cross-posted from: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473

Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.

information sources:

297 points
*

As always, you guys are way too fixated on size.

permalink
report
reply
76 points

Thing is, you have to measure from the user base on the underside, this graphic obviously uses the wrong method.

permalink
report
parent
reply
47 points

Meh. Not like there are shareholders to appraise of growth…

permalink
report
parent
reply
31 points

Here too there are misconceptions!

What’s important are the hard numbers, soft metrics like user count are misleading! Some may look large at first, but hardly grow with higher engagement, while in others engagement greatly increases the size.

permalink
report
parent
reply
60 points

Lemmy alone creates more content that I care about. This is fine.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Not always

Lemmy still doesn’t create enough content that I want

But I try to use lemmy more anyways

Hopefully more people will use lemmy more

permalink
report
parent
reply
28 points

It’s not the size of the ship, it’s the motion of the ocean.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Yeah, and let me tell you… Facebook’s motion does nothin for me, as big as it is…

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

That’s true but it does take a long time to get to England in a row boat

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

Yeah technique is really important too.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

So is my wife

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I wasn’t fixated on size when I met your mom

permalink
report
parent
reply
150 points

An elite 1.5 million.

permalink
report
reply
85 points

I’m absolutely fine with 1.5 million. I enjoy lemmy much more than reddit. I feel like content and conversations here are better. None of the karma farming and corporate promotion disguised as natural content.

permalink
report
parent
reply
57 points

Although you’re correct, I find fediverse lacking in the department of the more niche stuff, e.g. fandoms of specific games, communities by geo proximity, obscure hobbies.

But well, Reddit wasn’t like this from the start and I hope the diversity and smaller communities will be here instead of there with time.

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

Former r/fountainpens Reddit refugee here, and I agree 1.5m users doesn’t generate the kind of traffic for my hobby to figure in any sort of way. I miss the engagement

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Yep, I used to be on r/diyhotas and that was already a niche within the HOTAS niche within the simulator game niche 😂

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

While I was also part of some niche communities back in the Reddit days, thanks to Lemmy, I switched to Linux and have found interesting new websites, tools and apps. So I’d say overall it’s a net positive.

permalink
report
parent
reply

People need to realize that it’s okay for smaller forums to exist. Imagine if we measured fucking teamspeak servers by numbers. Would be just as ridiculous

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

If anything, smaller might be better in this case. We kind of have an idea of the type of demography we have here, with Reddit you could be arguing with a 9-year old in every other thread and you wouldn’t even know.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points
*

1.5 million is almost entirely Mastodon users which have no clue how Lemmy’s commenting culture works so rarely contribute in a way that makes sense to both the Mastodon commenter and the Lemmy comenter/poster at the same time.

Lemmy has ~20k ish actively commenting accounts.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

For now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
111 points

I’m happy with this. I feel like Lemmy is an oasis of nerds in a social media world of toxic people obsessed with all the wrong things.

permalink
report
reply
17 points

das ist richtig

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points
*

Bep bup! German Bot here!

“Das ist richtig” means “That is true”

Like and follow this bot so its creator may someday claw themselves out of the joyless pit they have dug themselves.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Close! Richtig is the German word for “right”, not true.

permalink
report
parent
reply
91 points

I’m surprised that the fediverse is as popular as it is, I would’ve guessed <500k. That’s awesome. I’m also shocked that Threads is apparently that popular, I completely forgot it existed immediately after it launched. I also didn’t know that Snapchat still existed, so maybe I’m just out of touch on social media stuff.

permalink
report
reply
34 points

Facebook forgot it existed too, they just recently made it possible to delete threads accounts without deleting Instagram

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points
*

Meta realized the same thing we all realized when we came here: userbase entrenchment is significantly more difficult to overcome nowadays than it was back in the 2000s when Facebook managed to pull everyone over from Myspace.

Legitimately, it seems like the average user nowadays is so hellbent against even a modicum of inconvenience or a slightly less populated environment that they will accept literally anything. The big tech and social media platforms couldn’t shake off users if they tried anymore. They can do every every shitty, anti-user, anti-consumer thing under the sun and users will bitch about it, but never, ever try an alternative.

And that’s why these companies and their devs don’t listen to feedback anymore. Why bother?

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

This is just factually untrue with the numbers lemmy by itself has being having. Not to say anything of Mastodon and et al. There wouldn’t be a mass exodus of highly engaged folks from reddit to lemmy if users just didn’t move anymore. Threads got big but then instantly deflated to a much lower number immediately.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Threads was built on top of Instagram infra (essentially Instagram but for text posts) so it’s not surprising the two accounts were intertwined. Would have made it easy to roll out an MVP (minimum viable product) when there was a need for it, and quickly iterate on it after launch. The original launch didn’t even include a web version as it wasn’t finished yet.

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

I’d like to see the breakout in the Fediverse for Mastodon vs. all others.

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

Thales was kind enough to provide a link:

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

What is a misskey?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Peertube is bigger than I thought!

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
1 point

Thanks!

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I’m surpsied Kbin is so low.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Mastodon is by the biggest contributor to Fediverse as a whole. Has been adopted by tons of Orgs like EU, W3C, Verge, Flipboard, etc.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I’m just curious what you thought might have happened to Snapchat? What app took its place in your estimation?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I think I got Snapchat and Vine mixed up or combined in my head. I’ve never used either one, I thought it shut down years ago, but what I’m remembering is Vine shutting down.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Vine was basically TikTok with shorter videos. I feel like it was a bit ahead of its time - phone cameras weren’t as good when it launched, and a lot of people didn’t have enough data to watch a feed full of videos.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

The fact that I regularly recognize my fellow Lemmings by username makes it feel small, but its not too hard to find a community full of strangers either.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points
*

Didn’t FB use some shady practice to make their users fall into Threads without noticing?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I think this was a misunderstanding of a bit of shitty functionality in threads. If you had Instagram and made a linked threads account, you would see follow suggestions for people who hadn’t made an account yet. It was basically “if this person makes a threads account I want to be following them”. I don’t believe it meant those suggested people had a shadow account or anything like that though. Still sketchy and probably drove inorganic growth, but I believe the number of users is counting the number of people opting into opening an account.

It’s just naturally going to be incredibly high, because so many people use Instagram and would’ve been exposed.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-4 points

The Fediverse is going to get a lot bigger once Meta turns on federation for Threads.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Or it’ll kill it!

RIP XMPP

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

How? XMPP still works anyway.

permalink
report
parent
reply
61 points

WE’RE ON THE RADAR, BOYS!

permalink
report
reply
17 points
*

LET’S GOOOOOO!

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

TO THE ATMOSPHEEEEEERE!

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

And girls

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

WE’RE ON THE RADAR, LEMMINGS!

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Baby steps are better than no steps for sure

permalink
report
parent
reply

Selfhosted

!selfhosted@lemmy.world

Create post

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

Community stats

  • 4.8K

    Monthly active users

  • 3.6K

    Posts

  • 77K

    Comments