It's very simple, most of the posts here are circle jerks (Linux, FOSS, boy howdy aren't we better than Reddit, communism) or rage bait.
I only come here when I'm having a good day and I want to reel myself in a bit
Edit: see below to see how far Lemmy users will go to circle jerk how much better they are than Reddit
Let's look at some numbers and do some napkin math:
Currently, the top post of Lemmy can usually get a little more than 2K upvotes, which puts Lemmy at about late 2010 to early 2011 reddit level of activity, which is right before reddit hits its explosive growth phase in 2012 with SOPA, Kony, and the Obama AMA. While active user count has been going down, the amount of post and comments have both been steadily going up.
You also have to realize that in more than a decade, there was never a reddit alternative that has EVER hit this level of activity. (unless you count 9gag or the_donald for some reason.)
It's worth noting that Lemmy only had around 1000 active users for the first half of 2023. (Kbin had fewer than 40 active users until May 2023!) Currently Lemmy + Kbin have about 38,000 active users.
That's the reality of where we are. A quiet rural village that turned into a boom town, and now is finding a new normal.
I won't lie. I mostly don't engage with content I see here. I didn't do that when I was on Reddit either and mostly for the same reason: I don't really have much to say and, even when I do have an opinion, I don't usually want to engage in what's often a protracted debate about something that will probably just end up being frustrating.
That's not to say I haven't had positive experiences on the Fediverse - I've had more here than anywhere else - I'm just not particularly motivated most of the time.
lemmy still isnt nearly as good as reddit was by a long shot. niche communities suck, porn sucks, c/all content isnt bad but if you scroll once youll just repeat everything on refresh.
but god damn the reddit app is terrible now and the content sucks there now too it literally feels like its trying to be a tik tok clone.
As someone who posts a ton, I've noticed that a lot of people seem to check the top posts once a day or so. Posts can be slow to get engagement and traction, but the ones that become super active still seem to hit similar peaks as before (1-2k upvotes, hundreds of comments).
But yeah, people aren't as actively engaged and commenting on everything all day like they used to on reddit. The framework is here, and I think if there were another big exodus, Lemmy is set up to be a great landing point.
I see more people complaining on Lemmy about problems than I do the actual problems they're complaining about.
Just use the thing, and put the content and comments you want on it? You don't have to be a passive observer just staring out the window as monkeys dance for you. Be the monkey. Dance how you want. Eat a banana. Fling poo if that's what you want. Just stop expecting everyone else to create your dream routine and then having a sook because they step-pause-turn-pause-pivot-step-paused when you wanted them to step-pause-turn-pause-pivot-step-step.
Lemmy is neither popular nor heavily advertised, so people join at a slow rate
On the other hand, the amount political discussions, Hexbear, and lack of content result in disinterested people leaving Lemmy and joining Reddit
So the user count is decreasing because Reddit refugees are leaving faster than new people are joining
I am still on Lemmy. It's still my primary timewaster. I was clean from Reddit until a few weeks ago and I relapsed. The app is shit. Lemmy feels more like what I loved about Reddit but without the content. Reddit still has content but the app doesn't feel good to use.I m stuck going back and forth. First to Lemmy then to Reddit. I'll stick with Lemmy until it gets better or it dies.
idk, I'm not going anywhere
tbh its true: apart from my french instance where i like to hang out, most of Lemmy is just memes, Linux related posts, or self hosting posts. No meaningful content for ur average person really. In fact i scroll throu 'All' in new and reach yesterday's posts in just few minutes, given the amount of 'not so meaningful content' i am filtering ..
I love it here
Yeah I lurk most of the time and comment on neutral topics sometimes, but generally the content isn't too engaging.
It's either memes, Linux (or memes about Linux), or this or that type of politics. Lots of bot-generated content, too many American-based sports teams; lots of repeating topic content (e.g. shitload of musk, trump/biden/whatever), lots of community and/or news duplicates. I won't be lying I've seen like 5 reposts of some amd threadripper news in my active feed within 10 pages.
Sometimes I know that engaging into a small comment will yield zero replies, and other times I feel like the response will most likely be frustrating. What I valued about reddit is diverse topic discussions, interesting questions and fun reads. But people seem to have more fun bypassing my anti-politics filters in-between porn. I honestly think we need to revive many communities related to questions, interesting topics, and overall "lets-have-a-chat-on-something" (preferably not related to what I mentioned above, or at least that touches a broader audience).
Do I contribute a lot? Am I the one to tell people what to do? I don't think so, but when I have a will to create some content, that will is usually cut off by zero-to-none expected engagement from other people. People wanna do what they wanna do, I guess. I don't blame em.
There are too many dimwits who think Lemmy was made so that they can build their echo chambers. So, there is no discourse, just stupid people encouraging stupid people. Anyone that comments otherwise is immediately removed.
Most mods are dumdums. Most are obviously politically and ideologically motivated. It's their job to prune anything they disagree with, which means they can't help themselves and ban everyone. Most of the time it's a complete waste of time to comment in smaller subs. The dumdums have taken hold either by making the subs and controlling them, or by volunteering as mods with no oversight.
Happened with Mastodon too, but that's thriving now. Users come in waves. Don't focus on the numbers, focus on the content.
This is normal. Most "alt" services, rely on outrage and shit to grow user base. Reddit will do something stupid and we'll get a huge influx again, some people will stay, others will leave.
One of the other alt sites that I was part of had a meme just for this: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/409/691/008.png
We need something like this drawn up for Lemmy but without the N word.
Wait... Are you guys not doing the Highlander thing? Because I've been cutting the heads off of other Lemmy users to absorb their power, but if there can actually be more than one true Lemmy user then wow... That is some egg on my face, but anyway the monthly users should start increasing again once I stop!
Sincerely, the 900 or so Lemmy users I for lack of a better word now "represent".
Feels Very circle jerky here. Its low effort commentaries on political issues mostly and extraordinarily little growth of niche interest subs. The lack of content here helps curb my doom scrolling, so that and a real hate for reddit leadership and the pathetic Simps that think writing "fuck Spez" while still contributing content to his network for free is a form of effective protest, are all that keeps me here though.
i love lemmy,
For me personally, I have less connection to specific subs than back in the reddit days, given its federated nature and all that. I enjoy scrolling through the homepage, but don't really have that specific moment of 'I thought of something nice! That would fit nicely into this one, specific subreddit!'
Which, don't get me wrong, can be a good thing in the long run. But it takes a bit of getting used to.
oh my god who cares
It was always bound to happen after a massive user gain. Frankly, we should be quite happy we can get over 400 comments in a thread. That’s not insubstantial for a very niche platform.
i don't care. I came here because i'm so sick of reddit.
I’ll throw in a few reasons
-Learning curve is huge compared to other social media
-As soon as an instance gets a large audience hosting costs skyrocket and moderation ability plummets
-The same instance can exist on multiple servers causing the demographic to be split
-Pr0n instances have to take the colossal risk of hosting malicious material that can send them to jail because the data is hosted on their own server
I moved to Lemmy over from reddit not because of content or better UI but because people behind reddit seems like jerks to me and i came to realization I'd rather use open source.
What i lack here is information e.g. programming communities in Lemmy are, well, dead. If left on Lemmy things that are "recommended" to me it's sensational "news" that are aimed to spark woke vs others battle in discussion.So what to make better ?
- to build what reddit has, I'd call it a content library and i don't care if it's done by bots or humans. For me the facts + discussion to ask question is super important.
- if searching for a topic outside of Lemmy> Lemmy doesn't show up in search engine but reddit does. Some optimization needs to be done to get better score at search engines.
- let users to block instances and thus make de-federation to user's decision.
- i think there needs to some kind of cross instance community, i don't think having same kind of community in multiple instances with different content is good solution.
AreYouNotEntertained.gif
Most people have never heard of Lemmy or the Fediverse and were not invested one iota in the API Fiasco because they don't know what API stands for and they normally use the official mobile app.
So the Fediverse has an uphill battle. For the vast majority of Reddit users, Reddit still does everything they need it to and there's no great call to migrate over. People that are only peripherally aware of the Fediverse may also think it has something to do with blockchain technology. The technological savviness divide grows larger by the minute.
Permanently Deleted
There is no way in the fucking world someone is going to ask me to feel bad about a social media platform failing in 2023. Like, get fucked.
“Newl and
active“currently arguing” should be the only sorting options. New promotes activity and the other is entertaining.Give it time.
Well, Lemmy is really not good at pushing new content/new posts and/or new communities to people. For many of us, that might be a boon: less algorithmic shenanigans, less "steering" of the user. Yet, if you are not a user who likes to actively seak out stuff, your feeds will look stale and slow-paced very quickly. There might be new stuff,.but the feeds struggle to find a middle ground between "only the upvoted stiff you subscribed to", "the always same server wide top posts" and "bleeding edge new stuff". It's also very reluctant to sprinkle on new communities.
I think that's a main contributor to the decline.
For the record: kbin is more liberal when it comes to that sort of stuff. So if you like a more active feed, you might want to try kbin. If you like your feed to be controlled by you more, use Lemmy.
I’ve stopped posting in a few communities due to user interaction. Some are just asses, some want this to be Reddit 2.0.
Degrowth happened. Anyway.
So glad I decided to stop lurking and actually start participating right as the fediverse is dying.
As someone who posts a lot, I've noticed that a lot of people seem to check the top posts once a day or so. Posts can be slow to get engagement and traction, but the ones that become active still seem to hit the same peaks as before.
But yeah, people aren't as actively engaged and commenting on everything all day like they used to on reddit. The framework is here, and I think if there were another big exodus, Lemmy is set up to be a great landing point.
Yep... You're right.
Supercommunities
It's still 35x what it was months ago.
It picked up a lot of people leaving Reddit. Some have stuck around, others haven't. And a number of people are continuing to join every month.
Think about what MAU is actually measuring.
If a user joined in protest of Reddit, they count as MAU for that month even if they never log in again after account creation. But then they drop off. So is the MAU representing actual churn, or just effectively sign up abandonment?
Given the spike in popularity and continued sign ups, the MAU is probably artificially inflated with the signups aspect.
The way I'd interpret these numbers is that there should be a greater investment in onboarding, and ideally funneling people towards signing up directly from one of the preferred app clients with a good onboarding and new user process.
If possible, then look at the relative account abandonment per-client and prioritize funneling users to the client with the lowest abandonment.
While there is a bit of the chicken and egg issue of content - and with such small numbers Lemmy does tend to be a bit of an echo chamber with little tolerance for different ideas - I don't think it's as much an issue with sustained usage as it is an issue with failing to keep users long past the initial signups (like 1-2 days past).
I mean my accounts keep getting banned pretty much just for commenting on worldnews threads these days so idk.
Network Effect
It would probably help not to have this happen:
Probably because of bad memes with bizarre phrases like "user is keep"
shieet
All the people constantly complaining about "tankies" and "commies": You are the problem. Normal people are repulsed by that shit. The only reason you don't see more pushback against it is because nobody wants to get inundated with pedo-nazis trying to draw them into a debate where they're either forced to side with literal nazis or the worst strawmen of socialism that they can think up, where if they back down or stand up for their values at any point, they get targeted for harassment. I deal with that shit regularly because I'm built for it. Most people aren't.
