Per the title, is Lemmy actually growing, or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
Don’t expect perpetual growth from the fediverse for one good reason:
It would cost more money.
Lemmy is self hosted and there are people who use their own personal money to host these things and have a certain amount of activity.
Doubling the users would double the cost but it would not double the usefulness for the instance owner.
I think the premise is flawed. Most of us have been brought up in a world that preaches “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” That mindset is harmful in a whole host of ways. I have no idea if lemmy is growing or not, but it’s quite possible, perhaps even preferable, for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.
I would prefer if it grew because so many communities are dead. It seems that only political and shitposting instances have constant activity.
For me it’s still not a real Reddit alternative. Which sucks because I’m permabanned from Reddit.
Lemmy is slowly accumulating mass - I’d really love it if we gained a number of strong niche communities, but didn’t turn into a reddit due to mass influx.
Doesnt work. They ban your ip, MAC address, email, everything. They even have a tool that flags people that may be doing ban evasion based on behavior and communities that are joined by said account. You could get around it but it’s way too much effort just to use reddit.
Correct. We don’t have need to be growing. 40k mau are nothing to scoff at and is bigger than most other online forums who can feel very busy even with 1000. So long as we’re getting as many users as we’re losing, we’re good. And the continuous enshittification of reddit will ensure there’s always people looking for a new home.
This is exactly on the nose. It reminds of articles I’ve read about the oldest continuously operating businesses in the world. Here’s an example: https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/management-leadership/japan-oldest-businesses/
Note that one thing in common between many of these businesses, some of which have been around for nearly 1,500 years(!), is that they are family owned and operated. In other words, they prioritized stability over rapid growth. I feel that there’s a huge lesson in this.
for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.
I’ve been on somewhat niche sites which have lasted decades, with waves of people coming in whenever related sites screw up and trickles of people leaving when an alternative community becomes more popular. It’s a comfy, slow existence, which works for some communities, but not for ones like this which thrive on diversity and chattiness, rather than really well thought-out replies days apart from each other. On reddit-like sites, time penalizes how high a post goes (unlike a forum where years-long threads are very normal to see on a front page) so there is an inherent benefit in having consistent activity. That doesn’t imply boundless growth, but at least sustaining a decent level of activity. We’re not chasing ad revenue, growth for growth’s sake is not what we want or need.
But with that said, a community with no new visitors can only lose them. That can be a slow process, but it’s inevitable. Been there, done that. Again, doesn’t imply that pointless growth is a good thing.
That’s some serious copium, and the other replies are worse. “If you’re not growing you’re dying” is bullshit when you control a large portion of the potential market, but not when you’re a bit player. Being less popular than a manifestly shitty platform like Reddit is not a flex and not a sign of long-term health.
According to fedidb.org, Lemmy has plateaued at around 43k active users over the past year.
If you ask me, though, it doesn’t matter. The Lemmy ecosystem is active and healthy.
I was about to agree with you and then add that people like me who more lurk and upvote may count as inactive because we don’t comment or post much. I just noticed that the chart only shows up to November of last year. I suspect several new people such as myself have finally found Lemmy given all that is going on and we’ll see that in the charts in a couple months.
Growth for growth/s sake means very little. Steady use is way more important and Lemmy has that.
It seems to be on a healthy state, there are some communities that I would like to have more content. But that’s also on me to share and contribute to the communities I would like to see.
Being a bystander on reddit for so long it’s a bit difficult to change that mindset, but I’m trying to share a bit more
