Per the title, is Lemmy actually growing, or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
The quality of discourse is better since a year a go by a lot. Some home brew drama too.
It feels lived in now. The active users engage more. Growth for social media comes in burst anyways.
Reddit needs to do something bad again. Tiktok enjoyer is not the target audience for apub protocol based social media.
Lemmy doesn’t need to “take off” or compete with Reddit to succeed. Growth for the sake of growth holds little inherent value. Unlike commercial platforms reliant on VC funding to survive, Lemmy thrives on sustainability. What really matters is that there are enough developers to maintain the platform, people to host the server, and users to create content. With these elements in place, Lemmy can continue indefinitely without the need for explosive growth.
In fact, rapid growth could do more harm than good. A sudden influx of users often brings toxic behaviors, especially those migrating from platforms like Reddit. When new users trickle in slowly, they adapt to the existing norms and culture of the community. But when a horde arrives, they risk overwhelming and reshaping the community in ways that trample over its core values. A slow, steady stream of users allows for organic integration, preserving the essence of what makes Lemmy pleasant.
Unlike commercial platforms, open-source projects don’t rely on profit motives to survive. They’re driven by people who directly benefit from their work and are passionate about their vision. When disagreements arise, projects can be forked, allowing different groups to take them in new directions. Even if a project is abandoned, it can be revived by a new team as long as there’s a dedicated community. This flexibility and resilience make open source inherently more sustainable than commercial platforms, which can vanish overnight if funding dries up.
The Fediverse, and Lemmy within it, only needs a large enough user base to remain self-sustaining. I’d argue that it’s already well past that threshold. There’s no rush to grow rapidly. Steady progress ensures the community retains its identity and values, while the open-source nature of the platform guarantees its longevity. Lemmy isn’t just another platform; it’s a sustainable, adaptable ecosystem built to endure. I’m willing to bet that Lemmy will still be around long after Reddit crumbles to dust.
It’s rare i see something you post and agree with you, but here i am today
Hexbear? Really?
It’s very active, but also a lot older than many other instances.
after the grad and .ml, hexbear is the oldest lemmy instance it pre-dates federation by over 2 years
This is just absolute number total posts and they’re a shi posting heaven that existed for 4 years before the big lemmy exodus. In monthly posts they’re still in the top 10 iirc but not 2nd
Ahh that makes sense. I thought it was a troll instance from all the Redditors
More the opposite, Hexbear is just a Leftist community that started from a much earlier exit from Reddit.
Total post doesn’t really tell us much. Of course there’s going to be more posts over time. Hell there are Bots that post things. That number is going to go up as long as the servers exist. There could be no human users on here and those are going to go up.
When you sort by monthly active users, this is what you get:
What really jumps out to me is the fact .ml’s active users equals the total users. Not too sure what to make of it. I’d assume the mod’s delete nonactive accounts after a set amount of time or it’s just relatively small based on total users but everyone’s visiting at least once a month.
It’s pretty obvious that .ml runs a custom version of the code because they are engaged in all parts of sketchy shit
This instance is the vanguard instance of Lemmy. AFAIK, all development is tested here and any improvements and new code is introduced first in lemmy.ml and it it succeeds is then spread. Lemmy.ml encourages everyone to use a different instance, because they lack of infrastructure fire a big community. Ideally, we should be mostly old accounts.
There’s a couple weird things about this re: lemmy.ml data - for instance, the fedidb entry for them specifically shows 147k total posts, but they don’t show up in the top 10.
Not sure what to make of that either.
I find it kinda concerning how the number of instances is shrinking and number of users per instance is going up. IMO it should be part of the fediverse design to incentivize decentralization to avoid a gmail situation.
Also worrying is that the number of Active Users is trending constant or slightly down, but the number of posts over time is climbing dramatically. To me, this could be a sign of inauthentic behaviour on the rise.
sh.it.heads: “We’re number 5! We’re number 5!”
(me. I’m probably the only one chanting at this fact)
You’re server’s #3 when it comes to monthly active users too!
So from what I’ve seen on Lemmy over the last year is that the quantity of posts and variety of topics feels like it’s going up. I certainly enjoy engaging on here.
Will it stagnate? I’m not sure. It might be that the monthly user levels stabilise but thats not the same as stagnate. If people are engaged and enjoying their time then it has value.
My feeling is that Lemmy will slowly grow over time. I don’t see it becoming a huge platform like Reddit anytime soon. Its feasible but it feels like for now it will remain niche.
But I also dont want to it suddenly become huge. I was on reddit for a long time and I saw it evolve from being something small and interesting to a behemoth and enshittification to make money. Small is sometimes better, and small or stable in no way means stagnation.
What we really need is for people to put up topic focused sites and promote them as their own thing, not jusy “lemmy”. So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in, but who aren’t into things like Reddit.
The fediverse is perfect for places like that. Places where you can focus on your primary interest, but also look over the fence. But all anyone wants to do is put up general interest sites and whine about there being more than one “gaming” forum.
So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in
I hope these types of sites eventually switch off of software like phpBB and move to software like Lemmy/Mbin
Maybe someone should make a database migration tool so posts/comments/users can be retained
I agree, it’s improved quite a bit from over a year ago. I hope it doesn’t get too big. I personally like only logging in once every two days and being able to see everything important. Less content makes it much less addictive than reddit was.
Lack of growth does not mean death. That’s a capitalistic mindset. It’s entirely possible for a community to be sustainable based on the people it has and have no need to grow. Lemmy’s not trying to sell a product; there’s no need for it to grow. People can join if they want to, and people can leave if they want to.
In terms of actual future prospects, Lemmy seems fairly large to me, and regardless of whether its userbase is growing or shrinking, it would have to shrink by quite a lot to become “dead”. Especially as Reddit continues to enshittify, I imagine its userbase will only grow. Hard to find social medias of this nature otherwise; almost all other social media is based around following people, not communities, and also obviously most social media is much more commercialised, less anonymous, much less text-friendly, etc, so link aggregator/Reddit style social medias fill in a niche people want and people who want a social media in this niche will gravitate towards the one they see as the best social media for whatever reason. Maybe Reddit because it’s the biggest, maybe Lemmy because Reddit is shit and Lemmy is federated and open-source, maybe their niche alternative because they’re part of a specific niche community that uses different software, who knows.
definitely agree, if you like reddit’s format but don’t like reddit lemmy is basically your only option
From the perspective of someone who has been on Lemmy for a few years now, I’ll say that the amount of content here has become large enough for me to use Lemmy as a “daily driver” account. I don’t miss out on important news or updates by using Lemmy instead of Reddit…in fact it often feels quite the opposite
It’s mostly fine, but sometimes I still miss stuff. For example, I haven’t seen anything on the Spanish ski lift incident on here (it’s probably somewhere), but I bet that would have popped up for me on Reddit.
(And I think I have done a pretty good job of curating my experience here)
Hard agree. I see the same usernames over here also so I’ve can actually foster a conversation with people. Reminds me of when Reddit communities were good and not controlled by the corporations.
Yeah I moved during the rexit well before the major one, but when It come around. I don’t use anything else.
When I have run out of content on lemmy I touch grass haha
Same, reminds me of reddit pre-9gag days, and that’s just the way I like it
Agreed
👍
The intelligence of the commentary here certainly isn’t
According to fedidb.org, Lemmy has plateaued at around 43k active users over the past year.
If you ask me, though, it doesn’t matter. The Lemmy ecosystem is active and healthy.
Wow… there wasn’t more posters during the election, people just posted more?
I was about to agree with you and then add that people like me who more lurk and upvote may count as inactive because we don’t comment or post much. I just noticed that the chart only shows up to November of last year. I suspect several new people such as myself have finally found Lemmy given all that is going on and we’ll see that in the charts in a couple months.
I’m pretty sure that votes count towards the MAU.
I believe that the newest Lemmy versions count up/down voting as ‘active’
I am also more of a lurker, but try to comment occasionally to get into the statistics. (Done for this week!)
Lurkers unite!
At the back of the community.
Where we watch and only occasionally post the odd comment… When we feel like it. Maybe tomorrow.
I’m working on a way to tell, but man, I’m bad at actually finishing projects.
Okay, logging off to work on it.
Growth for growth/s sake means very little. Steady use is way more important and Lemmy has that.
No and I want it to stay that way
One thing is that kbin/mbin/piefed/etc…etc… interact with lemmy all the time. Its getting a bit hazy if “lemmy” the platform is growing or if the entirety of the fediverse is growing and others are communicating with the software. We are now seeing quite a few accounts from all over the web interacting with lemmy communities. Is that a new “user” according to the stats? Or is that person a one off from mastodon?
What I a seeing is a general increase in discussion on the platform and increase in posts from all over the fediverse. Which is awesome!
I can be very critical of the fediverse, especially where I want it to do better, but I think stagnation isn’t the right word I think ‘maintaining’ fits more. The fediverse isn’t beholden to the grow or die model capitalist projects need and it remains a space that is unique enough to warrant people coming back here, or coming here for certain reasons or content or whatever. I think the model to hope for would be continue maintaining and being ready for when the next group of people get fed up enough to follow through and come here (fediverse in general)
It seems to be on a healthy state, there are some communities that I would like to have more content. But that’s also on me to share and contribute to the communities I would like to see.
Being a bystander on reddit for so long it’s a bit difficult to change that mindset, but I’m trying to share a bit more
Me too! Sometimes I forget that I can participate in the discussion and even post cool stuff I’m doing. After all, that’s the whole point of this kind of community.
Does it have to?
I would say yes, because as is the real niche communities dont have the size for larger discussions.
Mainstream communities e.g. about global news already have a decent size. And in many ways it doesn’t make much of a qualitative difference if there are 500 or 10.000 predictable comments. But many smaller communities are still mostly propped up by a few power users providing the majority of content which is not ideal for many reasons.
Maybe a bit would be nice, but I don’t want it to grow as big as Reddit got.
I mean it always will grow a little bit over time
