It’s quality and quantity. The quality has held despite a drop in users. Just wait and let Reddit have another controversy and we’ll get another infusion of converts. Popularity may only threaten more bots and scams.

I’m feeling very burnt out. Lemmy is kinda an endless stream of political doom and gloom. For context, I’m in the US and already stressed out by our political situation. But I don’t come here to see more doom and gloom. It’s getting to the point where I think I need to get off for my mental health.

Then there are all the people who if you don’t agree exactly with their opinion they downvote you to hell. You have left leaning politics but not my flavor of left? Downvote! You hate enshitification and big tech privacy practices, but you use a single piece of software that isn’t FOSS? Downvote!

It’s so exhausting. I absolutely hate Reddit but I miss going on there and just laughing at how someone’s TV is too high. I miss laughing at how some restaurant serves food of shovels instead of plates.

And that’s not even getting into the lack of content. That part I understand requires users like myself to be as active as possible. But it’s hard being active when I feel so burnt out from the other stuff here.

Tbh, idk if these issues are specific to Lemmy or just the internet as a whole. I can only speak to the slice of the internet I find myself in. But I just wanna see people that are excited about things: photography, 3d printing, weird keyboards, etc. And that exists here, but it’s drowned out by all the doom and gloom.

Is this strictly Lemmy or does it include related platforms like PieFed and Mbin? Because it seems like there has been some shift to PieFed

Hot take: the biggest issue is actually ever entering a community and seeing zero comments. Most reddit addiction stems from wanting to read comments, so I think people should add a comment to something if they're upvoting and they see that the thread has zero comments.

Nothing eliminates enthusiasm like seeing 0 comments on every post in a community, especially if that community is driven by bots.

Just talk up Lemmy, the issue is most people doesn't realize there's another option to the popular toxic trash fires.

…I am drifting away from Lemmy myself.

Political communities are echo chambers like Reddit, in a different color. Discussing tech or helping others is better, but still feels like talking in circles.

Wholesome subs like /c/SuperBowl are sublime, but I mostly lurk there.

Information hygiene is awful. Big subs upvote tabloids and Tweets to the sky, as long as they align with their beliefs. I just saw a discussion on a not-obviously AI generated photo with the community sentiment of “misinformation? Who cares. It’s a pro-lefty meme, so spread it.”

Anyway, all this scrolling and impulse commenting eats time. I get the same feeling of shouting into a black hole that I get on corporate social media.

---

Much of this is my fault, though.

I have several niches I intend to make original posts for, but never do.

It’s somewhere in the giant pile of my IRL executive dysfunction :’(

I'm a very new user who wanted to give this a chance, here are the friction points from my point of view:

1. The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn't help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.
2. Content discovery sucks ass. My feed stayed mostly the same since I started using Lemmy. I'm presented the same shit over and over again. I'm not sure if it's something that I do wrong, if there is just no content or if that's a side effect of 'no tracking at all' but either way the experience is just bad
3. Someone in here already said it, but 'Lemmy' is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn't bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I'm not sure I'll stay.

In short the user experience is abysmal.

From my own experience with Lemmy, I can absolutely see why it's declining.

Lemmy is packed full of miserable people constantly calling for violence. 90% of the feed is packed full of US politics, it doesn't matter how many filters I use I still see that greasy orange cunt's face every time I open Lemmy.

The amount of hostility towards outsiders just getting into Lemmy is astounding, and I've absolutely seen the whole "quality over quantity" crap that only drives people away from the platform. The IT tech snobbery is also incredibly offputting to people who aren't tech enthusiests.

In short, Lemmy has a toxic shithead problem that a platform this small can't afford if it wants to survive long term.

I've been using Lemmy less because it's so depressing. It feels like a majority of the engagement is with depressing US politics and a strong left bias (to be clear, I also hate the current government). Unlike most, I really like most of the nerdy tech content.

Which is why I've been lurking more on Hacker News lately, it's tech minded forums with an appropriate level of politics and more nuanced takes. And as a bonus the interface even less bloated (in terms of resource usage) than any Lemmy frontend I've tried.

Part of the issue (I feel a large part ) is that the learning curve is too steep to get on Lemmy

Now I'm not saying it's hard at all; but it's significantly higher than simply "go to a main page and create a user name and password". Lemmy needs a sign up page that just random signs you up to an active instance (per the instances permission) and automatically subscribes you to the 50 most active instances to just get you started up.

Making a getting started page that's as idiot proof as any .com would probably go a long ways into upping our numbers here.

Here is my super unpopular take: ultimately you / some / we have misunderstood "quality over quantity".

It doesn't mean "we don't want more users", it means that the best way to attract more users and growth of the platform is to focus on being the best fediverse we can be. Actively trying to attract more users is a foot gun - even in the unlikely event you're successful, you reduce the quality of the experience for everyone.

Focusing instead on the health, vibrance, management, and activity of the platform is the best way to attract more users.

Perhaps another way of saying the same thing: the most fertile market segment are those users who used to be active monthly. They were here trying to participate at some point but lost interest. Why? Pretty solid guess is that they were still logging in to reddit for the special / niche interest subs, and after a few months got sick of checking lemmy.

IMO, dead special interest communities are the cancer consuming the fediverse. Nothing wrong with a small active community, but a small community with a half dozen posts from 3 years ago is a big sign saying "go back to reddit, this place is dead".

I posted in an ADHD community about how I'm fed up with managing my symptoms and I think I finally need to talk to a professional. Someone tried to blame my symptoms on capitalism.

As someone who simply left Reddit because they took away RIF and only stays here because I'm stubborn, Lemmy is the left wing version of Truth Social. A great deal of the users here are the absolute embodiment of the people from Sanfrancisco in South Park huffing each others farts about how progressive they are.

Like, I get it and I do agree in principle on most things with Lemmy which is the only reason I dont leave, but make no mistake THE FEDIVERSE IS AN ECHO CHAMBER.

I'll commit to commenting more. I prefer to lurk, but the fediverse needs me 🤣

I've been here a few years now and I can say Lemmy's got issues. You can't come on here and have a good time anymore when all it's about is trump trump trump and Linux Linux Linux it gets old. I wanna escape from reality a bit sometimes and there's few areas to subscribe to that gives any joy anymore.

It's not that we're missing more user, but rather that we are missing communities where people would come for the community specifically.

Lemmy is filled with people that want something that is reddit without being reddit.

We will start winning the moment we have communities were people join Lemmy to be part of said community.

I have been noticing a drop in post/comments diversity and quantity. The diminishing users is something noticeable and sad.

We're in times where we need to seek alternatives to big tech more than ever, and yet, people don't seem to care :(

Just wait for Reddit to finally ban porn and we’ll have more users than we know what to do with

I'm here, I just never comment :3

Lemmy feels like a return to the old internet, when communities were smaller, and for me its refreshing to be able to participate in communities on major topics again without getting drowned out. It harkens back to the days of early forums and message boards, where users gathered around shared interests and discussions felt more organic.

As a developer for a Lemmy app, recently I've felt Lemmy become more and more fragmented resulting in a poorer than usual user experience. And the base user experience is already poor. I'm mostly just venting but man is the fragmentation annoying to deal with as a developer and as a user. :/

After trying to convert a friend who heavily uses reddit, multiple times, I recommended him again the other day to leave the hellsite (reddit).

I didn't recommend Lemmy but have a while back.

He himself specifically brought up that he 'didn't vibe with Lemmy as much as reddit' and that he believes he would 'miss stories he would otherwise have liked to see' by switching to Lemmy.

Reddit has kept him more up to date than not over the past year - he believes had he not been using reddit he wouldn't have found out about [specific events in iran] as early as he did.

The other main pain point I've encountered is the small and niche community problem, which I'm sure we are all aware of - certain information feels like it can only be found on such small subreddits.

Therefore I have two suggestions:

• create a Lemmy instance that mirrors reddit, rather than have bots post reddit posts onto main Lemmy instances, create an instance that mirrors specific subreddits on request, including the comments of their posts, and allows Lemmy users to comment and reply back, where those comments are also propagated to reddit so that replies and discussion are mirrored also.

This would struggle due to reddit API and compute power requirements but the subreddits on request and a specific instance for these posts would eliminate the bot spam problem from earlier attempts at the same thing.

• potentially allow the user to associate their reddit account with the instance so comments etc can proliferate without bot recognition.

The other suggestion would be:

• set up trackers for major (and newly popular) subreddits, tag posts by priority, and use this set of posts to determine what content and types of content are missing, but don't just automatically post everything as the spam problem gets out of hand.

Finally, my biggest gripe with my Lemmy use is the constant instance wars.

I have had my comments removed for being rightfully critical of Israel by lemmy.world mods. They appear intent on recreating the problems of reddit here.

While (I think) I totally understand what you are saying here...

... Yeah I'm honestly fine with lemmy just being more or less a tiny cluster of neo forums.

I like the cozy.

At the same time... from I guess a less selfish perspective... yeah, this is the exact time an alternative to Reddit and other corpo social media needs to be popularized.

But, somewhat alleviating myself from that... I don't really know anybody that I could 'word of mouth' spread lemmy to, that I haven't already.

And I'm too crippled to put stickers on really anything outside my own apartment, lol.

The only way non tech users who comprises of 90% of the world will join Lemmy only if they have one instance which is baked in the app.

People don't understand and don't want to learn what instances are, how it works etc. Non tech users don't give a shit. All they need is an app with username and password which hopefully the remember.

Once you get an app like that and the UI is reddit like , then 100% will move.

I send my friends memes. They ask "Muad'dib, where do you get these great memes?" I say I get my great memes from Lemmy. They instantly lose interest, because Lemmy is full of tankies and kinphobes

The culture wars have reached the fediverse, and it's making me less happy to be here. I don't want to hang out in places where people use slurs and insults, even if they're not aimed at me. I'm seeing more casual misogyny/misandry, more casual use of the r**** slur, more perfectionist gatekeeping, more assumptions, and just less good-faith comments in general.

I'd advertise, but I'm starting to look for an alternative to lemmy.

I’m happy to promote it. I tried to get a few non-technical people to check it out. They felt it was too complicated. I’ve shared it with tech friends and coworkers who use Reddit. They’re aware of Lemmy to varying degrees, and are not enthused about moving to another platform despite hating Reddit.

I think it’s because despite Lemmy being a great alternative, it is more complicated and lacks the user base that users of other social media platforms have.

Bluesky is marginally more complicated than Twitter, but compared to Mastodon it is user friendly. Bluesky worked to create a dedicated, easy to use app that most users use.

Bluesky existed for a while before experiencing explosive growth. This occurred during moments of controversy with X. Bluesky capitalized on these moments, with champions on both platforms that led their followers to change, and there were mechanisms in place to bootstrap a user’s feed with the followers and topics that they had in the other place.

I think Lemmy needs to follow this model. There needs to be a Lemmy app that has a user experience as similar as possible with the Reddit app. It also needs champions that have main stream recognition (George Takei, Mark Hamill, etc.) that can be willing to make noise about switching from Reddit to Lemmy when the next controversy occurs. Repeat with more and more promotion by this evangelists, and Lemmy could grow.

The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.

Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.

I think posting quality content (or at least trying to be quality content hahaha) and good comments keep the users visiting back.

I just try to post one or two posts a day (to not spam things), comment a little bit, it seems it grows some communities on our instance. Some communities were dead, now at least some people post at these places.

I wonder if we can combine the related fediverse services (like piefed, which is getting more and more traction lately), mbin/kbin, and others.

Because according to this graph I dont exist for example. Im not a "lemmy" user, but I sure interact with a lot of lemmy.

There is also a number of instances that are chosing not to give their numbers anymore either because of AI scrappers getting really aggressive, or because they just dont want to be seen by the different tracking software out there.

I tell people about lemmy and send them links. Mostly people don't care about anything. Abstract or remote things like "should a platform be owned by one asshole?" just doesn't even enter their brain.

Reddit refugee here. I've been banned three times in 2 weeks for erroneous applications of nebula's policies. They appear to be going through a self-destructive phase. All you need to be is a viable alternative to a dumpster fire and deliver a clear valuable alternative.

Alright, I'll make more content. Give me a month or two. I'm slow at drawing.

I came to this space in November of 2024.

As a trans person I wanted community. So I checked out blahaj first. But, the queer community here is controlled by Ada who bans anyone she doesn't like and i ticked her off once by not bowing to her judgement when it came to allowing trolls to stay in the space. This drama also splintered the 196 community, and neither 196 space has had the same number of participants since.

So no more queer community for me. I've had to get that other places like Tumblr.

I then decide to use the .db0 community to report what I feel is abusive behavior from .blahaj staff and after enough time they realized that they really don't like people using the "report abuse community" to report abuse of specific spaces like blahaj. Banned for using the space for what it was created for.

So no more .db0

I'm just so tired of using this space, it feels just like reddit except there's somehow even less accountability.

Every week i feel less and less compelled to contribute

I used to enjoy posting like a dozen memes a day and now I don't post anymore. It's not fun it's a chore to keep feeding memes and engagement into this space that pretty much only has told me it hates me for the last year.

Bad app :c

Then start breeding yall

i remember hearing about when the empire State building was first built, the would light up some of the offices to make it look busy, to attract other people.

I was meaning to buy a bunch of sticker for all sort of cool stuff I support (lemmy/fedi being one of those things) and stick it around the city. Know its not much, but its fun! :)

Okay, now let's see Piefed and mbin users!

I just don't get why people would stay in reddit when lemmy exist :(

It seems strange that these two curves so closely match eachother in shape.

When 6month active users drop that means 6 months ago a user stopped using the platform.
When monthly active users drop that means a month ago a user stopped using the platform.
So this would suggest that there is a correlation between user attrition 6 months ago and last month.

Goes to 'All --> New,' here we go again...

Come on everyone, let's do our part. The only way to get less doom and gloom on the main page is to engage with the stuff you want early. Like it was mentioned by others, that primarily means comments not just upvotes

One thing I've noticed with Lemmy is that it feels way more like a social bookmarking and commentary platform. I see fewer posts that are "original content" here than for example Reddit.

This is quite concerning indeed.

We should start by being better at retaining what we already have.

Every person is valuable now.

Lemmy doesn't have the niche communities and people don't want to take the time to customise what it can do for them so get stuck in the same shit as reddit, so then they leave.

A) "Lemmy" is an embarrassingly bad name.

B) Most of the content I see on here seems to be shitposts. Not saying it all is, but the immediate impression for new users is terrible.

C) Lemmy's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. Moderation is near non-existent and the comment section of posts always devolves into shit.

Networks are almost always about quantity over quality.

I came here looking for something different than Reddit but I’m actually pretty done. I try to post, start threads and conversations but the ones that don’t get deleted because of some vague rule get questioned to hell as to why it exists that it makes me wish I hadn’t posted at all.

I think that if we want new folks, it would make a big difference is we organized the equivalent of a new member drive.

Currently, look at a default front page for your home instance and ask how enticing it is to a total newbie. There might be some good stuff, but it's foreign and overwhelming. You feel out of place.

Now imagine if the first Friday of January had been "new subscriber day". People on Reddit and Bluesky are taking about the fediverse and if it's any good. And on Lemmy there's a bunch of posts about finding the best instances and memes about being new on Lemmy. That's a much more inviting beginner experience, and it makes it more likely for folks to come back the next day.

I really think planning for bursts of new folks is the way to welcome people.

I'm going to be frank.

I'm highly empathetic, and studied history, sociology, economics, international relations, and a few other subjects in university. I dabble in reading as well.

It's really, really hard for me to stomach the news coming out of the US right now. I'm Australian, so in comparison I live in a utopia. But I just want to cry whenever I see how innocent people are being hurt in the US, Venezuela, Palestine, or really anywhere else. I get angry when I see how the US government, and many others are fucking everything up right now. Things don't have to be like this.

There is so much American news on this platform. There is so much bad news in general. I don't come to the internet to stress and worry. I come here to learn stuff about niches and chill out. And every time I'm on Lemmy I'm left with the same bad feelings I get from reading world news subreddits.

Let me be clear; I have no problem with the fact that American news gets posted. It's that when I get on the lemmy.zip or lemmy.world page, some days 9/10 links are to American news, that is very, very, bad news. It makes me miserable.

So why should I be here instead of just switching off? I love Lemmy, but I find that I just can't justify coming on here. It makes me feel awful.

Look, this is my filter list:

Because i don't want to deal with depressing politics every day in my off time.

And this is what i still see:

Maybe a tagging system would help?

When this post is two days old and still on the very top of my feed you know that it's either a ghost town or the sorting algo doesn't work.

Here's my approach: over the holidays I suggested lemmy to 3 people I know. I did so by emailing or texting them links to the following piefed feeds of lemmy communities:

• https://piefed.social/f/highsignal
• https://piefed.social/f/highmemecontent

The first is non-political, non-tech, low-meme communities (tho sometimes those topics sneak in.) The second is non-political, non-tech meme/humor communities. One peson said they thought it was neat, the other said they bookmarked it, the third didn't say anything. Dunno if they joined.

To the user mines!

I actually don't mind a smaller community of more intelligent people. Too much riff raff and the quality degrades.

I've always been more of a lurker/commenter than a poster, but posters are what Lemmy needs if we want more users to come. People need to want to come to Lemmy for content.

In my experience, the best poster on the platform is the person making the comics on /c/unix_surrealism, in that sometimes I find myself wanting to check the comm to see if there is anything new.

And this will be disagreed with heavily, but the second best posters are the memers at Hexbear. I just think they make the funniest leftist memes (so political content, sorry people who are tired of politics), and they're the only instance that actually has a site culture, with their own in-jokes and history/lore.

When Reddit was young, that was a big part of it: Posts that went viral among the community and became in-jokes/lore. Comment chains (as much as I grew to hate them). And original ideas for content (AMA, TIL, AITA, etc.). There was a kind of culture to the site (that's mostly been diluted now).

That said. I like Lemmy perfectly fine at the size it is, even if it doesn't fully replace Reddit. Though it's concerning to see it declining.

Either we will have a huge spike in activity soon or Lemmy will become a ghostland. It is no wonder that we have low activity here with those numbers of users. But, on the other hand, Reddit has too much users + bots which leads to information overflow. Thus, Lemmy would be nice if it had only a few several hundred thousands of users.

How about bridging over to bluesky? If they could follow and comment threads, the userbase explodes 10-fold (compared to the current exposure to mastodon).

See this thread: https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/372

Tell your musician friends to find me here:

https://lemmy.world/c/IndepthIndie

Actually, you know what? I'll give a free guitar lesson to the first 10 people to make a post in that group.

Can I ask a different, more difficult question?

Where are people going?

Lemmy Isn't Quite It? Mastodon is too formal. Blusky is too political.

Lemmy was a clone of Reddit. Not an improvement on it.

The hurdle of registration and getting into the Fediverse is, in my view, too high for many people.
I had to guide my brother step by step to get him into the Fediverse.
I think that’s where it often fails.
It needs to be much easier to join — then more people would probably come in.

I don't know the motives of others, but I've been spending increasingly less time on the internet and more time listening to podcasts & reading.

Lemmy attracts only certain types of people who like reading articles and replying long paragraphs arguing with each other or small details. In a time when literacy is falling, means there's only a smaller and smaller pie left. Maybe we need a book club or pen pal system or a noobie hub to make it a friendlier environment. There's a cloud of hostility in the air friends, don't let it take you. Ape strong together.

Well, good news - I'm brand new and decided I'm not resubbing to Relay so I'm effectively off Reddit since the official mobile app is garbage.

Things will improve after the major release with more fine grained controls. Being able to limit community interactions to members will drive up quality engagement and that should drive up retention rates.

I think part of the issue is new users not understanding or feeling comfortable with the fediverse (myself included a while ago). Even after searching for a bit and looking it up I can barely get how it works, but there's really no guide with the common terms anywhere, how to get started, the difference between platforms and what they have in common etc. The benefits are the first thing you hear about, but they seem more like jargon terms than actually anything functional.

Reddit has better accessibility and user retainment, alongside with a library of old posts that are good for searching some niche stuff up.

For example, if I were to get a friend into lemmy, I'm not really sure how I can explain it to them, or where to start other than the copy paste "decentralized" "federated" stuff. It doesn't really answer stuff like who moderates it, develops it, owns it, or what's the difference between lemmy, piefed mbin, how do they interact with each other.
I believe that an introductory "oficial" post on the front of each platform in layman's terms would be great to get new users to stay.

Every person that keeps saying it's good that there is no one here sounds like scrooge in my head going,
"Good, all to decrease the surplus population"

you know what would be really helpful? cross this with data from moderation. content removals, bans, permabans.

then, layer in mods/communities and you might find why users are leaving.

The more niche communities really suffer I feel from the decentralized pattern. Tv shows, movies, video games, etc. you have everyone trying to be the "de-facto" instance and none of them really get traffic.

Really, Lemmy is just a US political platform with some weak notions of being anything else. And if it wants to survive, it needs more people, with more interesting topic. To many subs are just ghost towns.

Do comments help also or we need to post topics etc.

I agree! There is not enough people here

I'm here everyday, unfortunately I don't have a great deal to post only comment.

I'm very busy with real life work to create content

I love Lemmy, and would never ask for it to change. Call me crazy, but I have essentially zero problems with the content and comments posted (barring shit news sources). If I want to disengage from the misery of the world, I can read a book or play a game or make music or something. I suppose I've adapted over the years.

It is, in my opinion, unrealistic and unwarranted to expect the userbase to self-sensor, and it is ESPECIALLY unrealistic and against the ethos of the program to hand out bans for calls to action, as some users are suggesting in the comments here. Perhaps .world should launch a spinoff instance that can satisfy these criteria, I don't know. Passivity and complacency can be nice, but are altogether unproductive, in my mind. We need people to be frustrated, angry, and hungry.

Lemmy has also opened my eyes to the world of open source software, something I am tremendously thankful for.

I'm not satisfied with this comment, it feels sloppy, but I want to get my feelings out there!

o7

I'll do my best! Luckily, Lemmy still has a healthy community though 

I am curious why there is such a big difference between FediDB and Fedi Observer.

FediDB has Lemmy at 48 K MAU:

https://fedidb.com/(Lemmy is the fourth entry on the platform list).

Maybe everyone should be a literal more willing to discuss things than just dog pile on with downvotes.

This place is mighty insufferable and I say that as one insufferable twat.

It's the porn. And comments like "those colors are really a bad choice, they make the graph very difficult to read".

But seriously, the quality content in Reddit is not the reason it's big. It's a corporate. It's a massive echo chamber destined to shame people under insufficiently explained contexts. I see it like a virtual mob with pitchforks on steroids (bots).

Web banners are the way to go

For me I deleted my account a month ago after 2 years of lemmy. I forgot about this account and jerboa install, the only community sub is this one haha.

I figure I'll just say why I left, this place became a depressing shit hole.

The communities aren't niche enough because it's not big enough, so it's just a shit experience. I'm just going to look to old school forums again. Phpbb you must still be out there..

I figure I'll still keep this account in case I need to use it for something useful. One never knows when they'll get lost on the seas and need some directions.

I think one huge missed opportunity is within sharing stuff from lemme... Other sites will allow you to share media, often with a banner or link back to the original content or source. For lemme I download the media and there's no branding or linkage that brings you back to the platform (at least not through the Boost app)

I think I interact with Lemmy less now because I noticed that I grew tired of reading useless comments and for finding and reading articles I want to read I have RSS which doesn't bombard me with stuff I don't care about.

The presence of comments leads me to only want to read the comments and I hate that.

If you ask me, users kind of suck.

My two cents is that more users oughta establish new communities when they find the absence of one. Even if they don't have the time to devote for fully moderating it, as people join the responsibilities can be allocated among the early adopters. Especially those with strong political and moral backgrounds (to mitigate abuses of power like those infamously cultivated at Reddit).

I do have the idea of making an app it makes an account for one instance and uses that "log in with Google/apple id". Then people can learn later that you you can join other instances or log in via web browser.

The server can be simple lemmy or mastodon server and the app can just be variant of Voyager or mastodon app. Someone need to get rid of copyright material then hard code an instance.

I would do it myself but I can't get an AI to code apps

The other option is to have an app that browser based

I'm doing my part. I can't stop making communities and having debates.

Honestly fragmentation is what keeps people that I recommend Lemmy away from it. They are used to the UX/UI doing most of the heavy lifting along with the more politically charged posts being there, my coworker who loves self hosting and tinkering tried to join. But was put off with how much more political things are on Lemmy and some Fediverse instances are and how hostile they can be with certain opinions. But I taught them how to curate their feed for more things tailored to their passions. But they've been on and off since there's multiple versions the same community which feeds into the fragmentation issue. That is just a viewpoint from me, I'm still fairly new to the Fediverse and Lemmy. (Which I love how diverse it is and how passionate people are.)

What is that spike in activity in December, I wonder? I see a similar increase in December of 2024 as well, although there it remained sustained instead of dropping.

I hate that it's true but the people on the Threadiverse are toxic as fuck. I have almost universally always regretted making posts here, so I primarily stick to comments.

This in turn is due to the fact that the moderation tools suck ass - I hope PieFed will offer some strong hope for that, but as it is only a small percentage of the Threadiverse uses it.

PieFed also offers some hopes in other ways too - e.g. highly contentious users (who let's say receive 10x more downvotes than upvotes) have labels attached to their username. It doesn't block any content, but it helps new users from other platforms realize what they are getting into, if e.g. they engage with a known sea-lion.

And PieFed helps in so many other ways besides - e.g. a recent addition will automatically convert URLs pointing to other instances into one that will work on your home instance, where you are currently logged in and so can vote, reply, bookmark, or whatever. Lemmy will probably never add all the various features that PieFed even already offers - like post and user flairs, polls, combining comments across all cross-posts, and things like that that even Reddit does not offer. I don't mean to be annoying about all this but I said it to help illustrate: look at all that PieFed offers, and yet how many people remain on Lemmy? Now you understand a tiny bit better why someone remains on Reddit.

Plus Reddit is where the content is, and the user base too, so why would content creators want to post their stuff here, only to get trolled in the comment section? The Left always eats its own - and it rejects even more all the centrists and even ring-wingers, i.e. mainstream non-technical normie users i.e. the vast majority of content creators, who don't like to visit a Nazi bar (even a leftist tankie flavored one) and be told how they didn't vote properly or hard enough.

You said it yourself: you were one of those very people who did not want others to come. What could you possibly have said to your past self to have changed your mind earlier?

I think it is kind of a mistake that Lemmy tries to replicate or replace Reddit. If you want your "niche" content (which I can never figure out what people mean but this but I digress), it requires the network effect of Reddit. Reddit still exists and both Lemmy instances and Reddit are websites. You can easily have two tabs or like both apps on your phone so I'm not sure why it has to be all or nothing.

I think a better use of Lemmy is to provide things that don't work and don't exist on Reddit. A good example is https://crazypeople.online/c/eternalplaylistwhere we post whatever we're listening to and then sometimes comment on what other people are rocking at the time. I started https://crazypeople.online/c/streamingmoviesjust to post whatever bullshit I'm watching, maybe if you stream something from https://fmhy.net/post it and we can all watch it.

I think the people using lemmy as a personal blog are more like what the platform excels at like https://lemmygrad.ml/c/spacedogschroniclesand https://crazypeople.online/c/bitofaramblerwhich became https://crazypeople.online/c/travel

Lastly I think the real win for Lemmy as a whole would be to figure out how to better interact with other fedi software. Maybe turning mastodon and pixelfed tags into communities and figuring out how to better integrate there would provide more and interesting content but in a scenario i find much easier to follow than subscribe to poster type twitter style microblogging.

TL;DR being Reddit 2 won't ever happen until Lemmy has a reason to exist that isn't being Reddit. Some people are building that and this is still early in the game.

: (

Edit Actually after taking a step back and looking at how many thoughtful comments and conversations have happened on this thread, I am heartened.

There is a lot of passion here, we are just fighting against unbelievably strong currents.

No search is THE deal breaker for lots.

Recommended this space for my friends after being a fan of the old reddit

The process through which we get more users is that something material changes in current Tirefire user's life that puts them over the threshold needed to look for alternative. Then they look. Lemmy is the obvious Reddit alternative, it's well indexed in search engines. Then they try it. If the quality of content is decent, there's a decent chance they stay. They know the quantity won't be as high, that's the major reason they haven't switched to begin with. So for this process to keep functioning, we need to maintain the quality.

Of course we should also suggest Lemmy, but probably when asked or otherwise appropriate. Or else it may have the opposite effect that naked shilling often has.

I completely agree. To attract more users, you not only have to create higher quality content, but also content that elicits an emotional response from users, as they well know at Reddit. On Reddit, it is bots that are constantly posting controversial topics. On Lemmy, fortunately, it is humans who can participate in more controversial discussions to attract more humans. For me, as a Linux and Firefox user, controversial discussions include comparisons between Windows vs Linux, Firefox vs Chrome, etc.

I advertised Lemmy to my friends a few times and they have now stopped replying to my messages :P

it's just a matter of time until the internet gets divided into spaces like US, EU, RU and China

I hope Lemmy continues to decline, instead Piefed should reign supreme.

Is this like all Lemmy everywhere or just a selection of large instances? Does it account for people that host their own instances and come into the larger spaces to interact? I feel like there's context missing before jumping to conclusions.

me the next time i see some reddit user

For me I had so much issue actually making an account, I almost gave up. I think it is cool how Lemmy looks, very simple and very direct, but it does need a bit of more user experience.

gandalf-der-12te. Trying to interpret your post.

Do you have any comparable data, from other other apps? stuff like engagement %, daily, monthly users and such?

Also also we we could aim for both more quality and quantity. Why not? Trashy people can always join Trashy instance, or whoever and whenever. That's imo what's Lemmy is all about. A hook in every nook?

As much I love the idea of Lemmy, I've noticed myself I was drawn back to Reddit. Why? Because it has a larger community, of course, but (and please don't shoot me for this), Reddit's algo and rewards. Yes, the achievements gallery is stupid, but it works.

The folks building Lemmy investigating how to increase engagement, this is one factor.

Damn there's barely anyone here

Wait till Reddit fucks up again, there will be an influx of users.

Fediverse is a leftist nest. Most people bounce away

I have faith in the EU's opensource policy. Things will change. We're in no rush.

if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall

I don't consider this a given. E.g. your new users might all be dingleberries, or they might attract more bots. It also depends on your definition of quality. I quite like recognizing and conversing with regulars that I know from lemmy. This is something you lose with a larger userbase.

Here's another way a high monthly active user count doesn't necessarily lead to a quality platform. Suppose most users post once a month. Conversations will largely be dominated by posts from folks who have no real connection with each other. Any meaningful conversation is drowned in an ocean of seagulls going "have my updoot, kind sir" and "this!". Higher user count, lower quality.

Aside from that, vanity metrics like bare user count typically don't tell you whether you have a sustainable non-ad based platform. You don't need users, you need users willing to donate for the operation (to instance admins) and maintenance (to the devs) of the platform. And I feel (0 data to back this up) like users are more likely to be donating users if they feel like they know the operators and devs personally.

I'm not saying the idea of getting more users is bad, I'm just saying its goodness is very far from established.

Why does the y axis not start at 0?

A lot of those 'users' are bots or paid shills too.

Total servers are way down and so are users. But how come the number of comments has increased?

What's the likelyhood a white hat group scrubs reddit and makes all of its content available on an alternative fedi instance, preferably in a non western friendly jurisdiction?

I moved to Mbin, and I know quite a few people moved to Piefed, so you need to take that into account

Lemmy is more stable than what that graph makes it out. I'm not sure how easy it is to track fediverse since instances can pop up at any moment then grow or even the domain can change for an instance

the big dip in 2024, oct might have something to do with people going back to reddit and other social media trump news?

Fediverse is changing. People used to put the text of images, like comics, in the body of the OP to be more accessible, but I haven't seen that in ages. It's something I noticed.

I think you're right

Everyone I try to explain it to thinks it's reddit but worse. I'm still going to keep trying. The other thing is seeding content and not making reposts. I'm not the most creative person, but I still try to make content for this platform because I love what it stands for. Might do that right now.

https://piefed.social/

Good things never last.

Also , People are the problem. They will move again in masses when AI companies fks their reputation online like the recent Grok fiasco

We really don't though.

Unfortunately, most people are too unintelligent and lazy to learn about the reasons to support reddit-alternatives, and move to them.

No

Can someone vibecode a self hosted tool that reposts reddit top rated content to Lemmy? Like people that are interested could just run that self hosted service for subreddit they are interested in and it would post automatically into lemmy communities .

This site is seemingly for hardcore left-leaning people. Center and right wing are censored, banned, without violating rules, just like reddit mods. So it's no wonder people are leaving.

As long as Lemmy is in hands of extremists, it wont happen.