I feel like that is more or less to be expected. A ton of people found Lemmy during the reddit protests. Now that the protests are gone and Lemmy has had its growing pains some users are leaving, going back to reddit or other places. If we keep using it and making content users will grow organically.
Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.
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I don’t think it’s about a craving for centralisation but for newcomers and people still learning the core ideas about decentralisation it’s about a promise of more active engagement and more varied content.
Lemmy is having an identity crisis of sorts. It was built to be decentralized yet we (users) seem to want to centralize everything and we all go to a few of the largest instances.
Because decentralization, at least as it is now, runs counter to what people are looking for in a social media platform; mainly discoverability.
It’s not that users want to centralize everything. It’s Lemmy’s design that promotes it, because despite federation, there are still advantages to choosing big instances and communities.
- Joining the largest instance makes searching, joining, or opening communities much more seamless.This can be addressed by:
- Improving the search so that it can find communities, or even content, that no one on the instance has subscribed yet.
- Making it easier to open a community in your home instance.
- In addition to Sub/Local/All feed, you can have a “moderated” feed (with communities selected by admins). The “local” feed is most useful for instances on a specific topic. But for very small instances, it’ll be too empty at least at first. So a moderated feed can create an on-topic feed that’s more lively.
- For most topics, only the largest communities are large enough to have good content, so everyone wants to join them. To address this, you need some easy mechanism to subscribe to all communities on a topic. For example, we can let communities follow other communities. Then people can create topical meta-communities that aggregate content without centralizing it.
You also don’t have the content of Reddit. It doesn’t take too long to scroll through all top six hours and get to the single digits of upvotes.
It’s hard to find instances that offer what world offers, so I get it.
OTOH, I ended up moving or handing over most of my communities that I had created on world because this instance is TOO popular and bogged down all the time. Plus, they make arbitrary and drastic decisions without discussion on matters like defederation and often banning. It’s smart to go to a smaller instance but it’s also risky because any instance could go down at any moment. That’s why many of my communities are duplicated (across world and infosec) because it would be devastating to lose all of those quality links and engagement.
It’s that everyone wants to create the same community on different instances.
I think more people need to make communities they are interested in that might already exist on beehaw/lemmy.world/lemmy.ml/etc but on other instances. We really need to not keep everything on a few instances… I agree it contradicts itself. I tried by creating fallout but hard to get activity. Even its main community is quiet so that makes sense. I might try something a bit less niche.
I think there is a gap in understanding how Lemmy works and how it differs from reddit, in particular with the less technical crowd. We definitely don’t want people sharing giant instances, but that matches more with the sign up for reddit, use reddit logic many people are used to.
I think it’s also why we have seen such drama over Sync for Lemmy and its ads and pricing. To the techy crowd that was the majority of Lemmy users, that all seems antithetical to what Lemmy is and how it works. To the people who came to Lemmy from reddit, and especially those who may have tried out Lemmy because of Sync, the criticism sounds maddening because that’s the way it always worked on reddit.
So in some sense all of this is expected. Lemmy will lose some users, but maybe it will find an equilibrium. The key focus these days imho should be outreach about smaller instances, and outreach about donating to your instance (if you can) to keep it running.
That doesn’t seem weird to me. Honestly it seems weird that it’s that active. I would’ve expected a sharper, quicker decline. Retaining active users is hard.
until personal interest groups are populated people will not use this site. its basically 1 big meme sub right now with some tech and politics sprinkled on top.
Some dropoff after initial hype is normal. Now we just continue as usual until reddit pisses people off again.
I’m to tired to make quality posts. Props to the people that can do that every day. Best I got is a few mildly opinionated comments.
I’m actively lurking, I just have nothing of value to share 🌝
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It’s okay for it to die down a bit after a massive influx like we saw from Reddit.
In the long run though, if it isn’t growing it’s dying. Lemmy is still small. If it succeeds at what it’s trying to do, it should definitely grow.
It’s a little worrying that we can’t grow faster than the novelty-die-off rate. But not cause for alarm as yet.
It’s a FOMO, bigger is better, kind of thing. I think some people came here looking for a replacement, which can’t happen, instead of looking for a community, which can.
It’s funny that you say that. Although it’s not I guess replacing Reddit in terms of scale, the browsing experience on Lemmy and that community feeling is actually an improvement for me.
So, I guess for me Lemmy is a more than adequate replacement. I don’t want all of Reddit here though, I think that would cause a whole lot more problems than it would solve.
Bigger is better, that’s why I got a big truck on big wheels and only eat corndogs whole while enjoying it a little too much.
I’m okay with it being smaller. I don’t think I want this to be Reddit-sized. I would like more users for sure but not that many.
Well, to keep a user is way harder than to attract his attention.
I think that the key differences between this platform(s) and the more known alternatives are part of the problem - people are very dumb these days and lazy. Often the first reaction to something new and not working in the expected way is to skip it, or demand the solution, rather than look around, try different approach and such.
I feel like I’m witnessing Diaspora 2.0 effect…
Yes, most people give up as soon as something does not work first time.
Maybe there are enough of us to be enough abd to fix those annoying little things that make lemmy complicated to use.
A lot if issues got resolved, apps are here,it is getting better fast.
I doubt it - too many people with different preferences they aren’t willing to let go, I’m afraid.
If you’re asking me, it’s “good enough” the way it is. I’d gladly have some more content filters, but even without them I perceive it as a platform with enough potential to consider it good.
There’s a flaw in your logic around people’s preferences if Lemmy wants to keep growing - at the end of the day, Lemmy is a service, and people shouldn’t be expected to give up what they want from a service. They’ll just go somewhere else if they aren’t getting the services they want.
It’s like if a restaurant told you what they were going to serve you and you better eat it or go find somewhere else to eat. Nobody’s going to put up with that. They’ll go somewhere else to eat. Just because you think the food is good doesn’t make that a good service model.
Now, I’m not saying that Lemmy should copy Reddit, or Facebook, or whatever else because that would defeat the entire point of Lemmy. But, taking into consideration the friction points people have with using federated platforms and coming up with ways to reduce that friction will only end up helping everybody. For example, finding a way to make a native aggregator for similar communities across multiple instances would not only help with discoverability for smaller communities, but would increase engagement by simplifying the process of users being able to find content they’re looking for while also allowing for more instances of those communities to exist across more servers without splitting or isolating the userbase to those servers, which would increase the resilience of Lemmy’s communities to specific servers going down.
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I think those issues will be solved though. Apps will increasingly make onboarding simpler so Lemmy will be as simple to use as Reddit.
At that point really its just a case of waiting for Reddit to fuck itself, which it absolutely will do eventually via corporate greed, and there we go, all the Lemmy content anyone could ever need.
I don’t think Reddit will fall, sadly.
It harbors too many people, who go there for a specific content and don’t care about the internal dramas, or who leads the place and what he thinks about the userbase. In addition… Eh, it hosted Obama, Arnold, plenty of actors, celebrities.
My assumption is that it will simply evolve into something different, but no less popular.
After all, Facebook was caught redhanded on such abominable practices that it should be burnt to a crisp long time ago, and yet it’s still there, led by that automaton, what’shisname…
I mean Facebook is actually a perfect example though no? I don’t know anyone below 40 who uses it. Eventually people get fed up of these stupid websites and move elsewhere.
Reddit will be around just like Facebook sure, but somewhere else will pick up the slack.
In Facebooks case that was Instagram largely which you know, also they owned. In Reddits case it may be Lemmy it may be elsewhere, we will see.
But that’s the point I’m making here. Facebook didn’t fall and Reddit won’t either. It’s going to evolve, cater to different clientele, offer different content/experience. But it won’t fall.
I mean fair I guess we’re on the same page there then. But if it caters to a different clientele then the existing clientele will move elsewhere was really what I was getting at, and that may possibly be here.
Aye.
This is both a blessing and a curse. Already there are some… less welcome, Reddit behaviors visible here. I’d rather people leave their old baggage at the doorstep, heh. 😬
I think I am on shitjustworks… i don’t know how big my instance is I just chose it because it has a cool name.
It has gone down a few times and at first my reaction was to go to is it down dot com to see if the problem was with my app… but then I had the realization that ohhhh, it’s just my home server is down… I thought about making a separate account on another instance but instead just decided to do something else with those few minutes I would have spent here….
No big deal…. It’s happened a few times in the couple months I’ve been here, but it always works eventually… I really like this platform, and the philosophy behind it, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to understand all the inner workings and how the instances work together, but I don’t feel like I need to.
But I can see how people who understand it even less than I do might get frustrated and so that is going to be a limiting factor with new growth here I would assume…
One thing that bugs me is people asking for/using tools that replicate the look and feel of Reddit instead of learning the ropes. I left Reddit, I don’t want another one. I get it, familiarity is comforting, but when the user base is a fraction of the other platform, no UI or app will ever give you the same experience. I say move on, get out of your comfort zone and participate.
Amen to that.
I don’t imagine staying on some site that resembles a drowning wreck, because “I got used to how things work here”.
I’m just here because I like the pretty 3rd party apps.
FYI, Lemmy doesn’t count lurkers as active users. Here’s how Lemmy counts active users:
An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
I’m not too worried. Graphs dont only go up. :)
Graps are delicious and I love the wins they make.
:) I erased any evidence of any misspelling that may or may not have taken place here tonight.
Joined today. I’ll likely just lurk in the background…
Also, this graph does not take into account kbin which is essentially the same kind of software as lemmy but tracked seperately. Better data can be found here: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse
Also, instance hopping and users registering on multiple instances before picking only one/being active on only once may be an explanation.
Also worth noting is Lemmy only counts posts/comments as “active users”. Lurkers who only read and up/downvote aren’t counted.
That’s interesting, I would expect people who vote to be accounted
Me as well. I only remember this because around July 1st there was a post about it, which lead to a wave of “doing my part by posting my daily comment to count as an active user”-comments.
That was probably my post :)
wow, I lurk so much more than I post stuff… one would think they would track this
I think this is the biggest factor. Most people only lurk. How many people signed up and only lurk?
At least 2.
So true. This is straight from Lemmy’s documentation:
An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
In this case, I have a theory. I remember a month ago people were posting a lot on Reddit and the !reddit@lemmy.ml community was extremely active. It was like group therapy for refugees. But now the new reality is setting in and people are actually having real and meaningful conversations, which means more lurkers.
So it doesn’t mean that active users are down per se, it’s just that it’s stabilised because people are mostly over Reddit.
Absolutely, and also keep in mind that many who were lurkers on Reddit and came over here maybe made one or two comments immediately saying something like “Happy to be on Lemmy!” and then went back to lurking here and haven’t commented since. They would have counted as monthly active users for July, but not August.
I wonder if lurkers were counted in reddits active user data
Lemmy.world has been down a lot, I’ve been trying to use it but half the times I’ve logged on it’s been down. So that might be part of it?
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Having Sync default to Lemmy.world seems like a huge mistake to me. Poor Ruud
Between lemmy.world and sync having issues I almost went on reddit. Then I remembered this is the fediverse, jerboa and lemm.ee exist and I’m back and more active than ever.
I think it’s mostly lemmy.world issue, since (for some reason) is Sync’s default, instead of suggesting smaller instances.
For real.
Don’t you have an account on another instance? Lemmy.world was down a bit that one time. Lemmy.ca was down once briefly for me due to site maintenance.
What are the best instances to have an account? I’m new to lemmy and just have lemmy world.
I have a second account on lemdro.id. It’s smaller and mostly android focused but its my main account most days. If world is having issues I don’t even think about it I just switch over 😂
I made a second account on lemm.ee - it’s big so has all the connections you could need and has amazing uptime.
Think it depends on things like your interests and at this point in time the uptime associated with said instance.
Is there a way to export and import subscriptions between accounts?
Lemmy.ml but same problems there. I haven’t had time/energy to make another one and subscribe to everything again.
I’m not sure why they’re not using elastic servers. Maybe because of the cost. Idk how Lemmy server dudes get their money, but it can be expensive running a server with 5-7 million visitors per month.
I’m generally a lurker so here. I posted.
As a lurker I mostly just vote. But gotta post every once in a while to add to active users stat!
I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me that you need to comment to be counted as “active”
Is this actually written somewhere?
I would have thought votes would count as a unique interaction to count towards being active
A stat for logged in users would be nice.
Yeah same, well here’s my active status for the month.
