Total monthly posts exploded after Spez enshitified Reddit, and is still growing steadily month over month.
That suggests that the current decline in monthly active users is primarily because lurkers who only came to lemmy after initially hearing about it on Reddit, went back to lurking Reddit.
The number of users that are contributors is still growing, and that’s what’s important.
There’s also folks like me who came, 15 years on Reddit and I haven’t been back.
Those of us who actually interacted with the platform and left aren’t going back.
I’m close to that too, but I think mine was 13 years. The weird thing that I’ve noticed is that most of the time I was on Reddit, almost no one I talked to in real life used Reddit. I struggled for years to try to get people to check the site out. Now that I left, I swear I hear someone I know mention Reddit exponentially more often. The average person doesn’t give a damn about how shitty the platform has become, because they weren’t around to see what it used to be. The average person WANTS to see ads interspersed with their cookie cutter content with stupid ass features like chat and followers. Good riddance.
I’m a counter example. I contributed on Reddit, moderated my own subreddit with a couple of thousand viewers; couple of tens of contributors
I haven’t been back to that sub, haven’t appointed any other mods. If automod can’t handle shit, shit isn’t being handled
I have been back to other subs. There are small inoffensive places on Reddit that simply haven’t moved
I still visit those subs, still write on them, just not nearly as often
Edit to add: checking today, those subs are becoming less good. With no good app, so many of the prolific commenters don’t comment much now. I also had a reply to a 2015 comment I made. I thought stuff was auto-archived much quicker than that
I’m yet to encounter the majority of issues I hear Lemmings griping about. Everyone has been pretty civil toward me. Every time my inbox blows up I feel dread, only to open it and find zero confrontation or vitriol. I’m not running into any racists, sexists, bigots, etc., and I certainly haven’t noticed a decline in content (I browse Top ~6 Hours).
I realize my personal experience doesn’t equate to these problems not existing, but I do get the strong impression that people are exaggerating greatly.
Exactly my experience as well. Sure, I don’t have infinite scroll, but I also don’t feel like an algorithm is trying to make me angry. When I get responses, they’re typically thoughtful or on topic.
I’ve been active for a month and in my opinion too many users have radicalised and extremist mindsets, but other than that it’s alright.
Going back to reddit would mean to install that unbearable app they have and having to deal with incompetent admins, so I will stay here for some time.
I can see why it’s off-putting for a lot of people though.
If you share a thought on a Biden/Trump thread, an Israel/Palestine thread, or another topic that attracts strong views, and your opinion is different than the hive, expect some vitriol and confrontation.
I’ve run into it while seriously looking for debate or productive conversation.
The same thing happens on Reddit, though. I think that’s kind of just the internet from now on. /r/worldnews is literally just a pro-Israel, anti-Palestine echo chamber so it’s nice to see another perspective on here. (I only browse Reddit at work not logged in for the record.) Over here, the hive mind on that seems to change thread to thread.
My only issue is the lack of small communities that get posts frequently, and yeah, duh, I should contribute, but theres only so much I can say about my transness.
One thing I miss about reddit is just being able to endlessly read about peoples experiences and stupid shitty trans memes, thats just missing here right now
Exactly this. My small Reddit communities had a few posts per day. The equivalent on Lemmy have a few per year. Still, I don’t miss them enough to go back.
I’m still seeing so much growth in new content and communities, idk if the raw number of users is the metric we even should care about. Is it the best measure of quality?
I also think a big part of it is how active users are counted. Saw in a different thread that it only counts accounts who have commented or posted in the last month. Well… I browse and vote on probably an average of 30-50 posts and many of their comments every single day, but the last comment I left was over a month ago.
I also wonder if the active user count is counting people who made multiple accounts across different instances and was therefore always massively overinflated to begin with. I have 5 lemmy accounts - one on lemmy.world when I first joined, one on lemmynsfw for happy fun times, and 3 more trying to find a different instance with the de federation policy and hoster that I wanted after lemmy.world was going through their ddos downtime issue.
I mostly lurk or comment like this but I’ve found the community to be much better over here. I can’t see myself going back.
I mostly lurk, too, but enjoy being around my fellow Lemmings.
The only decline I have seen as someone who mostly lurks is in conservatives who thought this was the next Voat. After the surge I saw an uptick in all kinds of people, and a lot of them I don’t mind seeing leave.
You don’t need this lil slice of the internet to be the “next big thing”, you just need a place to go to see the stuff you like.
Smaller communities aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Compared to reddit I rarely feel like I’m commenting into the void.
Or into the thunderdome where no matter what you say, someone will fight you for it
Exactly, lemmy needs to grow but if it just continues to grow and grow eventually it will just turn into what reddit is now. I’m happy to have something small to be a part of for now… i don’t think you needed me to tell you this but they say commenting is good for lemmy, so here i am
What’s the easiest way to find communities across different instances? If I could figure that out, I would just forget about reddit.
I use an external Lemmy instance list.
honestly it’s replaced reddit for me in a good way, because it has just enough new content that I can check it before bed every day and scroll for a bit, but not enough to where I spend entire lunch breaks on it. sometimes I go days without even checking it. if anything it’s made my relationship with my browser / phone healthier than reddit.
Exactly. Lemmy is an anti-doomscrolling platform and that’s very healthy and amazing.
I just discovered Lemmy, and I’m so happy about it. Instagram replaced Reddit for me these last five months, and I can really feel how detrimental it is for me. It’s like an ADHD-machine. No community, no discussion, just this as quick and loud phase as possible vibe. You look through one recipe video and you get recipes for several days. People dancing and dancing with huge smiles and these creepy eyes. Honestly it’s all so dystopian.
So keeping on with Instagram is not an option, going back to reddit is not an option - and I was really considering becoming like this person who is never in his phone, really mentally healthy, but wildly uninformed about the world and the general discussion 😅
The feel of this place with the Sync app is just so * chefs kiss *. Feels like what reddit was.
Horseshit. Lemmy is plastered in content about climate change, the Middle East, and other depressing shit.
a lot of servers are really weird about porn, ngl. its not that they just don’t allow it on their server (which, cool, thats fine), its that they go out of their way to block it. its a new wave of puritanism and i don’t really like it. although porn isn’t that hard to find if you are on a good server.
Do you know of a good server for that? Because I tried to sign up with Lemmy n sfw they never activated my account, and it was like a month ago.
And yeah, I’m not sure why the sex positivity movement seems to have completely reversed itself. There is this idea that the idea of sexuality of any kind is somehow inherently wrong. Which is stupid. I need all the fetishes
There’s hundreds of us! Hundreds!
But hey, apparently that’s enough, I haven’t been bored on Lemmy yet. And as the enshittification of Reddit continues there might well be some other exodus.
Reddit is like that ex the whole lemmy isn’t over yet while loudly drunkenly screaming “I’m so over them!”.
Advice: focus on yourself and your content.
Nah, fuck spez forever. That sentiment should never die. I hope a decade after reddit goes bankrupt, he can’t leave his home without getting the phrase screamed at him
This is exactly right, I even find myself wanting to check my GME DRS subs but knowing I shouldn’t and feeling bad about it and blocking it for myself until the next week when I unblock and check my subs again in shame. But I’ll never return for real because I know she’s bad for me, wait we’re still talking about Reddit right?
Bruh you’ve only ever posted once, you should focus on trying to make content and posting it on lemmy, instead of criticizing those of us who are.
I mean, would you call this post ‘content’? It’s just low-effort, non-discussion-provoking, nothingness about a platform that nobody around here cares about anymore (except you apparently?)
Says the user with zero posts. And all the people upvoting it apparently do. Bahahaha
Most of the stuff you post is low quality shite mate not “content” it’s mainly 99% vague political memes. this shite makes up 90% of lemmy
You literally repost AI generated images, you dont even possess the originality to come up with your own prompt Lmao and you’ve never even made a post with over 1k upvotes. Git gud