Do we need more users ?
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Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.
The data
I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:
query { monthlystats { date_checked softwarename total_posts total_users total_comments } }Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:
jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)
Then did a good old' chart
What to think of it
I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice
we need more variety
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I just went to "All" and sorted by "Top: Today".
90% is memes.
I did that and it was evenly split between news, memes, reposted Tumblr and X posts and comics.
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The red flag is at least, "they have so much privilege in our society they can ignore politics", if not what you stated
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What we REALLY need is more posts about Linux.
Do you use Arch btw
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I did that and it was evenly split between news, memes, reposted Tumblr and X posts and comics.
I guess I considered the Tumblr and Twitter posts as memes since they are just screenshots.
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Look at it from a new user's perspective; someone who has not curated their feed or otherwise "made the fediverse what they want" yet. e.g. They land on Lemmy World or another big instance and their default sort is "active". Doing that now in an incognito window, and half the front page is rage, same on the second, and the stuff that's not are some random shitposts and Linux filling in.
Truth be told, looking at that, I probably wouldn't want to sign up. Especially if I didn't know that different instances have different cultures, etc.
Assuming they're a normie (which we desperately fucking need here), I just don't see that they'd want to stick around. Aside from trolls and spammers, the only people we seem to consistently attract here are the "Wah wah I was banned from Reddit" types and, while there's certainly a sizable pool to draw from, I wouldn't exactly consider them the pick of the litter for growing the fediverse.
The point of OPs post is that usage here is declining, and I am simply pointing out that I feel all the rage and politics is not particularly inviting.
Edit: And you know what? I'm just going to fucking say it. There's too many armchair activists here who won't let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you're not angry all the time then you're somehow part of the problem.
We really need better onboarding for new users, maybe ask them about their interests to give them a default set of subscriptions (it would probably just be a tweaked version of the community search page). And default to the subscribed feed, not the All feed
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I agree, I think something that has been lost in conversation about progressive politics and leftism more broadly (in US-centric circles at least) is that as much as people on the left disagree about absolutely everything, in general (with plenty of exceptions) politically left movements and cultural spaces tend to be far better at identifying common values and truths that are universal and holding individuals and communities to those values and truths.
Whereas on the right the endless stumping about valuing freedom of speech turns out to mostly be a mirage when it comes to innocent, vulnerable people being physically murdered on camera by the state, on the left institutions and individuals are much more often held to a standard of values and called out if they fail to reach it.
When people enter a space where progressive and left voices haven't been systematically silenced and it is a new experience for them, they often react negatively and feel rebuked. I know some of my first encounters when I was younger with actually left spaces initially made me bristle with how willing they were to say no to things that weren't healthy, to challenge oppressive structures even if they were so normalized they were invisible to me... it can be an uncomfortable process but ultimately more often than not leftist spaces actually try to do it and it that is a good thing.
I entirely agree with people having agency to decide when politics comes up on their feed and when it doesn't, but the idea that we are all just being a bit too negative and obsessed with the news and we should cheer up is honestly insulting in 2026 given, you know gestures at everything. Everything is political, if you have the capacity to complain about being subject to "too much politics" be thankful for your capacity to experience that state of choice.
Also, and this is on a personal note, talking about politics doesn't make me depressed, it helps me feel less depressed and anxious because I know other people feel similarly and the more educated I am about what is happening the less scared and confused I feel.
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We really need better onboarding for new users, maybe ask them about their interests to give them a default set of subscriptions (it would probably just be a tweaked version of the community search page). And default to the subscribed feed, not the All feed
Isn't that how Piefed onboarding works?
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Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.
The data
I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:
query { monthlystats { date_checked softwarename total_posts total_users total_comments } }Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:
jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)
Then did a good old' chart
What to think of it
I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice
Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed
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Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit a
As a contra point, I'm glad that its like this, a lack of politcal debate is toxic to democracy and that way be dragons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace, by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses). Juvenal originally used it to decry the "selfishness" of common people and their neglect of wider concerns. The phrase implies a population's erosion or ignorance of civic duty as a priority.
That doesn't mean there shouldn't be more other stuff as well though.
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I just went to "All" and sorted by "Top: Today".
90% is memes.
Ok, what content stream in what medium when viewed in a bulk popularity view like that isn't 90% memes or equivalent?
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Isn't that how Piefed onboarding works?
yea I think so lol
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Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
My experience is that Lemmy is decent for tech-related stuff but outside of that, it can be difficult to find active communities depending on the hobby. I just went looking for a good Spanish learning or general language learning community and the few that I found have been inactive for months. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place (I searched in Communities > All).
I don't think maximum growth should be a goal for Lemmy, I just think it needs a critical mass of activity to keep it interesting. Currently I think we just about have that for many tech/FOSS related topics but not so much outside it. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people who aren't into tech/FOSS issues don't know about Lemmy and don't see why they wouldn't just use Reddit or Discord.
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One thing that annoys me about each statistic about posts is that I don't know how many of these posts are actually interesting and engaged with.
For example, there is a specific instance that just mirrors reddit content and has barely any engagement. The bot posts mulitple posts per hour, mostly without any comments or upvotes.
It seems rather irrelevant to compare these posts to actually interesting posts with a nice discussion and a couple of upvotes.
My suggestion would be to count and plot the number of posts that have at least a few interactions.
Out of curiosity, which instance?
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Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
Thanks for the links
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Out of curiosity, which instance?
The instance is called lemmit.online, and the most upvoted post on the whole instance is "This bot is bad for lemmy".
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Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed
For that we need a LOT more users.
It's kind of a chicken and egg situation.Hopefully we can capitalise on the next Rexit.
In the past lots of people moved over but left because of the terrible UX.
I think PieFed has solved most of the UX issues. -
Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
Yes. I'm here for the long tail, the niche communities. And what do I see? Not enough photos of houseplants! Come on, you must have some too. And to add to the list, !books@lemmy.world looks nice.
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Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed
This is it exactly. I made a hard cut with Reddit, but I'll admit to missing the sysadmin subreddit. The place was full of very smart, helpful people and also cranky. The PowerShell subreddit was another great resource. I haven't been willing to go back, but those sorts of communities only exist when you hit a certain mass of people on a platform.
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Maybe its a question of organization. Perhaps we shouldn't have generic instances just instances around topics. That way niches can form without being too fractured and if said topic goes away it does not take several other coms with it.
One issue is I think Lemmy's UX means there's less friction with local communities than remote communities (not sure why) which is why usually the lemmy.world version of communities typically wins without a lot of effort to steer people
