Lemmy world was growing at a decent pace leading up to July 1st, then had a big influx following the API deadline. However the last week in particular has seen a decline.
Engagement still appears to be the same, although a little lower than the start of the month. A few of the other instances i have been checking follow a similar pattern.
Do you think we will continue growing at a steady pace, or do we need another big trigger to get users to migrate? For Mastodon, it seems there’s a big trigger every other week to drive users away from Twitter, but with Reddit, the revolt seems to have quietened down considerably.
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It does feel a little dead here. Right now it’s mostly memes, meta discussions, or Reddit hate. And the crowd is a very specific type of hyper aware internet dweller (myself included).
Reddit isn’t worth using without third party apps, and it’s the only social media I used before Lemmy, so I’m spending a lot more time off my phone nowadays. I only check the daily top on Lemmy once a day instead of compulsively every time I touch my phone. Guess that’s a good thing.
It does feel a little dead here.
This is also partly to blame on the sorting algorithm. There is an active PR to improve this https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3378 (Relevant issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3622)
I blocked the major meme subs (coms?) and my experience here has been much, much better. Free yourself of last year’s memes and explore all the interesting links getting posted
Yes, those meme communities are very active and drown other posts from other communities. Unsubscribing them drastically improve my experience. I can sort by New now and see Posts from communities I subscribed to. And unlike Reddit, new posts got pretty good engagements here, perhaps because other people browse by New too.
“very active” meaning nonstop reposts of last year’s top reddit memes by bots or humans acting like bots
I don’t want Lemmy to be reddit 2.0
It’s fine, memes also have their audience. I also blocked all of the communities, but to each their own
The sorting algorithm fixes can’t come soon enough IMO. Small subs are dead because they simply can’t show up on the front page with most of the sorting algorithms that Lemmy has. That limits how much you’ll see in your feed and also makes Reddit a better product (due to all the niche subs it has that actually show up on the front page).
That’s a very good thing.
And to be honest, as selfish as this will sound, I wouldn’t want Lemmy to grow too much - unless the eternal september crowd can be contained.
I disagree. While I do like that the discussions and top level comments are not nearly as homogenized as Reddit eventually became, I’m really missing the niche communities. I wasn’t subscribed to any large subs on Reddit, so my feed was basically just a curated list of discussions for my hobbies. No memes, news, pop culture, internet drama, or politics. Right now, that’s just not possible on Lemmy due to the low population.
Give it time. Lemmy is still very fresh, but I’m confident smaller niche communities will keep popping up and it will eventually add up. Region and country locales seems to be doing well.
I think it’s as you say. Lemmy’s growth is going to happen in waves, until it has reached a critical mass that sustains its own “weight”, in terms of growth.
You have to remember that this is no commercial platform, with little advertisement, which is made by its own users. Growth is bound to be slow, at first.
Not only that, we want it to be slow. Being a server admin at the moment is racing from fire to fire. The Lemmy software needs to mature a bit before it will be ready for the less-technical users.
As a user I disagree. But I do understand your side
I’m pretty sure most of the people who will come here as a result of Reddit are already here. All the new Reddit refugees are probably getting over the hype with Lemmy/Kbin and are finally not pouring so much time into the platforms. And as a result, slowing growth numbers and tapering engagement. Its pretty natural and nothing to be worried about. There’s still plenty of engagement here (just look at what happened to Threads a couple weeks after it came out).
Regardless, we should focus on making Lemmy/Kbin a fully fleshed out platform and draw in users the natural way rather than relying on Reddit falling off for new users. At this point in time, the Reddit blackout is pretty much over.
Might as well throw in my rant here, as I’m against this sentiment of not wanting Lemmy/Kbin to grow more and possibly even get mainstream. I get keeping out the undesirables of Reddit and other social media to prevent an Eternal September situation, but I also want more people of different backgrounds and interests rather than the same Reddit critic/tech enthusiast type of crowd. The great thing about federation is that if you want a smaller and more tight knit/topic centered community, there are smaller servers to join (not so much for Lemmy/Kbin at the moment since they are new, but it should get better over time). We can’t seriously want Lemmy/Kbin to develop well if we voice desires to keep people out and rebuild echo chambers. Lots of smaller communities and topics have little activity because there’s really only one group of people here right now.
According to the Fediverse Observer, Posts and Comments are still growing day-by-day. It’s definitely slower growth, but as long as it stays healthy and active it will continue to have growth spurts as the enshittification of the rest of the web continues.
And the best thing at can do is post and comment to let people know we’re active and alive!
The exodus from reddit has stabilized and we’ve made this place our experimental home. That wave is over. We won’t get another wave until some of the kinks are smoothed out. If we have fewer shutdowns and better apps then I bet we’ll get steady growth. Also it might take a while for people to realize that lemmy is easier to use than mastodon, which gave federation a bad name for most normies.
I wouldn’t call it a matter of need. While I want to see Lemmy grow, I don’t think that we should rely on outrage on another platform to drive our own activity in the long term. While the number of users joining has slowed down, it certainly hasn’t halted.
All we can do is make Lemmy as solid and enticing of a platform as possible, and leave those on Reddit to choose between supporting a platform they don’t like and leaving. We shouldn’t be responsible for forcing their hand, but we should be responsible for maintaining a healthy community here.
I think even something like a indie video game developer hosting a forum on Lemmy instead of Reddit would do wonders for making Lemmy “mainstream”. Or even a youtuber, streamer, or some other content creator at that. But of course, it’s not something I’d go out of my way to do; just something that I think will happen in due time.
Don’t imagine for a second that Reddit is done pissing off its users. All it takes for lemmy to win is keep improving reliability and usability.
anecdotally; the lack of content and relatively steep learning fediverse learning curve compared to reddit both make it easy enough to understand why lemmy & the fediverse haven’t reached into the millions of users yet.
i’m a reddit refugee and i’ve handcuffed my ability to participate in reddit because i’m still angry about the api changes. i also work in technical, but i still struggle to understand all of lemmy’s (and the fediverse’s) quirks. both result me me still spending more time on reddit as an unregistered lurker than with lemmy as a member who can participate.
also we can see how it turns out the ones who migrate to lemmy is really a tiny minority, majority of people still using reddit like usual and most people dont want to use 2 website to just browse stuff they can already do in reddit
that makes sense to me because reddit has all of the content that lemmy has plus a LOT more.
i suspect that i will have to rejoin reddit so that i don’t miss (my) world shaking events like the recent red hat shift that lemmy completely ignored.
Don’t know don’t care. There’s a community here now and it’s healthy.
That’s fine. Just do our things here, and when Reddit eventually shoot their own foot again, the next wave of refugees will have an alternative ready, unlike us a few months ago where there was confusion over where to migrate.
Kind of lucky the Fediverse version of Reddit worked out as the main alternative while Mastodon and Bluesky duked it out and then Threads came out of nowhere.
Also IMO the Lemmy apps are better than Mastodon… I admit I was one of the people who got too confused to get on Mastodon but I figured out Lemmy just fine.
If you build it they will come
Except for the overwhelming majority of situations where somebody builds something and nobody comes.
Honestly, I want half of the people on reddit… to just STAY on reddit.
There is a lot of toxicity that I don’t want here…
There is a lot of toxicity that I don’t want here…
It already is… :(
It could be far worse. But, its not that bad yet.
Yea, I don’t want to sound like I’m arguing here, but there is a generally negative vibe that is being replicated here on lemmy as it was on reddit:
- Too many Elon Musk twitter posts
- Too much climate change doom & gloom
- Too much political doom & gloom
The toxicity is already here when you browse “All.” I’ve just blocked most of the offending communities for a better experience. The list grows longer every day… but that’s just my opinion. I think we can all agree that browsing “All” is like playing mental health on nightmare mode.
Sorry, I stand corrected. Found myself into a thread where apparently half of lemmy thinks that vandalizing others peoples property is ok… because they drive an SUV.
Yep, I got downvoted for suggesting that vandalizing the car was not a good plan…
Edit: I think you’re actually talking about a different thread. Lemmy needs therapy.
