cross-posted from: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.
information sources:
New Lemmy Post: Relative size comparison of social media platforms (December 2023) (https://lemmy.world/post/9401671)
Tagging: #SelfHosted
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For the biggest ones: How many of those active users are bots, advertisers, and scammers? I’d guess about half on Facebook.
Also, is it considered “active” if you have a dormant account but have the app installed on your phone and it still watches what you’re doing? What if you only use it to communicate with family because it’s the only internet they understand?
Further, what about duplicate accounts or “secretive” secondary accounts so you can click on the depraved stuff you like without that showing in your public feed?
I feel like the real numbers for the big ones are massively inflated by issues like these.
The Fediverse is small enough to as of yet not be affected. Once it gets large enough, it will have all of this, too.
For sure.
with respect to bots, as of this time I don’t think it’s a problem that can be fully solved, although I do think over a long enough timeline the fediverse is probably the best suited to handle that problem.
I wanted to see a visualization of the relative size comparison, so I used the data that was available on Wikipedia, but this data is approximate at best.
The Fediverse is by design affected by inflated numbers. If one user uses three different services, the user is counted three times. However, for the Fediverse it doesn’t really matter - that number of total users is just as irrelevant like the total number of used email addresses.
Also, is it considered “active” if you have a dormant account but have the app installed on your phone and it still watches what you’re doing?
Almost all platforms use “monthly active users” - anyone that uses it at least once per month is considered an active user. If you have an app installed but don’t use it, it doesn’t count. Some platforms also provide a daily active users metric.
I wonder how many users Matrix has?
As always, you guys are way too fixated on size.
Thing is, you have to measure from the user base on the underside, this graphic obviously uses the wrong method.
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.
Yes. Quality is the key thing about fediverse. Also - size doesn’t mean everything. Black holes are small, but mighty. Lemmy sucks most of my spare time already.
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.
Facebook forgot it existed too, they just recently made it possible to delete threads accounts without deleting Instagram
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?
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.
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.
The Fediverse is going to get a lot bigger once Meta turns on federation for Threads.
I’d like to see the breakout in the Fediverse for Mastodon vs. all others.
I’m just curious what you thought might have happened to Snapchat? What app took its place in your estimation?
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.
Didn’t FB use some shady practice to make their users fall into Threads without noticing?
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.
