So since the mass-exodus from Reddit we can see that the total amount of active users has gone down rather heavily: https://i.imgur.com/MeQok2F.png
This can seem a bit sad at a first glance. Where are we heading? But one has to remember that back during the summer many of us created several accounts to settle at an instance, there were also problems with spam-bots of various kinds.
So active users in itself is actually not that interesting. At least not the comparison with the peak. Instead we can watch the total amount of posts, how is that looking?
Well it’s steadily going up actually: https://i.imgur.com/i3Vse7Y.png
Though the increase has gone down slightly. This number however is influenced by other parameters as well. There are several reposts bots and such that mass-post to different instances. But it’s definitley a good tell it’s not going down.
Another interesting factor is comments: https://imgur.com/hWT8xvF
The amount of comments per month has gone down, but not by all that much. A 10% decrease from the top or so. What’s interesting here is that the decline has plateaued, which could indicate that the userbase has settled and become somewhat consistent. This is great news.
All in all, it seems like Lemmy has settled into a rather comfortable spot, with a decent amount of users, posts and comments. That is very slightly decreasing. Ideally we’d like to see this trend reverse, and perhaps that might happen naturally with due time when things have settled even more. For Lemmy I’d reckon the growth will look a bit like this. Whenever Reddit does something horrific (and it will happen more), we’ll see a mass-exodus with more users over here. Then it’ll decrease for a bit, settle and hopefully we can rinse and repeat. Anyway - that’s some irrelevant thoughts from me on the subject.
Just wanted to post these rather good statistics!
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I feel like the overall engagement has increased. I see a lot more niche communities (like people butchering their VWs in various ways 😂) and it’s nice! There’s generally conversation to be had and such, it feels like a healthy platform.
Lemmy slotted in the gap that Reddit left really easily for me, and I’m getting what I wanted from the platform.
One thing I love about lemmy is how easy it is to get a conversation going. On reddit it’s really easy to be buried in a thread, and if you get a response it’s often just a joke or a snarky remark. Here there’s so much genuine engagement. It reminds me of the transition from Twitter to Mastodon. I guess people who bother to make the move are more likely to be more engaged users, too.
Lemmy’s comment sorting does also actively prevent getting buried, unlike reddit (?). Newer comments are biased towards the top, and even heavily-upvoted older comments will fall towards the bottom. The lack of “global karma” and our community’s propensity to heavily downvote anyone doing redditisms like pun threads are also doing a lot of work here.
I didn’t even know about that, that’s really cool. I have noticed that if I come back to older posts there’s often a lot of new activity since I was there last.
Yeah! It doesn’t matter how stupid whatever point I have is, there’s usually some sort of conversation born from it, and I really enjoy that!
ignored ;)
i need to see those VWs please
I think it’s [email protected]
TIL how to link to communities on other instances in a way that keeps you on your own instance. thanks for that!
No problem :)
It definitely makes life easier
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As a forever lurker, I agree with you, I’m unleashing up votes like never in my reddit life
I had to block that sub, I can’t stand classic cars being cut up like that.
My roomie is German so I share stuff from that community with him from time to time. It might be against the Geneva convention, but I’ve not faced repercussions yet.
Lemmy has replaced reddit completely for me. Sure the content isn’t exactly the same, but it doesn’t need to to be successful IMO.
Same. Since the app stopped working I sometimes accidentally get on Reddit, but not on my phone.
Also Lemmy banned a lot of bot accounts, so the user number is to take with a huge grain of salt. It could in fact be up from before the bot fiasco.
It takes time. Lemmy is still pretty niche and reddit just has a decade+ of accumulated lurkers.
The important part is that the best people from Reddit are here now.
(ヘ･_･)ヘ┳━┳
What did you call me? I’ll have you know that, as a former Redditor, we bring a certain level of trash regardless. Nice to be here, though ❤️
Yea, seems like the active posters are here and the trash is left on Reddit. The quality of posts in my subscribed subreddits is terrible now.
I checked it yesterday as I was suffering through a meeting that should have been an email and the content quality on reddit these days is appalling. I don’t have an account anymore, so I was just browsing r/all, but still, it’s very noticeable compared to a year ago.
The most noticeable thing when I went back to the site with a fresh account (unfortunately there are still a few real niche communities that I want to participate in that refuse to move) I was inundated with a bunch of right wingy content. New subs like “true unpopular opinion” parrot a bunch of shitty views disguised as “conversations”. Lots of racism, homophobia, and other terrible shit now there right in the open on the home feed.
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My activity dropped because I can’t enter a single thread that isn’t about, big corpo, Linux, and how I shouldn’t spend money.
Don’t forget being accused of being a fascist because your favourite game is rollercoaster Tycoon.
Wait what? Is it just because it’s a tycoon game?
I’m just being a bit daft but I’ve never seen the word fascist being used so much anywhere as I do on Lemmy. Everyone seems to get labelled it at some point.
I gave up on it because I’ve tried logging in via Jeroba, Connect, and Voyager on my phone, and no bueno. I don’t mind putting in some effort but eventually I give up.
I’ve found Sync to be very reliable and nice to use. I’m commenting from it right now!
I use Liftoff and it works great, plus it’s free and doesn’t sell any of my personal data.
My activity dropped because I can’t enter a single thread that isn’t about, big corpo, Linux, and how I shouldn’t spend money.
I read your comment on the YouTube Adblock post, and how you were railing against the same things, but I didn’t see that even mentioned in the OP at all, which is what you directly replied to.
Was trying to see your point of view but I didn’t see the OP do any kind of hate raging against corpos, etc.
Man, Lemmy users also take things far more literal.
Was trying to see your point of view
Man, Lemmy users also take things far more literal.
Was honestly trying to understand your perspective, and have a conversation with you about it (which is why we’re here, right?).
There’s no need to be rude about it.
The arrival of Boost for Lemmy did it for me. So now it’s a case of stumbling around and finding the communities I like, and beginning to post, and that always takes a little while.
Welcome, Dave.
Dave’s a beast!!
Everyone knows Dave!
Dave’s not here.
Yes, but only on Tuesdays, 4 to 6pm. Don’t want to steal the limelight, there’s room for everyone.
I wish the app logo was slightly different so I can differentiate Boost for Reddit and Boost for Lemmy. I’ve turned off app names on the launcher years ago and it has never been an issue since every app is different, except for Boost.
it’s too bad the stock launcher on android doesn’t let you change app logos. you can do it using most 3rd party launchers, but that’s probably not worth it for that one feature
I think the Nova launcher allows you to have custom icons on their free version.
Is there any point having boost for reddit still installed?
It’s still my primary app for Reddit.
But isn’t it shutdown? That’s what the boost subreddit says and it isn’t available on the playstore anymore, did they implement some way for people to pay the api fees directly?
It wasn’t shut down, it was just abandoned. Furthermore, the app store won’t forcibly uninstall an app on your phone just because it was removed from the store.
Whilst the pinned post says it will stop working after the API change, every other post is talking about how it’s working, new bugs that have appeared as Reddit is changing their API, and others about how they chosen the wrong method to keep it working.
I don’t visit the sub but since i was interested because of what you said, I’ve found someone say practically the same thing as I did here. https://www.reddit.com/r/BoostForReddit/comments/16upao5/comment/k2pp0ae
I don’t know what the developer did exactly to keep it working. After the API change there was 2-3 updates within the first few weeks, and then I assume they removed the app from the store.
Don’t kill me for saying this but I feel like Lemmy has become slightly worse than when the mass exodus happened. I won’t name names but there are so many copycat communities seemingly exclusively reposting the Greatest Hits from any given sub. It feels like we’re trying to be reddit 2.0 instead of lemmy 1.0
There’s also a discussion of this on hackernews, but feel free to comment here!
That hacker news bit got me, I won’t lie.
“An actual conversation about this post is happening elsewhere but I guess you can leave a comment here. I’m a bot so I won’t read it though lol”
To be fair, many of those are fascinating posts in their own right.
It’s one of the only bots I haven’t blocked so I do agree. It just feels weird to see. Like a reminder that hackernews is better
I went ahead and blocked it and spend time on HN along with Lemmy instead. HN discussions on those posts are always so much livelier than those sad, but interesting copycat posts.
Bot posts are soulless and when so many of the posts here are from bots, the whole site feels a little hollow
Agreed. I think it dilutes user engagement, because people will leave comments on these bot threads, never to be seen by anybody else.
You’re right. Reddit was the same way during the Digg migrations. The first wave took place with the HD DVD code fiasco migration when some people setup their first accounts. It was a couple years later when Digg upset users again that the final big wave occurred. This is a great place for Lemmy as growing pains get worked out and development catches up to much needed moderation functionality.
As Cole and I say in reference to lemdro.id, it’s a marathon not a sprint! [email protected] has also been steadily increasing in active and subscribed users.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0,
Big copyright die mad
Oh, memories. I was still in college.
Yeah I expect the same thing to happen. Reddit’s gonna keep pissing users off as they race for their IPO and so this will happen in waves. And when Reddit goes public and needs to start MAKING BIG NUMBER GO UP, the site is really gonna change and people are not going to like it.
Meanwhile the Fediverse and its lack of profit motivation, algorithms, and advertising is going to start looking real appealing.
It might take years. But it does feel like the Fediverse is holding on and has what it takes to make it on the long term.
We will see another big one when old.Reddit.com dies, too. Some people just want a list, man! I don’t necessarily want to load every post and picture to scroll by…
Yeah I completely wiped my account and don’t post anymore but I still browse the site because it’s just a hard resource to replace overnight. But if they kill off old.reddit it’s gonna be a lot easier to wean off of it. Killing Apollo has cut my usage back considerably as I no longer use Reddit on mobile.
So I think killing old.reddit will be a big step as will them seeking more invasive ways to pump revenue. It’s all downhill for that site from here out as far as I see it.
Don’t make the same mistake reddit did, by assuming active users = engagement.
Look at reddit’s stats, active users didn’t drop very drastically when everyone left. However, engagement/comments dropped drastically.
A lot of us left entirely, but even more people just went full lurker mode. Taking “precious resources” away from Reddit servers while no longer giving them any free content in return.
Yeah. This is me now. I was an active content poster previously but now I refuse to contribute anything.
Would that be better than outright quitting the platform? Genuine question
Not really, it’s like giving attention to someone you hate. They feed off of it.
Not necessarily. As long as you just cost traffic and offer absolutely nothing in return, blocking their ads and even restrain from voting. The difference that would make is directly proportional to the amount of users doing it.
I don’t, btw. Just completely left and deleted a “nice” account. Fuck you reddit.
I left with 15,000 karma points and eleven years as a Redditer. Sad to leave ornithology and many other subs, it will take awhile to get those folks to migrate.
Ouch. Damn. Such very niche-subs will take a while to get here for sure. Luckily I found most of my subs here. More or less. And more or less active. But hey, it’s our own fault for putting time into such a thing. They always end up the same.
I did a Google search one time for Reddit traffic stats but came up empty handed. Is there a good resource for that?
I saw it through one of the apps which scrapes reddit comments for archival.
Reddit quit making those stats public a while back, sadly
I would add a strong subjective signal as well. That is, I am a pure lurker. Never posted on Reddit, don’t intend to post here. I browse reddit to pass the time and to feel a connection to what is happening in the world. I set up lemmy during the summer and I have been very pleasantly surprised. I now surf both lemmy and reddit about equally. I’m finding that lemmy is always more enjoyable and increasingly more informative as well. It really feels like lemmy is well on the way.
I dig the positive trajectory.
I don’t use any social media except for Lemmy. It used to be only Reddit but jumped ship after the API changes. I’m enjoying Lemmy for the most part. Commenting is better because it gets more traction compared to Reddit. Unlike others I actually enjoy having all the varying opinions from “problem” instances. It makes it feel less like an echo chamber, which Reddit was bad for.
My only issue is because it’s so much smaller than Reddit, there isn’t as much content or niche communities. I miss some of the subs I used to frequent on Reddit. Some of them were made into communities here but barely have any activity, like one post per week. I guess at the end of the day it’s a good thing cause I spend less time on Lemmy than I used to on Reddit.
My problem with niche communities, and most of Lemmy’s content in general, is that people are using the most weird, random, out-there sources for all of their topics. It more often than not that I see some strange, clearly biased source, over more reliable or professional sources.
Definitely miss the niche communities, but not enough to go back.
There are many niche communities missing, but they will come with time and with people talking more.
I agree.
The best part I enjoy is being able to open this website without all the dark patters pushing me to install some dumb app just because they can scrape the data from my phone more easily.
Bringing the content from niche subreddits is what I am trying to do with Fediverser. What subreddits do you miss the most?
The problem with crossposting bots is that I rarely care for the OP as much as I care for the comments.
You’re in luck. Fediverser is made to bring comments as well…
Yeah, but if I have a clarification question or want to further discuss it, the bot is not gonna answer me. It doesn’t have the same feel to it for me, I dunno. But it’s a start I guess.
It will, soon. I’m working to make two-way communication. Responses on lemmy to a reddit bot will create a comment on the reddit thread.
I really miss hobbydrama. Someone made a sub over here and was reposting the material but seems to have stopped in the last month.
I am starting to be a bit bottlenecked by the amount of subreddits that we need to track. I am planning to let people import their own API keys and/or private JSON feeds to help fetching more data. Would you be interested in joining it?
Thanks for looking out-- I don’t really have any technical skills where I could mess with API keys or the like but I appreciate the thought.
Go Lemmy. I’m actually okay with how it is now. Lemmy feels like an exclusive club where the members are more inviting and accepting than Reddit ever was.
Me inviting and accepting?! Im gonna feed ya to the Joshua trees!
No, not the Joshua trees, I’ll never survive! /s Love you too, fellow Lemming.
D’aww you guys…
Group hug!
No I am made of spite and covered in blood, now if youll excuse me Ive got to tear the copper out of this church and burn it down. Then me and the boys are going to dennys via the back of Kurts bickup.
Yes. We banned a ton of fake accounts and servers.
After twitter implements subscription for all users, prepare for twitter users moving to Lemmy.
or mastodon/threads mainly
This is much more likely, the way twitter works is very different from reddit/Lemmy style
Why don’t news outlet cover Lemmy and mastodon as much as threads and twitter
meh, I’d say a mix of lack of ability to advertise efficiently on services like mastodon and lemmy and the fact that Lemmy and Mastodon are still in their “infancy” (I can’t say that about the latter since its pretty old in comparison to lemmy). Also, lack of marketing power compared to something like meta with billions of dollars of resources and all the motivation to try to get people to move away from Twitter and onto their services. This is new tech so I’d rather just stick to being niche for now and enjoy the experience. Its not going to last long and maybe soon by the next year we’re going to see alot progression.
I am guessing since they can’t advertise there.
Bluesky as well
I despise bluesky but that too
I despise bluesky
Why? Honestly asking.
Unfortunately, the software for both running and displaying Lemmy is still in beta. While it’s still in active development, it’s probably for the best that we stay niche because bugs and stability issues turn off a lot of people permanently from the platform. That’s why I’m waiting until the Lemmy 1.0 release to really advertise, I don’t think we’re ready for that kind of growth yet.
Would be nice if the pace of development could be accelerated.
Still waiting for an instance to swap to photon or alexandrite as their default UI. Those seem to develop faster
I have Photon running at the same subdomain level as my main UI, but it’s easy enough to host both.
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Imo almost a million active users is about the right place to be. Fuck being as big as reddit.
The consequence is that, for many niche interests, there simply aren’t enough people in the Fediverse to form a viable community about it.
Just to throw a random example that crossed my mind, /r/glassblowing has 32,000 members. There is no Lemmy community as far as I can find. I actually got some useful advice from /r/terrariums, with 180,000 members, when I made a terrarium a month ago. I don’t believe there’s an equivalent Lemmy community.
Reddit’s massive strength is that it’s big enough that essentially any interest or topic, no matter how small, has enough people into it that they can form a productive community. That size also means that the default communities become absolute dogshit, but it’s easy enough to ignore them.
Yeah, I get that too. It’s a valid point. I’m hoping over time the internet at large will absorb some of those niches. I don’t even care if sometimes a web search takes me to reddit, or somewhere else really. I just want a place to browse that is less toxic than reddit. Lemmy’s userbase has gotten a little shittier lately imo, but still way better than reddit.
A lot of Lemmy’s problems can be summed up in a question: how does this benefit from not being a dedicated forum?
I want to go back to the decentralized internet where hobbyists were running their own servers and communities. Lemmy, like reddit, encourages centralization onto a single major platform, and I don’t like that.
