Lemmy's active userbase has been stable since September 2025
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No, they just don't have the same principles as us. I love Lemmy, but it doesn't have the same level of smaller active communities. There is more work for us to do.
No, they just don’t have the same principles as us.
Reddit has being shit for a decade, if you have the wrong principles is because you are fine with that
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I've come across some people who have no idea what "sealioning" even means. There used to be a hb user "Ulysses" or something, like three years ago, who accused me of doing it after I replied to their reply to my reply, and that's the only conversation we'd ever had. I pulled up the definition of sealioning and the comic which the word originated from, and they just say "no that's not true, stop sealioning".
I feel like some people just think sealioning means "this person keeps replying to my posts", as if conversations on a public forum are somehow uncalled for, or unusual.
It's a real thing, for sure, but more often than not is used as a conversation terminator.
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!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a very toxic community as well, you don't see SJW defederated from most instances.
Lemmy.ml is defederated from infosec.pub and lemmy.cafe.
Piefed having actual instance blocking at the user level make defederation less of an issue.
Meanwhileongrad is only a toxic community if you go into the community to argue in favour of tankie talking points or otherwise defend them.
If you believe that violence and bigotry isn't okay then you won't encounter toxicity.
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A post from 2 days ago presented a graph that showed an important variation in the active userbase: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/52565659
Using the daily rather than monthly view on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 shows a much stable line (especially if you take into account Piefed's growth: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 )
Going through the comments in the other posts, a few recommendations that can help with the overall experience
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use different feeds: either using different Lemmy/Mbin accounts (one account per type of content), or Piefed personal feeds, but being able to browse different feeds such as "Good news", "Hobbies", "Art", "Life advice" help to see more content than politics and tech
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discover communities: subscribe to !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, !fedigrow@lemmy.zip and !newcommunities@lemmy.world to add active communities to your feeds
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go to general communities rather than specific ones: the current user base only allows so much specialization. Your favorite city builder community may not exist, but !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works does. !stationery@lemmy.world and !pen_and_paper@lemmy.world may be inactive, but !journaling@sh.itjust.works is not.
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use a client that allows for comments consolidation: I don't remember which mobile apps does it (Sync, I think?), Piefed has that feature built-in too. It allows to see all comments on a cross-post in the same view: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/928874/worst-in-show-ces-products-include-ai-refrigerators-ai-companions-and-ai-doorbells#post_replies
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report toxic users and avoid communities that do not handle your reports: quite a few comments mentioned that issue in the other thread. Mods can't see everything, reporting helps to keep the atmosphere of a community enjoyable.
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use a client that implements keyword filters: quite a few mobile apps and alternative Lemmy front-ends do, Piefed has it built in. It can really help avoid the "doom and gloom" overwhelming your feed.
Finally, a few communities recommendations for lighthearted communities
- !casualconversation@piefed.social
- !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
- !wholesome@reddthat.com
- !nicememes@sopuli.xyz
- !dullsters@dullsters.net / !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
- !twogoobers@lemmy.zip
Personally I still relate to the other graph. Lemmy posts can sometimes be much too focused on negative things, so I sometimes take pretty long breaks before coming back when it gets too depressing.
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I could criticize China right now, here in this community on Lemmy.world, but if I did so in a community on Lemmy.ml I would get banned from not only the entire instance but from communities that I've never so much as heard of. We have censorship here too.
And we have toxicity here as well. As too does Reddit. It is a little odd to hear Redditors of all people complain about toxicity:-). Maybe they were used to smaller communities on Reddit, avoiding the big ones, but then here with far less content you pretty much have to subscribe to the large communities (like is there another one talking about the Fediverse besides this one that is more worthwhile?), where the toxicity is more visible?
I don't know, I haven't wanted to actually talk to people on Reddit for several years now:-).
I would get banned from not only the entire instance but from communities that I’ve never so much as heard of
That's not how it works. You get banned from the instance and all communities you have commented or posted in. And it wouldn't be any different if it were to happen on .world or .zip.
(I know OpenStars and piefed.social users cannot see this, however I wanted everyone else to at least understand how bans work)
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No, they just don't have the same principles as us. I love Lemmy, but it doesn't have the same level of smaller active communities. There is more work for us to do.
Updoot to that! When I am checking for technical solutions or suggestions on the internet, Lemmy has barely any info while Reddit very often has the answer I need. But when it comes to "your typical social media site", Reddit sucks donkey balls in that while Lemmy gives me nice small community vibes. Reddit is still good as long as you dont step into mainstream subs shit.
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Meanwhileongrad is only a toxic community if you go into the community to argue in favour of tankie talking points or otherwise defend them.
If you believe that violence and bigotry isn't okay then you won't encounter toxicity.
I just had a look to find an old thread to show to @openstars@piefed.social : https://lazysoci.al/post/39100205/20292399
But I just noticed you banned me 5 days ago for "brigading"? What evidence do you have for that claim?
Edit: just found this thread: https://lazysoci.al/post/39736457/20699113
Well, I'll let openstars decide what to do.
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It's a real thing, for sure, but more often than not is used as a conversation terminator.
The sealion in the original comic is completely correct, which makes me very suspicious of anyone who dismisses someone for "sealioning" and as you say, it usually is just used as an excuse not to engage with what someone is saying.
The sealion in the comic overheard someone being racist against them, and stepped in to say, "Hey, why are you being racist?" And for some reason is wrong because... they're persistent? Or because they're annoying? How is that not literally just every "anti-woke" argument?
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I just had a look to find an old thread to show to @openstars@piefed.social : https://lazysoci.al/post/39100205/20292399
But I just noticed you banned me 5 days ago for "brigading"? What evidence do you have for that claim?
Edit: just found this thread: https://lazysoci.al/post/39736457/20699113
Well, I'll let openstars decide what to do.
You regularly post threads you comment on to YPTB's chatroom so others get involved. YPTB and other such Tankie places also regularly use alts, and as soon as you posted the thread, a few alt accounts popped up arguing with Tankie talking points. That's brigading, and I'm not going to allow it in my community.




Trying to prove you don't brigade by posting to a brigade community is certainly a move. Why should I unban you when you continue to manipulate threads and engage in snark communities?
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The sealion in the original comic is completely correct, which makes me very suspicious of anyone who dismisses someone for "sealioning" and as you say, it usually is just used as an excuse not to engage with what someone is saying.
The sealion in the comic overheard someone being racist against them, and stepped in to say, "Hey, why are you being racist?" And for some reason is wrong because... they're persistent? Or because they're annoying? How is that not literally just every "anti-woke" argument?
Agreed! They take issue more with the argument style to dismiss the substance.
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You regularly post threads you comment on to YPTB's chatroom so others get involved. YPTB and other such Tankie places also regularly use alts, and as soon as you posted the thread, a few alt accounts popped up arguing with Tankie talking points. That's brigading, and I'm not going to allow it in my community.




Trying to prove you don't brigade by posting to a brigade community is certainly a move. Why should I unban you when you continue to manipulate threads and engage in snark communities?
If you're on that chatroom, you very much know why fxomt got so stressed
i wonder why fxomt was so stressed
It was because of you, that was said a few weeks ago. That's the bad faith I'm referring to.
Regarding everything you screened, I stand by all of it. Also, linking a thread to a room with 10 active people is not bridaging, otherwise this link at the bottom of the post should be brigading too: https://lazysoci.al/post/40725899?scrollToComments=true
Now I'll stop here as this is not the place to discuss this. We can have a thread on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com if you want.
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If you're on that chatroom, you very much know why fxomt got so stressed
i wonder why fxomt was so stressed
It was because of you, that was said a few weeks ago. That's the bad faith I'm referring to.
Regarding everything you screened, I stand by all of it. Also, linking a thread to a room with 10 active people is not bridaging, otherwise this link at the bottom of the post should be brigading too: https://lazysoci.al/post/40725899?scrollToComments=true
Now I'll stop here as this is not the place to discuss this. We can have a thread on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com if you want.
I'm banned from YPTB and the chatroom, and so are most MWoG users. That's because dbzer0 is a tankie instance and YPTB is a tankie community that protects said tankies.
If you stand by all of it, don't complain about your ban, since if you stand by all of it, you know you were brigading, and you know that's against the rules of my community. You're proving my point by threatening to create YPTB threads. You're proving my point by actively linking this comment chain to the chatroom.
Or do you think your ban was unjust and you should be unbanned?
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It's very difficult for a set of volunteers to combat people being paid to manipulate their platform, so I'm happy with this platform remaining small enough to not be worth spending money on to manipulate.
Except most posts are created by bots here too.
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I'm banned from YPTB and the chatroom, and so are most MWoG users. That's because dbzer0 is a tankie instance and YPTB is a tankie community that protects said tankies.
If you stand by all of it, don't complain about your ban, since if you stand by all of it, you know you were brigading, and you know that's against the rules of my community. You're proving my point by threatening to create YPTB threads. You're proving my point by actively linking this comment chain to the chatroom.
Or do you think your ban was unjust and you should be unbanned?
As I said, not replying to any of this as this is off topic for this community.
If I find another place to continue that conversation, I'll ping you there.
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As I said, not replying to any of this as this is off topic for this community.
If I find another place to continue that conversation, I'll ping you there.
Why should I bother to engage in any conversation with you when you've proven in these very replies that you brigade and get others to dogpile with you? Why do you insist on having a thread instead of just DMing me? Not that I want you to.
Tell you what: if you're actually earnest and acting in good faith about this, you should call off the dogpile and ask for peace between the communities. But I doubt it.
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Why should I bother to engage in any conversation with you when you've proven in these very replies that you brigade and get others to dogpile with you? Why do you insist on having a thread instead of just DMing me? Not that I want you to.
Tell you what: if you're actually earnest and acting in good faith about this, you should call off the dogpile and ask for peace between the communities. But I doubt it.
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A post from 2 days ago presented a graph that showed an important variation in the active userbase: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/52565659
Using the daily rather than monthly view on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 shows a much stable line (especially if you take into account Piefed's growth: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 )
Going through the comments in the other posts, a few recommendations that can help with the overall experience
-
use different feeds: either using different Lemmy/Mbin accounts (one account per type of content), or Piefed personal feeds, but being able to browse different feeds such as "Good news", "Hobbies", "Art", "Life advice" help to see more content than politics and tech
-
discover communities: subscribe to !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, !fedigrow@lemmy.zip and !newcommunities@lemmy.world to add active communities to your feeds
-
go to general communities rather than specific ones: the current user base only allows so much specialization. Your favorite city builder community may not exist, but !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works does. !stationery@lemmy.world and !pen_and_paper@lemmy.world may be inactive, but !journaling@sh.itjust.works is not.
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use a client that allows for comments consolidation: I don't remember which mobile apps does it (Sync, I think?), Piefed has that feature built-in too. It allows to see all comments on a cross-post in the same view: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/928874/worst-in-show-ces-products-include-ai-refrigerators-ai-companions-and-ai-doorbells#post_replies
-
report toxic users and avoid communities that do not handle your reports: quite a few comments mentioned that issue in the other thread. Mods can't see everything, reporting helps to keep the atmosphere of a community enjoyable.
-
use a client that implements keyword filters: quite a few mobile apps and alternative Lemmy front-ends do, Piefed has it built in. It can really help avoid the "doom and gloom" overwhelming your feed.
Finally, a few communities recommendations for lighthearted communities
- !casualconversation@piefed.social
- !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
- !wholesome@reddthat.com
- !nicememes@sopuli.xyz
- !dullsters@dullsters.net / !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
- !twogoobers@lemmy.zip
need to include places like piefed and mbin in this too; reddit is just reddit but here you can be either lemmy, piefed, or mbin and talk to one another.
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A post from 2 days ago presented a graph that showed an important variation in the active userbase: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/52565659
Using the daily rather than monthly view on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 shows a much stable line (especially if you take into account Piefed's growth: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 )
Going through the comments in the other posts, a few recommendations that can help with the overall experience
-
use different feeds: either using different Lemmy/Mbin accounts (one account per type of content), or Piefed personal feeds, but being able to browse different feeds such as "Good news", "Hobbies", "Art", "Life advice" help to see more content than politics and tech
-
discover communities: subscribe to !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, !fedigrow@lemmy.zip and !newcommunities@lemmy.world to add active communities to your feeds
-
go to general communities rather than specific ones: the current user base only allows so much specialization. Your favorite city builder community may not exist, but !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works does. !stationery@lemmy.world and !pen_and_paper@lemmy.world may be inactive, but !journaling@sh.itjust.works is not.
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use a client that allows for comments consolidation: I don't remember which mobile apps does it (Sync, I think?), Piefed has that feature built-in too. It allows to see all comments on a cross-post in the same view: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/928874/worst-in-show-ces-products-include-ai-refrigerators-ai-companions-and-ai-doorbells#post_replies
-
report toxic users and avoid communities that do not handle your reports: quite a few comments mentioned that issue in the other thread. Mods can't see everything, reporting helps to keep the atmosphere of a community enjoyable.
-
use a client that implements keyword filters: quite a few mobile apps and alternative Lemmy front-ends do, Piefed has it built in. It can really help avoid the "doom and gloom" overwhelming your feed.
Finally, a few communities recommendations for lighthearted communities
- !casualconversation@piefed.social
- !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
- !wholesome@reddthat.com
- !nicememes@sopuli.xyz
- !dullsters@dullsters.net / !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
- !twogoobers@lemmy.zip
A statistician explain to me why these graphs seem correlated beyond general trend? They both seem to have localized events on the same day, but given their different timescales that doesn't seem like it should be possible.
I raised the same concern on the other post too, but idk enough about statistics to for sure say something seems fishy.
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!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a very toxic community as well, you don't see SJW defederated from most instances.
Lemmy.ml is defederated from infosec.pub and lemmy.cafe.
Piefed having actual instance blocking at the user level make defederation less of an issue.
Excellent point and example, I agree.
MwoG and !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net have every right to exist, just like 4chan, just like NSFW content, just like bots - my beef has always been that they should all be labeled. Properly labeled NSFW can be blurred, filtered out, now a new feature on PieFed allows it to be specifically searched for even, bots likewise can be blured, filtered out, or at least you see a visual indicator that replying to it will not yield a conversation.
In fairness to CTH, the community sidebar does accurately describe what it does. Unfortunately, Lemmy's UX workflow does not show the sidebar text when browsing by All, and some apps seem to go very very very much out of their way to hide every sidebar - burying it behind 5+ clicks and also a deep scroll required. For someone who already knows what CTP is all about that's perfectly fine - you only need such text once, or perhaps in communities like YPTB rarely (for the acronyms) - but for a newbie to stumble across CTP unawares can be... well... devastating, quite frankly.
So I do not begrudge its existence, only it being so readily accessible the same as any other community, even though it is NOT just like any normal community. But, like a bot, like NSFW, if someone wanted to opt-in to it, that should be their decision. i.e. by making an account on an instance that federates with hexbear and joining that community.
Separately, but not unrelated, hexbears are known trolls. It's fine to troll in the community specifically created for trolling, but to do it all across the entire Threadiverse, especially in flagrant violation of the rules for other communities... that's not ideal. Hexbear should be defederated from because Hexbear consistently violates the rules that others set for themselves, and because consent should matter.
But if a space like PieFed.zip wants to federate with hexbear... that's its business, fine. Though WITH NO LABEL on CTP, I strongly think that it makes that instance less "Newbie-friendly". Wouldn't an instance that does not label bots or NSFW be the same? Also, note that PieFed currently has no capability (iirc?) to label all users from an instance. So when someone comes over from Reddit, makes let's say a comment in an innocuous community such as memes@lemmy.world, and gets trolled by a hexbear user, and then again by other users in other communities, over and over and over and over again, why should we be surprised when they nope right back to Reddit?
Perhaps goat should have a label as well. Perhaps I should myself? I agree that I write long messages, so if I had a label that said "writes long messages", why should I even be offended? It would help warn people away, if they did not want to receive such? Though for others of us, that's what we came here for - not just a hundred or so characters that would fit within Twitter's old restrictions, but LONG-form content, chock full of facts and detailed analyses - I change my opinions over time in response to such, when presented with such details and logic (e.g. I used to argue that while hexbear was a troll instance that lemmy.ml was not, though I now have a much more nuanced take on the subject). Choice is a beautiful thing :-).
So I am not opposed in the least to someone seeing CTP, I am slightly more opposed to federating the hexbear instance (but whatever, to each their own), and what I am mainly opposed to is that Newbies in particular can be exposed to hexbear's trolling even/especially outside of their communities without any kind of warning whatsoever - as if their trolling was the same type as any other content here. Their trolling is their decision, while our decisions to allow their trolling is on us, and all the more so to validate it when a label could be applied but we choose not to. Which makes us a Nazi bar - not that we are Nazis ourselves (or in this case, we are not hexbear trolls), but if we accept them here as if they were any other user, with zero distinction between them and us, then that makes us only one step removed from them. Especially in the eyes of someone noping out of our content because we look superficially similar to them.
We cannot force others to join here, only become as enticing as possible so that if they don't join us, that's their loss:-).
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Well, I agree that there are some specialized comunities for people that want to believe in 1 idea. Like Lemmy.ml. And if you don't want to be the part of a brainwashed herd, you either leave by yourself or get banned. This is normal. I am talking about the active platform wide banning regardless of comunity. I don't see such thing on Lemmy unless you are really harming the platform like mass spamming or sharing dangerous software. On Reddit you no longer can have a normal conversation, since you can get banned not only by a toxic mod but also by shitty AI system. And then you cannot even expect for the appeal to be normally processed by a human, since either they are also being reviewed by AI or the workers are too lazy to properly work(which is quite relatable since there are thousands of appeals and not enough workers because of a greedy management).
Due to the decentralization on Lemmy, even if you get banned from even 2 or 3 instances, you still have a lot of parts of platform available for you. While on Reddit your ban affects you and your account dramatically. Especially, if you are not paying them for the pro version.
Reddit is worse both overall and on average, agreed. I will say that Lemmy.ml is extremely well-known for mass banning people even from communities that they've never heard of, so it's more than a little bit like Reddit, though as you say with the federated model someone can always go elsewhere, and still see the same content.
There are some slight ways in which the Lemmy implementation of federation is very authoritarian, like how it does not send you any kind of notification that your content has been removed, or even that you have been banned - people simply have to discover that on their own (and oftentimes never!), months to years later. And there's no modmail to be able to ask questions why, plus the modlog most often obscures the name of the mod anyway, so you can't even DM them, nor, as you could on Reddit, can you ask them in the same post that has been removed from the community yet still exists for those who have the URL, since Lemmy not only deletes the post in that case but offers a confusing generic error message as if the post never existed in the first place.
So believe it or not, Reddit actually offers some (very few but somewhat foundational) more rights to people there than Lemmy does here!!! Lemmy offers supreme rights to someone wanting to spin up their own instance and be an admin (though CSAM brigading is a constant threat), and also offers special privileges to mods as well, but normal everyday users have far less protections. It is up to each person to decide which "rights" they value most - there is no right here to not have your content deleted by a bot btw, though it is far less common on the Threadiverse than on Reddit, I hear.
Overall I think it's better here than there, though as the OP graph shows that seems to not be an opinion shared universally by all people looking for a threaded conversational platform, since we are losing slightly more people than we gain, slowly getting smaller over time (now at ~35k active users, down from the peak of ~55k at the time of the first major Rexodus).