Per the title, is Lemmy actually growing, or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
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.
Total post doesn’t really tell us much. Of course there’s going to be more posts over time. Hell there are Bots that post things. That number is going to go up as long as the servers exist. There could be no human users on here and those are going to go up.
When you sort by monthly active users, this is what you get:
What really jumps out to me is the fact .ml’s active users equals the total users. Not too sure what to make of it. I’d assume the mod’s delete nonactive accounts after a set amount of time or it’s just relatively small based on total users but everyone’s visiting at least once a month.
sh.it.heads: “We’re number 5! We’re number 5!”
(me. I’m probably the only one chanting at this fact)
I find it kinda concerning how the number of instances is shrinking and number of users per instance is going up. IMO it should be part of the fediverse design to incentivize decentralization to avoid a gmail situation.
Also worrying is that the number of Active Users is trending constant or slightly down, but the number of posts over time is climbing dramatically. To me, this could be a sign of inauthentic behaviour on the rise.
From the perspective of someone who has been on Lemmy for a few years now, I’ll say that the amount of content here has become large enough for me to use Lemmy as a “daily driver” account. I don’t miss out on important news or updates by using Lemmy instead of Reddit…in fact it often feels quite the opposite
So from what I’ve seen on Lemmy over the last year is that the quantity of posts and variety of topics feels like it’s going up. I certainly enjoy engaging on here.
Will it stagnate? I’m not sure. It might be that the monthly user levels stabilise but thats not the same as stagnate. If people are engaged and enjoying their time then it has value.
My feeling is that Lemmy will slowly grow over time. I don’t see it becoming a huge platform like Reddit anytime soon. Its feasible but it feels like for now it will remain niche.
But I also dont want to it suddenly become huge. I was on reddit for a long time and I saw it evolve from being something small and interesting to a behemoth and enshittification to make money. Small is sometimes better, and small or stable in no way means stagnation.
What we really need is for people to put up topic focused sites and promote them as their own thing, not jusy “lemmy”. So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in, but who aren’t into things like Reddit.
The fediverse is perfect for places like that. Places where you can focus on your primary interest, but also look over the fence. But all anyone wants to do is put up general interest sites and whine about there being more than one “gaming” forum.
Does it have to?
Maybe a bit would be nice, but I don’t want it to grow as big as Reddit got.
I would say yes, because as is the real niche communities dont have the size for larger discussions.
Mainstream communities e.g. about global news already have a decent size. And in many ways it doesn’t make much of a qualitative difference if there are 500 or 10.000 predictable comments. But many smaller communities are still mostly propped up by a few power users providing the majority of content which is not ideal for many reasons.
