I discovered lemmy back when reddit started to charge for their API. However upon taking a look at it, it seemed that apart from like 8 communities,there was not much going on elsewhere. Things seem to have changed since then, quite a lot of active communities these days. So how many users do yall reckon lemmy has now? Is it close to 5M? or perhaps even higher?

  • frozenspinach@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I remember in the early days people saying that Lemmy wasn’t succeeding. Very frustrating to hear because it was like the very early days. And look at it now!

  • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The worse two things to happen to lemmy when the reddit api migration happened is people created clones of their subreddits multiple times on different instances but when it didn’t take off immediately they just abandoned it. The second was bot posting no one is going to engage when op is not real and thus you have zombie communities with zero comments. So it looks like a ghost town instead of a letting grow organically.

    • small44@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      When you are almost the only one posting for more thsn 6 months, it make sens that s lot of community owners stop posting

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        But that’s my point it wasn’t created organically one community at a time but a flood of clones with the same names at subreddits vs having there own identity. So instead of one community on one instance known for one topic you have twenty that are watered down and no one knows where to coalesce.

        • small44@lemmy.world
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          But that’s my point it wasn’t created organically one community at a time but a flood of clones with the same names at subreddits vs having there own identity

          I would argue that people like familiarity like linux distros that looks familiar to windows has grown in popularity. Therefore using similar names to the one on reddit makes complete since to me and I don’t see it would affect the growth. As for have different content, since lemmy is less mainstream you will see less popular topics. Many communities has a good balance between mainstream topic and less popular content yet fail to make people participating

          • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            You are also asuuming reddit was the default for a person coming to lemmy and that still doesn’t explain the multiple communities created as clones becase the familiarity gets flipped on its head becase the person coming from reddit that would appeal to goes. It looks like reddit has the same name as my favorite subreddit. Why doesn’t it work just like reddit? Then they say screw this I’m going back to reddit and thus you haven’t dead communities hanging off of lemmy like a tumor. Hell the /c/name is not even shown in clients when you search it’s the display name. So that makes it even more confusing.

            • small44@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              I don’t see a reason to believe that the majority of users on Lemmy are Reddit refugees, because every time Reddit makes a bad decision, we see a boost in new users.

              Technology is one of the most duplicated community name, yet Lemmy.world technology community is one of the most popular, so I don’t see community duplication as the biggest issue. The biggest problem with Lemmy and other fediverse app , was always that most people don’t understand the appeal of decentralization, because most of them never experienced censorship, so it doesn’t directly affect them. I think decentralized app creators should stop using decentralization as the main selling point, and focus instead about the fediverse being open source and about the diversity of clients you can use to navigate them. While also simplifying things like adding an pick a server for me, ability to merge communities with similar or same names, simplifying migration to other servers with the ability to migrate everything including posts.

    • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      not disagreeing with your overall premise, but do clearly labeled bot news aggregator communities need much interaction right now?

      I read many of the articles on bot feeds and will sometimes comment on ones that I think should get a few more eyeballs. others do the same and I appreciate their prodding as well. for my usecase lemmy in its current state has been absolutely wonderful, and I am enjoying watching it evolve.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Yeah I’m glad it works for you but at that point you are using lemmy like a RSS feed reader and at that point just use an RSS feed reader. But my point was trying to explain the lack of engagement that drives more content. Sometimes the post is secondary to comments in some cases.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I know I engage way more on lemmy than I ever did on reddit. I think I posted more on here in the first year then I did the whole 11 years on reddit. Lemmy reminds me more of the old forum days than reddit or Digg. I wish lemmy would have followed the forum model more with an instantce having just 2 to 3 communities all around similar theme like how the star trek instance does it vs everyone trying to be an mini reddit. Also I know it’s ironic me saying that with my account being from .world

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          Yep, I agree, that’s why I generally enioy Hexbear more than other instances. Having a theme and a specialty helps flavor your experience in unique ways.

        • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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          with an instantce having just 2 to 3 communities all around similar theme

          There are a few servers like this and people are aware of the centralization dangers of .world. Its hard work to keep a system like this from turning to shit.

          • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            trying to do my part; always on the lookout for non {dot}world communities to comment in.

          • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Yeah imagine what lemmy would look like if reddit or Digg were not a thing and it went from forums directly to lemmy. The network would be so even and the the instance would tell you kind of what communities are there just by the name.

        • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          It’s not really what you’re looking for but I noticed recently that NodeBB (forum software) supports the fediverse. I actually found my lemmy user on it which I thought was super neat

        • toynbee@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          A while ago, I made a post saying things very similar to your first two sentences.

          I definitely am far more active here than I was on Reddit. It’s less intimidating here because of a smaller audience. Also, on Reddit, I’d often get negative responses if any at all. The crowd here is much friendlier; once or twice people have lashed out in response to something I said, but mostly people have been kind even if they apparently disagreed with my message.

          • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Well also on reddit there was a lot of Psyops shit going on with accounts being puppeted. By one org or another to manipulate the discussion. Reddit is a bigger target for that kind of shit. Lemmy gets the benefit like Linux used to have of being too small on the desktop side to be a target for the most part.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 days ago

        Mastodon is the biggest fediverse platform and that has just short of 900k MAU (monthly active users) with around 8M registered users.

        In terms of non activity pub but federated protocols, matrix is probably the biggest with a user count in the hundreds of millions. They also market very well to goverments and the public sector tho so they get lots of users from massive deployments with millions of users on one server.

        • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          People say this, but I’ve been on Lemmy and Mastodon for about 1.5 years and Lemmy feels a lot more engaging than Masto. My posts there get one or two likes and boosts, while posts and comments here regularly get dozens if not hundreds of upvotes. I think Blue Sky is eating their lunch right now.

          • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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            3 days ago

            Microblogging is about individuals while lemmy is about topics.

            With the former, unless you involve algorithmic recommendations or recommendation lists like bluesky, its going to be a lot of work for users to get a nice feed from just following individual people.

            With the latter, the things i mentioned are basically built into the system so its easier to get a lively experience even with much fewer users.

            • dentino_F@discuss.tchncs.de
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              3 days ago

              My experience goes against this position.

              Between quite a few really active users and the ability to follow hashtags I have had a very active timeline almost since day 1 in Mastodon.

              To put it in comparison, I find it hard to keep up with the Masto timeline while my 6-hour best sorting starts quickly showing a ton of doubles (wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow make them go away? )

      • Foni@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        Keep in mind that these are active users, many networks with huge numbers have registered accounts, but most have no activity.

        In any case, be the change you want to see, help the network grow by providing content and activity, you will always be welcomed.

    • HexPat@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Can you ELI5 for me why Instances are more important than communities?

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        Doesn’t matter as much for lemm.ee as it’s more of a utility than an instance, but I see instances more like traditional “subreddits” and comms within them as “hashtags” and categories. Hexbear’s “games” comm is very different from Lemmy.mls, as an example.

        • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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          If I could change one thing about lemmy. I kind of wish communities worked like channels in IRC. When servers are federated if I go to #games on my server and you go to #games on your server. It does it’s best to show the same content. So the instance is real but the community is vitrual abstracted by the protocol.

          • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I feel like doing that automatically would just encourage instances to defederate if their larger communities didn’t like the cut of another instance’s jib. The culture clash would be harder to tolerate if content were mixed by default like that.

            Maybe an easier way for end users to do it themselves? Like making a feed of multiple communities under one topic.

    • lolrightythen@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Quality > quantity. Lemmy still has some trolls and the usual misunderstandings, but people are here bc they want to be, not bc its the only option

  • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    It’s small enough I recognize users all the time, which is kind of nutty, and I’m not even a heavy user I think.

  • Daddy Kuma@r.nf
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    2 days ago

    https://lemmyverse.net/ in there you can search instances and communities, and If you Have an account on a y lemmy servwe you can use Its search function or if You use clients as Jerboa you can search communities with Its search function. I follow a lot of communities on Lemmy most of them are not as actives as their peers on Reddit but there are

  • scytale@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    I guess the question is “is bigger better for an internet community?” Like, old forums were a lot more interesting then today’s giants (Reddit etc), even if not much was posted from day to day