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!
Holy moly even though the graphes have a slight decrease - but that cause has been explained in the text - but those are still huuge numbers.
Holy moly there are a lot of guys on this platform! Nice to see!
Thanks for sharing and explaining mate!
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.
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!
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 had to block that sub, I can’t stand classic cars being cut up like that.
Where are these VW communities you speak of…? Asking as the owner of an old Mk IV Jetta lol
As a forever lurker, I agree with you, I’m unleashing up votes like never in my reddit life
I noticed that many people commented that there should be more engagement, ‘just like reddit’. So, i’m wondering if some of these people left and will return later to see if it’s more ‘reddit like’. So, those might be people who don’t necessarily want to post and comment themselves, but are waiting until they can get served with an endless stream of posts to scroll through.
Just thinking out loud here.
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! !android@lemdro.id has also been steadily increasing in active and subscribed users.
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.
I just joined after taking a break from reddit because of its toxicity spread into some of the smaller subreddits was active in, or they just shut down entirely. Now I’m kinda lurking around to get a feel for the communities here and the culture of lemmy in general. I like it here.
It’s weird how drama free kbin seems to be. Perhaps because we’re still smaller
I do follow some kBin communities. I learned about federated social networks recently and I am still exploring them. It’s the same with Mastodon. I’m on the main server but I might switch to another instance because I’m more active with people on it, it happened gradually though. I’m just trying to learn where I fit in the best.
