How is the size of Lemmy’s userbase changing? Is it growing or shrinking? How diverse is it? What do the current trendlines look like as we approach a year since Rexxit?
I feel like I used to see graphs on this sub fairly regularly, but haven’t seen one recently. There was also some ambiguity in the numbers as commenting and voting were added to the active user totals. Now that most (all?) instances have switched to 0.19, do we have a better idea of where things stand?
Aside from sticking around and posting, commenting, and voting, is there anything users should be doing to help grow the platform? (!lemmygrow would be a good name for a sublemmy, if anyone wanted to organize something)
In any case, thanks to everyone who has helped grow Lemmy to its current size!
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At least from the nerd side of Lemmy, communities pertaining to technology, self-hosting, etc. — which I’d imagine to be the larger drivers due to how complicated it is to join compared to a traditional centralized setup (see also same hurdle for mastodon vs Twitter; which doesn’t gain adoption until Thread and BlueSky started to attract the less technical users), I’m seeing troubling signs of slowing down and shrinking.
If people actually want Lemmy in these areas to grow, it is important to be a lot more inclusive, and understand when to not participate in order to foster better community growth.
What I mean on the inclusive side is those FOSS advocates need to back off with the “You don’t understand FOSS, and go make your own instance” comments so other users don’t just bounce right off and leave after being bored with nothing to interact with.
What I mean by understand when not to participate is literally don’t participate in niche communities that doesn’t apply to you. So many Android users commenting irrelevant anti-Apple sentiments in Apple Enthusiasts community, for example. This is driving away actual users who are interested in discussions.
The charts don’t lie. Lemmy is shrinking, not growing. After getting a new lease on life with 0.19 due to what is essentially clever accounting, the community is still slowing down/shrinking. And for the nerdier side of the userbase, unless the community by and large start to interact more inclusively, the whole thing is sadly going to be just a small blip that’ll soon fizzle out.
A lot of people talk about the decentralization being a barrier of entry, but I don’t think it is.
Generally speaking, your average social media user won’t care about that one way or the other. You tell them an instance to look at, they will check it out.
Where I think it goes wrong is the general Lemmy attitude of curating your own feed. Your average Lemmy user will say the best part is that you just block the communities and instances that you don’t want to see.
Your average social media user on the other hand, doesn’t want to spend an hour or a month blocking people and communities to make the site useable. Most folks will come in, see a feed full of tech bros, repost bots with zero discussion, 30 different fetish porn communities, Star Trek memes, and bottom of the barrel shitposts, and they’ll just leave.
The only way I see Lemmy overcoming this is for instance admins to heavily curate the default experience so the feed is friendlier to new users. This would likely require some more tools in place to allow for this, possibly even a default block list that users can customize after they are already drawn in
Also the sorting could be better.
I think admins curating the feed is… Interesting but also kind of dangerous and it sounds like it could be very manipulative. But of course you could go to instances that don’t do it but it might not be obvious.
That said, I agree the sorting could be better. The active sort still showing 2 days old posts is not ideal.
I think admins curating the feed is… Interesting but also kind of dangerous
just letting the admins set defaults would be better than forcing these choices upon their users, which I think is was the above user was suggesting, which is kinda what Reddit does with having default subs
The active sort still showing 2 days old posts is not ideal.
why not? if they’re getting new comments then they’re still active
Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score [of the post] and time of the latest comment, with decay over time
it’s like something inbetween Hot and classic forums-style sorting (New Comments sort in Lemmy)
but I do not think that should be the default sort method, instance admins can already adjust what the default sort method is
Yeah, it’s something I observed, too. I’m new here, coming from a STEM field myself - Many places give off a tech-elitist vibe, though.
Customization options for Firefox get reactions like “nobody needs this”. I like it here so far, but the tech-bubble is obviously super prominent here, and in many places it simply seems very “If you’re not a tech-y don’t talk to me because I know better”. It’s worrying because it will lead to people leaving again when they get the cliché reactions of “use Linux, don’t use Windows” or “ewww, Reddit”. People should be less hostile, but I guess that’s just a problem of the Internet in general and doesn’t just apply here.
I hope to see it succeed, though!
Open source culture remains the biggest problem with open source software, sadly.
It’s really a major problem. Every time I mention how a lot of open source software suffers from bad UX, I get a lot of down votes instead of agreement and calls to improve things.
how a lot of open source software suffers from bad UX
Thought only I had this take in the whole world. Usually open source software are best but you have to spend some time picking the right one. Usually 5/7 would have great UI but only 1/7 would have the UX you might like.
But at the receiving end you’ll have a talented backend developer who has created something impressive, and who instead of being recognised and motivated for her work just receives a bunch of shit about the UX being awful. Which is not great either.
It’s a tricky thing to get right.
Strong agree
Also agree
I’m not quite as pessimistic, but I agree that inclusivity is important to keep in mind.
If people actually want Lemmy in these areas to grow, it is important to be a lot more inclusive, and understand when to not participate in order to foster better community growth.
Android users commenting irrelevant anti-Apple sentiments in Apple Enthusiasts community
I’ve noticed similar behaviour as well, and it concerns me. There was a related post a few weeks ago on downvoting etiquette which received a surprising amount of pushback (+63/-108).
I think this is a side effect of Lemmy’s small platform size pushing users towards browsing by /all. I never browsed /all on Reddit, and I don’t think this the best way to regularly use Lemmy either.
Ideally, I think users should mostly stick to their subscribed feeds, and browse /all only occasionally to discover new communities they might want to subscribe to. (I recognize that what I think users “should” do is irrelevant when it comes to actual user behaviour.)
As the platform currently stands, we have a bit of a “chicken or egg” problem. Too many users browsing by /all can stifle the growth of niche communities, and the lack of niche communities can induce users to browse by /all. I’m not sure the best way to fix this, other than to hope that niche communities manage to grow despite uninclusive behaviour.
Do you have any ideas which could help make Lemmy more inclusive?
As the platform currently stands, we have a bit of a “chicken or egg” problem. Too many users browsing by /all can stifle the growth of niche communities, and the lack of niche communities can induce users to browse by /all. I’m not sure the best way to fix this, other than to hope that niche communities manage to grow despite uninclusive behaviour.
Promotion of communities to !newcommunities@lemmy.world and !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, and promotion of those communities to the wider audience
I went back on Reddit a couple days ago and the difference is insane. Lemmy post and comments feel like real people. Reddit post are literally the same shit post or questions asked 3 years ago and filled with comments that seem like AI or just someone not putting in any thought
I’m subbed to r/horrorlit and keep wondering if I’m taking crazy pills because it feels like 30% of the posts are some variation of “What’s the scariest/best horror book you’ve read?” They reword it or give it a slightly different spin but it’s essentially the same question over and over. And then of course the responses are always the same 40 books being mentioned repeatedly. I don’t understand why anyone who’s been on the sub for more than a month would keep upvoting the same question.
I just came back a few days ago and have had the exact same experience.
It’s too early to say, as the method of accounting for ‘active user’ changed recently.
Seems to me like Lemmy is “consolidating”. Some people are leaving but the community is deepening in norms, understanding, commitment and cohesion. This shows up as better content and discussions all the time. Spam is snuffed out quickly, more communities have better moderators. Our infrastructure is maturing and the software is getting better.
Theses stats are a bit weird to read and idk how trustworthy they are, but generally i would agree because even though total active user count might be stagnant, the comment and post numbers are steadily growing.
The total user count is meaningless. Look at the monthly active users. That gives a good picture. And those are the correct links and graphs.
(The total users mainly show how the Reddit exodus happened. Lots of people made an account and used it once. Thus the steep incline in users. But they’re not real, just zombie records. Also it’s heavily affected by instances moving, shutting down or doing maintenance. Also lots of people here have multiple accounts. And there is some degree of farming and bot activity…)
total active user count
Thats what i said, whether you filter by day or by month or whatever is a different question.
Hehe, now I get you. But I don’t think there is something like “total active…” 😆 It’s either the active users or the total amount… You just confused me by using both opposing words in a row.
yeah i see that does not make a lot of sense indeed.
We need to up our stats. Get some AI bots in here posting content!
/s
Let’s charge 8$/month for verification maybe add a checkmark so people know!
The Reddit strategy? Genius!
Thank you. I’m glad you could see my vision. Now please give me money for my new Lemmy IPO idea.
Shrinking
Oh get over yourself lmao. Like reddit didnt have the_donald up on the front page for years
yes
Is Lemmy growing or shrinking?
It looks like Lemmy has shrunk overall since our peak of 68k active users in July last year to our low point (since rexxit anyways) of 32k, but we seem to be attracting more MAUs now and have climbed back up to 51k.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by diversity, or at least what measure of it you’re seeking, but if you mean instances, there’s currently ~770 instances online, a bit over half of our peak in July. I’m not aware of any major instances that have closed down yet though, so I assume it’s mainly small, single user instances that have shit down, as well as a few hyper niche ones with very few members.
Average users per instance has also been increasing and is getting close to the levels we were at in june when everybody was joining the same few instances. That peak was 690 users per instance, that dropped to a low of 321 in July, presumably because there was more of an emphasis on getting people spread out after initial influx of people who just needed to go somewhere.
There was something interesting I noticed in the stats, in Feb there was a major drop in total posts of almost 5 million. I don’t know what exactly happened, but our total posts halved, so perhaps that’s why nobody’s been posting updates.
It’s even more obvious on the 120 day graph
Overall, it appears we have shrunk compared to our peak during rexxit, but we have been steadily increasing in both active users and posts (excluding the major drop in Feb) since our low point a couple of months after rexxit. That’s about what I’d expect, and quite good compared to most popular corpo sites which lose a lot more percentage of their MAUs after they’ve peaked. Threads lost something like 80% of their userbase a week after it launched. Also I don’t think that peak during rexxit will be our biggest peak. We’ll probably continue steadily gaining users until Reddit fuck up again and we get another influx, like what happened with mastodon.
FYI all these stats are fairly easy to find. I like FediDB because it’s got a more friendly UI, but Fediverse Observer has a more plain UI, so is better for posting graphs and such. But that’s the beauty of the fediverse, we can all access the same things through all sorts of UIs
Are you able to track bot posts vs regular posts? I wonder if the major drop in posts was bots being stopped.
Nice graphs
Hello @threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works,
Would you be interested in creating a community dedicated to community growth? Maybe something a bit more neutral like !communitygrowth so that it can be more inclusive to Mbin, Piefed, and in the future Sublinks?
I have a few theories I would like to discuss with other people interested in this topic
I would definitely be interested. Good idea to make it more general than just !lemmygrow, though “community” is still a Lemmy(-ish)-specific term.
Some other name ideas:
- !fediversegrowth (if including Mastodon, Loops, etc.)
- !fedigrow (shorter version of the above)
- !threadiversegrowth (if limiting to link-aggregator discussion forums like Kbin, Sublinks, etc.)
- !threadigrow (shorter version of the above)
Thoughts?
Small heads up to see if you already have an instance in mind? You are on SJW, that could work, otherwise I usually like Lemm.ee because it’s well managed and a very neutral name. Lemmy.ca does a lot for new joiners too with !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca
Haha, I was actually going to message you to ask if you had an instance in mind. I think we want a well managed and widely federated instance which is large, but not the largest. Any of the ones you propose sound good.
Slight preference for Lemm.ee on my side, but I let you decide in the end, you were the one who started the discussion, so you can choose!
Lemm.ee is fine with me!
Sounds good, do you create it, do I create it? :D
I don’t currently have an account on that instance. Might you be able to ask @Blaze@lemm.ee to create it?
I just checked, Piefed calls them communities too, I guess Sublinks will probably do the same.
Fedigrow seems like a better name, communitygrowth seems a bit long, so I guess that could be the one? I’m afraid Threadigrow would be too confusing to people
Yeah, we also call them communities
!fedigrow sounds good to me! Short and general. More specific communities could be created later if needed.
Now I am surfing lemmy more than reddit, simply because lemmy load faster.
I surf it because reddits app is trash and even the desktop old.reddit site is starting to be put out to pasture by reddit. It’s just better here. I use boost for Lemmy and it’s been amazing.
I came over during the whole API debacle and then realized it will either be great for my mental health, or eventually Lemmy will have just as much content. So far my mental health has inproved… the content has improved a little too
I think there has been some influx where a lot of new users made room for themselves while pressing others to leave/defederate. Beehaw was the notable and initial example where the growth of people from reddit resulted in less interactivity.
Removed by mod
LOL I think I know your main account if the name isn’t that different
Im seeing more communities on my feed than ever. Even if it’s shrinking, the ones who stay are active.
Just FYI, every “wave” of signups from some reddit/other news relating to lemmy will always be followed by some falloff as people dont both signing in every day – which is basically how people use reddit and other apps but with such a large installcount they’re not as noticeable.
every “wave” of signups from some reddit/other news relating to lemmy will always be followed by some falloff
Also as they see how much propaganda and political extremism is on Lemmy.
Yup, I mean I’m pretty left, but the endless politics is probs bad for the platform in the long run. We need more “normie” and hobby communities if we’re gonna keep attracting new people.
Have a look here https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
Why do the graphs look so weird?
Fuck me, pie charts with 50 segments??? Maybe they look weird because pie charts suck if you have more than 2-3 things to show
And the rest on the page don’t display well on mobile
Youre right - feel free to make and share a better Version. I think the community appreciates forks and contributions :)
No, I’m just here to sit in my armchair and judge other people’s design choices.
But on a serious note, I wouldn’t even know how. I barely played around in R but the only semi-legit data viz stuff I ever did was in Tableau. And that was only with static data
Not super tricky, they’re using ChartJS and with some very minimal tweaks to the config (aka changing “pie” to “bar”) the data would look like this!
edit: does look a bit awkward due to the huge difference in values. A logarithmic scale would look better, but is much more confusing.
Still look less awkward than pie charts. And yeah, I wouldn’t use a log scale for a viz unless it’s going into a professional publication
It just gives current stats, not historical trends. I don’t think it is any answer to OPs question.
I mean there is a a graph about active users over the last months, so I would argue it does regarding user activity?
If you scroll down it does give historical trends on comments, posts, monthly active users, etc.
What I meant is why do the graphs look so janky.
For example:
What happened in October 2023 that made so many users join?
and
What happened in February 2024 that made so many people stop posting?
Edit: March -> February
Thanks for the post. Something on my browser only shows the pie charts and doesn’t let me scroll down.
The graphs are all interactive (touch to show labels, etc.). That can interfere with scrolling—try dragging at the edge or one of the pie chart titles. Fwiw, it scrolls ok on mobile safari…
0.19 counts active users differently; prior to 0.19, the count is only if the user posted, after 0.19, all interactions results in the user being counted as an active user. This inflated the active users hugely as all lurkers are counted.
The active users is dwindling. You can see the steep drop off prior to the change and a slow but continued decline after the update.
I do not know the reason for the number of posts falling off, but that doesn’t look healthy either to be honest.
Sept/Oct '23 was the Boost lemmy mobile client release. A lot of people signed up and many of them bounced off shortly after.
I didn’t know there were almost as many Germans as Americans, the majority of Reddit users were Americans which has created Americocentric perspective on a lot of topics which from a European perspective was quite annoying.
I did not verify my thoughts but I think this could be because ovh has big datacenters in Germany and quite a lot of Europeans use ovh.
fediverse had a strong european presence before the reddit migration too. The Mastodon lead-dev/founder, for instance, is German. And European governments have been far more interested in running their own instances on the fediverse than any other country AFAICT (to the point that I’ve seen it confuse North-American admins).
I think one of the Lemmy devs is German too
Yes that’s me :)
Thank you for your work.
Yeah open source seems to be a big thing in Germany specifically for some reason
So basically, had a massive spike during the reddit blackout in July last year. Dropped down to half by November and has since shown fairly steady (if measured) growth. I think that’s a good sign.
What just happened to the number of servers? Did the admins just decide they want to go with quality over quantity? Or does it have something to do with political conditions?
Probably lots of people trying to start another general instance that didn’t draw any users and then deciding to shut it down. FWIW I think we have instances enough (from a users point of view, I don’t think it matters much whether there are 100 or 1000 instances). We could be spread over the instances more evenly though.
Now that most (all?) instances have switched to 0.19
Beehaw are still on 0.18.4. If/when they make the planned move to Sublinks, they’ll effectively be on 0.19 in some ways I suppose.
Shrinking because it’s full of, and ran by commie dumbasses. Nobody likes you guys.
Every instance is run by distinct admins. You can’t say that Lemmy as a whole is run by any specific group.
Idk. The software most people here use is made by a small group of specific people. It affects us all as this defines the interaction and moderation tools that are available. And dictates what admins and mods can and cannot do.
Also the large instances have a dysproportionate amount of say. For example the largest communities are on lemmy.ml and lemmy.world. They run most of Lemmy.
Technically it’s all distributed over several different people. But they’re not equal in opportunity or reach.
It would definitely be better if users spread more evenly over the instances, yes.
We juste moved our community to !casualconversation@lemm.ee hopefully others will do the same
Yeah, we are really, really bad. You should leave before you start transmuting yourself into a tank and begin involuntarily rolling over capitalists.
Not to mention their jokes suck
18 days for this comeback was worse.
There is a thing where some Americans when exposed to other ways of doing things in the world insisit everyone’s a commie. It’s interesting to me that McCarthyism persists and that commie is used as some sort of pejorative but can’t compete with the wide world on some things and resort to big daddy government protectionism eg TikTok, steel imports, ecars etc
