we need more users
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It’s quality and quantity. The quality has held despite a drop in users. Just wait and let Reddit have another controversy and we’ll get another infusion of converts. Popularity may only threaten more bots and scams.
the sudden rise in 2025 early on, was the massive purges reddit was doing, banning almost anyone left and right, and hitting all thier accounts at once. when they usually never try to multi-ban you before. they did take thier foot of the pedal though, because they realized they were banning too much, lowering thier faux engagements with bots. reddit switched to more insidious bannings in the background.
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Here is my super unpopular take: ultimately you / some / we have misunderstood "quality over quantity".
It doesn't mean "we don't want more users", it means that the best way to attract more users and growth of the platform is to focus on being the best fediverse we can be. Actively trying to attract more users is a foot gun - even in the unlikely event you're successful, you reduce the quality of the experience for everyone.
Focusing instead on the health, vibrance, management, and activity of the platform is the best way to attract more users.
Perhaps another way of saying the same thing: the most fertile market segment are those users who used to be active monthly. They were here trying to participate at some point but lost interest. Why? Pretty solid guess is that they were still logging in to reddit for the special / niche interest subs, and after a few months got sick of checking lemmy.
IMO, dead special interest communities are the cancer consuming the fediverse. Nothing wrong with a small active community, but a small community with a half dozen posts from 3 years ago is a big sign saying "go back to reddit, this place is dead".
Would it almost be better to prune old communities? I agree it's off-putting to find community for an interest and seeing last activity like a year ago, doesn't make you want to post since it seems inactive.
One thing about how reddit/lemmy works though is people subscribed (assumedly still active on Lemmy elsewhere) might still see that content vs a forum where no activity means very few visit the site.
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We're actually seeing a rise in new user applications over at Feddit.dk. The hostile behavior of the US has gotten some Reddit users to seek alternatives to american platforms.
i suspect reddit has upped thier bannings recently, even banning anti-right wing views. plus they upped thier detection of people who are serial evaders, the ones that use hundreds of accounts to spam(not the propaganda bots though). reddit bans for refrencing physical "damage" to people, not even outright saying it. or implying a "demographic" or anti-zionist comments.
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It’s quality and quantity. The quality has held despite a drop in users.
This is my experience too; I haven't really noticed a change. I still see about the same number of conversations and the same depth of conversation as I always have here. I was very surprised that the change in user count was so high.
I wonder if there's a committed/stable subsection of the userbase, that is mainly responsible for posts and comments, and has largely stuck around throughout? And then most of the swings in user count are from people who were less active to begin with?
its also the fact that we can ban whole communities too, from popping up your feed. since there are less users, blocking the users that are obviously tankies or conservatives, reduces us seeing more posts.
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We're actually seeing a rise in new user applications over at Feddit.dk. The hostile behavior of the US has gotten some Reddit users to seek alternatives to american platforms.
must be the "greenland invasion, distraction by trump thing recently"
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Fediverse is changing. People used to put the text of images, like comics, in the body of the OP to be more accessible, but I haven't seen that in ages. It's something I noticed.
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the big dip in 2024, oct might have something to do with people going back to reddit and other social media trump news?
I'd argue the opposite, Lemmy was in a decay and Trump and the go European movement prompted a new influx of users to Lemmy. External events didn't cause the dip, but the recovery.
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IDK if there's a way to tell on Lemmy whether an account is dormant. I haven't posted or commented on reddit in years, but I still log in and talk to people over PM. So my account there isn't dormant, but also has no visible activity.
Anyway someone further up described a big Lemmy problem, which is link dumping. I think on reddit, moderators tend to delete those, unless the poster makes some kind of effort to at least bypass clickbait and say what the link is about.
reddit goes pretty hard against link dumping,or sharing, its bannable offense. reddit also for some reason started cracking down on new and old inactive account as potential bots, so its risky for new users there.
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Here is my super unpopular take: ultimately you / some / we have misunderstood "quality over quantity".
It doesn't mean "we don't want more users", it means that the best way to attract more users and growth of the platform is to focus on being the best fediverse we can be. Actively trying to attract more users is a foot gun - even in the unlikely event you're successful, you reduce the quality of the experience for everyone.
Focusing instead on the health, vibrance, management, and activity of the platform is the best way to attract more users.
Perhaps another way of saying the same thing: the most fertile market segment are those users who used to be active monthly. They were here trying to participate at some point but lost interest. Why? Pretty solid guess is that they were still logging in to reddit for the special / niche interest subs, and after a few months got sick of checking lemmy.
IMO, dead special interest communities are the cancer consuming the fediverse. Nothing wrong with a small active community, but a small community with a half dozen posts from 3 years ago is a big sign saying "go back to reddit, this place is dead".
This place has always been dead if special interest groups are a measure. There is nothing here and honestly never was…
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Just talk up Lemmy, the issue is most people doesn't realize there's another option to the popular toxic trash fires.
i occasionally mention lemmy, on a forum where people got banned from reddit( for people earning money from using massive accounts on reddit)
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To be completely honest, Lemmy is kinda dead outside the politics subs and some of the tech ones. When I deleted my reddit account I came here and joined some of the communities I was using reddit for: Pathfinder 2e, RPG, memes, anime. Out of all of them I only see an occasional post from memes while the other ones are literal ghost towns.
ive seen less movies, entertainment, tv shows posts than before, when ee was still alive.
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sometimes a 1-2 days.
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Would it almost be better to prune old communities? I agree it's off-putting to find community for an interest and seeing last activity like a year ago, doesn't make you want to post since it seems inactive.
One thing about how reddit/lemmy works though is people subscribed (assumedly still active on Lemmy elsewhere) might still see that content vs a forum where no activity means very few visit the site.
That might be an option. I personally would be fine with that but I've noticed that many / most users get very upset about the notion that posts / communities / users are impermanent ?
Another solution is to simply promote these dead communities - if anyone is interested in warming them up then they should do so. If they're consistent then after a few months ask existing mods to add them as mods, or ask admins to do so if the mods are not responsive.
This approach runs the risk that the person doing the work may not become a mod, but honestly I don't think being a mod should be the objective of creating a community.
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I'd argue the opposite, Lemmy was in a decay and Trump and the go European movement prompted a new influx of users to Lemmy. External events didn't cause the dip, but the recovery.
actually i was going to add, that was when reddit started to purge people, all the way back after election, it was pretty clear when reddit became mysteriously quiet for a long period of time.
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I have been noticing a drop in post/comments diversity and quantity. The diminishing users is something noticeable and sad.
We're in times where we need to seek alternatives to big tech more than ever, and yet, people don't seem to care
me too i noticed, the problem was when lemmy.ee went down and all the users scattered to other instances, or the piefed but would not engage any post on lemmy. i saw massive reduction in posts like movies, entertainment tv shows,,etc. also the tankies i blocked, or the problematic accounts are likely posting themselves. i dont even come on during daytime, only a 1-3 hrs before sleep at night, because i know there will be less content overall, its probably healthier for people anyways. people are still addicted to reddit unfortunately.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Lemmy feels like a return to the old internet, when communities were smaller, and for me its refreshing to be able to participate in communities on major topics again without getting drowned out. It harkens back to the days of early forums and message boards, where users gathered around shared interests and discussions felt more organic.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
What's the likelyhood a white hat group scrubs reddit and makes all of its content available on an alternative fedi instance, preferably in a non western friendly jurisdiction?
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and here I thought it was because I've blocked close to 300 users.
same, i blocked almost as much. condescending even from non- tankies will be blocked, or smartass.comments. probably those people posts the most, since the most chronically online are the controversial users/posters.
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Was on subs about gaming and the most upvoted post was some gay shit about lgbt.
As bluesky you are a brainwashed community that s unapproachable for the majority. On every political issue you are an enclave of opiniated ppl that dont even represent 5% of real opinion in the real world. I come here time to time just to laugh at the collective retardness. It s incredible how you can 't comprehend the issue isn't the software it s the user. And that s why nothing gonna changeOh no. We're scaring off this type of dipshit.
I'm not worried about the line going down.
*They said some homophobic shit, called the lemmy userbase the r slur collectively, and the replying comment was basically 'u snowflakes would rather be an echo chamber than have diverse opinions'. Yep, happy with where our overton window is. au revoir, francophone bigot.
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it's not just not caring. lemmy is currently not a viable alternative for e.g. reddit (there are no active conmunities for any of mine hobbies and posting to any of those that are here doesn't make sense - there is nobody out here who could respond to a specific question about analog photography or something similar). fediverse as a whole will never reach the momentum of old centralized social media - by design. it turns out that having many small servers with different moderation policies is great for resilience but sucks for bringing people together. i found out recently that my mastodon server is blacklisted on many of mainstream ones not because there is some bad content there but because it federates with some servers that mods somewhere else consider harmful... and so i am missing large swats of content from those.
i find out alot of people i blocked are the likely posters, yea thats probably why im seeing less and less posts now.
