven’t noticed anything like that here.
I have no doubt there is some small level of bot and other bad actor infiltration here on Lemmy too, but the big difference is there's no incentive for any sort of authority to quietly endorse said bad actors. To me the difference is that while the reddit community hates bots, Reddit loves bots. We are the community here, for the most part, so the dichotomy doesn't exist.
It would be nice to know the ratio of users/bots in X, Reddit, Facebook, ... and the Fediverse. I'm pretty sure we would be surprised.
All forums can be used to influence general opinion. If there were more users here I’m sure there would be more pressure trying to get past the current safeguards. What do you think about the bot situation here?
I've seen some LLM bots here... its getting weirder...
Someone mentioned nodeBB in the Reddit thread: https://nodebb.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
The numbers seem odd, 1@activitypub.space do you think they are accurate?
most of that seems to come from https://nodebb.fediverse.observer/community.sketchucation.com
Thank you, that would make sense. Not sure if any of their communities federate with any other Threadiverse instance
no users. Lets stop pretending we can fix this by moving to yet another different platform
"We can't fix the 'no users' problem by adding more users"
I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas. Whaa.
if all the people who said this actually went on Lemmy/PieFed and started leaving comments on posts, they would have nothing left to complain about
As if complaining with no power will convince capitalists to make changes.
These people just love to complain that Reddit doesn't listen to them, but they still sit at the trough when Reddit ignores them. Why should Reddit spend good money trying to appease them if they aren't even going to threaten to leave
IMO someone looking to be fed a constant stream of content will always be happier with commercial platforms. Someone looking to participate in a community or have discussions can be convinced to come to the fediverse.
there are more users than i could ever talk to. that's plenty.
That's an excellent point. I don't think I've ever spoken to you before and I'm always meeting new people other places
for sure! and i'm often updooting your posts, which i enjoy, even if i've not yet commented!
Glad you like them mate 👍
I only block jerks and there are more every day!
That’s how I know this particular social media is growing.
38k is more than enough activity for a plateform to be lively. Especially when those user are spread across the world, allow for content at every hour.
That's one thing I love about the Fediverse. Over on Reddit, if you belong to the 38k, you're a rounding error. Here, you're a significant part of the community.
Like complaining about the number of people on the rafts versus the Titanic. You can stay there if you want, but you are never going to "fix" a platform that you don't control.
Their loss, Lemmy is great. Everyone's been pretty good so far, even when I'm being the annoying-preachy anarchist in a lib/nonpolitical instance. That and Sync for Lemmy have made it a pretty pleasant experience.
I'm astonished that reddit it still going after all the decent users left en masse a few years ago.
I like that it's small enough that we all probably know who the thorn guy is.
I think I've only ever been banned from one community, and it was an NCD clone run by the reddit equivalent sub.
The fact that you can say pretty much anything here is probably lemmy's biggest advantage, despite it being such a low bar these days lol.
Insert rant against dichotomies: this stinks "it's either as big as Reddit or empty" from a distance.
My best experience with forums was one where we celebrated the day we got 300 users at the same time. It still felt vibrant, active, nice to be there. In comparison with that forum, 38 000 monthly active users is huge.
Plus those muppets behave like they really want to wallow in their own misery.
My best experience with forums was one where we celebrated the day we got 300 users at the same time. It still felt vibrant, active, nice to be there.
Indeed, even with 20 active people you can already have a vibrant community.
Yep!! I grew up on message boards like that, it was lovely. You don't need that many people and IMO the small end is better
More real users than Reddit
Especially when each Lemmy user is valued at 342 times the worth of a Reddit user.
How dare you insult all lemmings with that low estimate haha
Are you saying that comments like came here to say this take my upvote who's cutting onions saving this for later laughed at this harder than I should have tell me you're x without telling me you're x not all heroes wear capes sigh unzips pants thank you for the gold kind stranger are somehow less valuable than a genuine human thought?
Preposterous! Laughable!
But moving would literally solve the number problem. That's how Reddit got big.
No but see stop proposing that, it would be bad for spez
Don't feed the trolls. They don't need to be here anyway
I've found more genuine and enlightening conversations here in two years than I ever did in Reddit. They can have that trashcan. I'm having fun here without them.
By the looks of some new accounts, I wouldn't want them here, either.
Personal experience: the smaller group is, the more friendly and stick-together group will be.
Reddit had bots for a fucking long time. And since they allowed to close up user profiles post/comment history, tracking who is who became harder. There is no way that wasn't by design, it most certainly is. There is no secret that reddit is in cahoots with LLM companies. They will use (or already are using) bots to populate their site and probably will skew public perception in a desired way using bots.
Not like Lemmy has no bots. But it's so much more peaceful here.
I wouldn't mind seeing Lemmy grow further, but I hope it never reaches the levels of current day Reddit.
I don't want to see a single server grow to the size of Reddit. I wouldn't mind the network as a whole growing to that size, though.
I suspect that if the lemmy side of the fediverse did grow to the size of Reddit we would probably see a lot more fragmentation than we currently have.There'd be upsides and downsides to that.
Also commercial platforms try to maximize their user count so they can sell more ads.
Meanwhile, fediverse has little interest in increasing its user numbers, because we don't generate money from it. In fact, more users would probably mean (slightly) higher infrastructure costs, though i'm not sure how much they actually are or whether one could consider them "negligible".
Anyways, if we had more users, we'd also have more diverse content on Lemmy, and i would definitely appreciate that. Honestly, it's a bit sad that 50% of the posts on the frontpage are about US politics, but i guess it's just a topic that gets a lot of traction because it affects a lot of people and also because there's not so much other content on the platform yet. I hope we'll get more communities about somebody's fringe favorite topics. :D
-sigh-
Create an instance that’s nothing but tons of bots bullshitting eachother and include them in the numbers. You know, the ways all the other companies lie about their user count.
yeah, really shows the absurdity of the metric of "user numbers" xD
you'd think the companies buying ad-space would catch onto that...eventually, but apparently not? guess in a bull market $ is infinite anyway, so who really cares just pump pump pump
The stock goes up when you buy ads. That's all that matters.
No users. Let's not fix this by not moving there. 🤯
their loss...
Centralised platforms trying to be all things to all users are a terrible idea.
FOMO is a weird thing. Sometimes I get in moods where it's like, I don't want to watch a movie from 10 years ago, it's not relevant and no one is interested in it anymore. Or music, or whatever. We're actually hardwired to go along with the crowd, to want to be part of the bigger crowd, etc. So cheers to all you who chose this less-trodden path, or just got banned enough times on Reddit to take the hint 🍻
It's frustrating to see people considering 4 upvotes something to be frustrated about.
Drives me nuts with games too. Some games NEED a huge userbase for balance and ELO and whatnot, but it's always wild to see a solo or team-based PvE game billed as "dead" because it has only 5k concurrent players.
If it is a skill based PvP game it needs a constant inflow of new users or people that are just permanent bronze and happy with that. It's considered "dead" by those players that have peaked at gold or platinum and angry at a team mate that they lost a game
I'd rather take 38k active monthly users than the maybe 20 non-bots and 3 billion bots on their landfill they call a garden.
quality > quantity
hard not to read this as misogyny...
Indeed, comment has been removed. Do not hesitate to report similar comments in the future
oo, thank you!
Maybe its just my opinion but I personally wouldn't reccomend piefed until they get a bit more stable, they have a few more pressing issues rn than users
What issues are there now? It's been very stable for me for a while now.
The development style just feels like they're trying to add all the features of Reddit before they even finished with basic moderation or even just one single app that uses any of the features, it just makes it feel unpolished
The API allows the same mod actions than Lemmy's: https://crust.piefed.social/api/alpha/swagger
- remove comment as mod
- ban/unban user
- lock posts
The apps support of mod actions isn't there yet (Boost is the mod advanced: https://piefed.social/community/fediverse/wiki/piefed-app), but that's on the apps devs rather than Piefed's
Never mind, you got the message across and 13 people agree with you.
FWIW, I would not advertise a single instance though. Maybe more sth like this: https://lemmyverse.net/
I've tried several time to point people to instance choosers, 9 times out of 10 people reply "I don't want to have to choose, can't you just suggest one for me?"
That's why I ended up pointing to that one.
Also, Piefed has quite a few features that Lemmy currently misses: https://join.piefed.social/features/
i think lemmy shouldn't devolve into a feature-bloated monstrosity.
i've made the experience consistently in my life that the software that's still around after more than 30 years is mostly the software that's very simple and stable, no new features added after a while. Consider linux command line programs like wget and mkdir. Programs should do one thing and do it well, i believe.
meanwhile feature-creep slowly kills programs like cancer. consider notepad which got tabs, dark theme, and now it's a 300 MB memory-consumption electron-based web browser with a text editor.
Crosspost comments consolidation comes up regularly as an issue, Piefed solves it: https://piefed.zip/c/fediverse/p/668091/the-problem-of-cross-community-posting#post_replies
Same for actual instance blocking
Lemmy 1.0 will offer similar features: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/3386
I think advertising a single instance makes it less confusing for the Reddit users, if you give them a link to make them choose then they get analysis paralysis
But when you drive everyone to one instance you end up with things like mastodon.social where they're nearly 50% of the whole, which is decidedly not good. I dunno if lemmy/piefed has that problem or not though. As long as everyone isn't suggesting the same instance it should be alright
lemmy.world is the biggest in the Threadiverse by FAR, as long as we aren't suggesting that instance then it's fine
piefed.zip (the one Blaze suggested) is a drop in the bucket of the Threadiverse population, it's relatively small
https://piefed.zip/abouthas 105 monthly active users
lemmy.world has 14500
I could point 10k new joiners to piefed.zip, it would still be smaller than lemmy.world
Maybe the issue is the lack of full portability. If an instance die you lose all your content
Your content is still federated on other instances: https://piefed.zip/c/movies@lemm.ee
analysis paralysis
ooh I like that term, I'ma use it. Funny thing, I'd been on lemmy for over a year when I decied to make a mastodon account to participate in watch parties. I understood the basics of federation. and I KNEW it didn't really matter what instance I made an account on, but it still took me over a month to make an account because of analysis paralysis.
All the new users made Reddit objectively worse. I am not looking forward to when or if Lemmy ever blows up.
this guy this guys, internet stranger. pics or it didn’t happen, include me in the post.
that’s wild.
tHaNkS fOr tHe gOlD kInd sTrAnGeR 🤓👆
Edit: OMG THANK SO MUCH GUYS FOR THE uPdOOtS!
(sorry for the cringe reddit comment imitation)
I mean, for something that is meant to provide cotent for near-every niche or interest out there, it is nearly nothing. On Reddit, both Dota2 and War Thunder are more than half-way there every week, and those are both niche, and not particularly topical. Frankly, for the average user, Lemmy doesn't have enough content to be relevant.
Dont get me wrong, I'm still here and still hopeful for the Fediverse's success but blaming the user and pretenting the problems don't exist isn't helping the problem, and instead just makes us look like elitists and assholes. We're the ones trying to make a product for them, not the other way around. If you want the platform to be appealing to standard users, stop whining, and start posting more or otherwise contributing more to the platorm.
It not having the people to be a place for you is perfectly acceptable reason to not be interested, but dismissing near 40K people as nothing is just wrong. That's the population of a decent sized town.
We’re the ones trying to make a product for them
I really hate this language. I'm trying to build a community, not make something to be profited off.
While I mostly agree with you, I'd argue that a "product" isn't something that necessarily involves any sort of capitalist fever dream of something to be sold or profited off of. A "product" is, at the end of the day, a quantifiable result of work, and Fediverse software is arguably such a thing.
If you want the platform to be appealing to standard users, stop whining, and start posting more or otherwise contributing more to the platorm.
That's... what I'm doing?
The "you" was meant to be a more general you, rather than you specifically, although my point is the same. Launching a social media site is a herculean task, and requires the effort (or funding) to match. Its up to those trying to establish the platform to put in the effort, not the ones we're trying to "sell" to, and insulting or blaming them just makes us look like assholes.
insulting or blaming them just makes us look like assholes.
On the other hand, sharing the frustration on spaces like here can help people who feel demotivated.
As you said, launching a new platform is a herculean task, and there are only so many of us (around 4 or 5 people) trying to promote the platform.
Finally, the person quoted here is probably never going see this post.
blaming the user and pretenting the problems don't exist
Good thing no one did either of those things
More users don't necessarly mean more niche communities users
Seriously, this platform is far from dead. Lemmy is not quite the same depth of niche content as Reddit was, but it's certainly usable. If you can recognize Reddit's practices are a problem then with a bit of effort there is another option.
I think it's already too much.
San Marino Monaco and Vatican 👀
The only subreddits I would consider worth looking at are under 38k monthly active users. We could do with more non political content though.
I mean, 38k just means 34,2k bots and 3,8k actual users
The ratio of bots to humans is significantly better on lemmy than on reddit. In fact that's another reason that the dork in OP is wrong about "no users," because absolute numbers don't matter very much if you're interested in conversations with actual human beings, what matters is the likelihood that it's just bots responding and upvoting (or the opposite) and with reddit your odds on that are shit.
Not really. The user-to-bot metric is way worse on Reddit, I'd imagine.
Are there really that many bots on lemmy? I really only ever notice the couple RSS bots that float around between me blocking them.
Occasionally I'll see one acting up and filling the frontpage with spam but Beyond that I don't see many. There are a few users I suspect are chat GPT agents, but that's gonna be an issue anywhere.
1010010001010101!!!
It's not. You can pretend all you want but this place is mostly just reposts and three pugsjesus and butterfly in trenchcoats.
I see you pushing the same incorrect narrative regularly, https://piefed.zip/post/687843#comment_2347822
If you are so unhappy with this place, why are you still around?
It's not reddit. "You done don't like it then git out" 🤣
Just seems weird for you to still be here while at the same time saying that the platform is just reposts by 2 people.
I apologize for having some objectivity about the number of users and content while using the service. Deeply sorry.
Yeah, it's fine to be critical - but if you just dislike it and have zero hope for it - why stick around?
Because there are obviously good parts to it?
Doesn't mean they can't complain.
They don't seem to act like they find anything good about here.
As someone who's in a similar position...I like the technology and the idea of booting tech billionaires. I don't like how the userbase here is so monolithic, and this comment section makes me think people here like that this platform is a circlejerk.
Not a fan either of the "I don't want more people" when this community is literally dedicated to promote the platform.
But the vibe is really community based, in the majority of the community I participate it it's still good
It's not reddit.
Seems like intensely faint praise.
Errmmm... there's definitely only one me. I just checked and I'm definitely alone