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

  • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    Is this strictly Lemmy or does it include related platforms like PieFed and Mbin? Because it seems like there has been some shift to PieFed

  • Xanthobilly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    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.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      2·
      28 days ago

      Just wait and let Reddit have another controversy

      You know, there was a great blog recently that wrote about this, that now is the perfect time to popularize the fediverse. That’s because as tensions with the US are rising, more people in europe are looking for alternative internet platforms to communicate over. So the fediverse can jump in here and offer itself as an alternative.

      • zaphod@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        28 days ago

        When I look at some generic instance’s unfiltered feed all I see is posts about USA/Trump. I can see how this might deter a lot of Europeans who are looking for alternatives to Reddit.

        • FundMECFS@quokk.auEnglish
          1·
          26 days ago

          Yeah I’m ngl the All feed kinda sucks.

          I don’t think people shouldn’t be talking about the horrors in the US but if “all” is just 5 LW posts in a row on US politics its not exactly enticing for a new user.

      • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
        1·
        28 days ago

        It’s not just Europe. Plenty of us in the United States looking to circumvent the vanguard party. And fascism is rising globally. We need decentralization and federation to survive going forward.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
        1·
        28 days ago

        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.

    • Redredme@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      28 days ago

      It is. It’s one of the reasons i’ve pivot back to reddit these last few months.

      1. More then Reddit this place is an echo chamber for the far left anti capitalist crowd. While I don’t mind a discussion, everything over simplified to EAT THE RICH was getting tiresome.

      2. No company or institution is here. If I have a problem with my [insert device or appliance here] chances are good someone on reddit will reply and 50/50 there is a useable answer somewhere. Here it just stays silent. Or you get the anti capitalist reply that everything is fucked and we should just eat the rich.

      3. There are no real gaming or device or brand communities. Want to ask something about modding game x? Not here. Want to hook up with other players of game y? Not here. Want to know how to fix your [household appliance here]? Not here…Have a problem with mainboard from brand z? Not here.

      4. When you ask something here about Linux or any other gpl software the answer often times boils down to RTFMI! (I= idiot) That also happens on reddit to be honest. But here it’s just more extreme. And I know I’m an idiot. That’s why I asked. I’m too stupid can someone please explain.

      5. Where the fuck is LJDawson. Sync is dead it seems.

      And yes. Reddit more and more feels like an AI test site. For example the AITA posts are getting more and more out of this world. They are unbelievable, that’s just for clicks. So the enshittification is not slowly but very fast becoming a problem and within a few months it will be another youtube, unusable. But for now… It’s the best we have.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        27 days ago
        1. More then Reddit this place is an echo chamber for the far left anti capitalist crowd. While I don’t mind a discussion, everything over simplified to EAT THE RICH was getting tiresome.

        That must be so difficult for you compared to all the wonderful corporate platforms full of rightwing hateful trolls who genuinely harass people.

        • zen@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          26 days ago

          I’m going to tentatively upvote this. There’s a good reason the left wingers on this platform sound bitter (myself included). The Overton Window has shifted right, so they’re pretty much surrounded by toxic right-wing stuff on every other platform.

          Still, it doesn’t help Lemmy attract moderates.

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            01·
            26 days ago

            What conservatives want is for us to treat them like babies with tiny little fragile baby beliefs that we have to coddle.

            I don’t care if you think differently than me, what I care about is babies demanding we take their hateful and irrational ideologies seriously while they simultaneously target vulnerable groups with at a minimum hate speech and harassment.

            If we coddle conservatives this place becomes less welcoming to new people, that is how it is.

    • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
      0·
      28 days ago

      Just wait and let Reddit have another controversy and we’ll get another infusion of converts.

      Just wait

      this is how something like Digg swoops in and steals all the users

  • lunarcat@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    27 days ago

    Today is my first day here and I’ve mostly just been wandering hobby/interest groups!

    I think the biggest barrier for new users is that the whole system here is pretty complicated with the “decentralized” model. I don’t really understand what it means or how it works, what the difference between the various servers are, or what to join or even which app to download. There are a lot of options and complicated technical terms (like “federated”, “fediverse”) you need to research just so you can sign up. The fact that you have to write all of these explanations about it doesn’t really help. A platform like reddit (which I migrated from) is clean, easy to understand, and makes sense to the casual user.

    As for the political stuff, I think people here should engage more with positive content. We should make the wholesome, fun stuff popular because it’s appealing. Post about the cool/funny/awesome/interesting stuff you encounter every day; talk about the arts, your hobbies, your funny life fuck ups, your non-serious relationship woes, your pets, etc.! In my exploration today I noticed those kinds of communities barely get any interaction whereas the news/political ones are always active.

    • WeirdSarah9@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      This. This is the main complaining I see over the Fediverse when I try to suggest it to people. They enter Lemmy to give it a check and go “It’s all politics?”

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        27 days ago

        did you mention that reddit is all politics as well. reddit is intentionally forcing politics to front page, and anypolitics adjacent topics. almost all sports, celebrity talk eventually leads to politics.

    • Pika@rekabu.ruEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      First of all, welcome! Hope you’ll like it here.

      Politics surely seems to drown the regular conversations at times. But some niche communities are quite active! Places like !newcommunities@lemmy.world , as well as general search might be of great help in finding your gems.

      As per federation and stuff, I think Mastodon of all places does a more or less decent job on boarding new users, and Lemmy has a lot to learn from it.

      Regardless, the core idea is that there are plenty of various interconnected physical servers operated by different people. A simple and rough analogy is e-mail, which is actually also federated. You may have your mailbox somewhere like Gmail, and I can have mine in Outlook or even host my own (and you can do that with Lemmy, too). But we’ll be able to write to each other like if we use same service.

      Here, everything is organized in a way as to allow not only private communication, but public discussion. Posts and comments are public and can be seen by everyone from the server the post is made on.

      For example:

      • You connect to a server under the lemmy.ca domain. So, some Canadian guy just rents/owns a physical server and puts Lemmy software on it.
      • I connect to rekabu.ru, hosted by a guy somewhere in Russia. Same idea.
      • The post is in the community on the lemmy.world server, which is a third one.
      • Our servers connect to lemmy.world, where the post is made, and exchange information with it. My server sends my comments, your server sends yours, and so we can see each other despite connecting to different places.
      • Should I send you a direct message instead, it will go straight from rekabu.ru to lemmy.ca, just like e-mail. And vice versa.
    • GreenShimada@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      Welcome! The thing worth knowing is that corporate social media has intentionally trained you to expect zero friction because that’s the basis of their business model - to trap you. Once you spend a bit of time or watch a YT video and understand how lemmy works, it’s not that complicated at all.

      Consider that things worth doing in life are not so easy that they suck you in. No one gets in shape at the gym on accident. A small bit of effort pays off here.

  • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    27 days ago

    Hot take: the biggest issue is actually ever entering a community and seeing zero comments. Most reddit addiction stems from wanting to read comments, so I think people should add a comment to something if they’re upvoting and they see that the thread has zero comments.

    Nothing eliminates enthusiasm like seeing 0 comments on every post in a community, especially if that community is driven by bots.

  • moseschrute@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    27 days ago

    I’m feeling very burnt out. Lemmy is kinda an endless stream of political doom and gloom. For context, I’m in the US and already stressed out by our political situation. But I don’t come here to see more doom and gloom. It’s getting to the point where I think I need to get off for my mental health.

    Then there are all the people who if you don’t agree exactly with their opinion they downvote you to hell. You have left leaning politics but not my flavor of left? Downvote! You hate enshitification and big tech privacy practices, but you use a single piece of software that isn’t FOSS? Downvote!

    It’s so exhausting. I absolutely hate Reddit but I miss going on there and just laughing at how someone’s TV is too high. I miss laughing at how some restaurant serves food of shovels instead of plates.

    And that’s not even getting into the lack of content. That part I understand requires users like myself to be as active as possible. But it’s hard being active when I feel so burnt out from the other stuff here.

    Tbh, idk if these issues are specific to Lemmy or just the internet as a whole. I can only speak to the slice of the internet I find myself in. But I just wanna see people that are excited about things: photography, 3d printing, weird keyboards, etc. And that exists here, but it’s drowned out by all the doom and gloom.

    • Soulcreator@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      Agreed lemme is probably one of the most negative places on the Internet. I joined because I was hoping this place would grow to be a proper alternative for Reddit, with fun niche content, and its own culture of obscure inside jokes. Instead even after several years it still feels like we are the angry trolls living under reddit’s shadow.

      One of the biggest things I’ve found that helped me avoid the politics was to leave lemme.world and fill my personal feed up with subscriptions to content that fits my interest. Politics has ways of working its way into content none the less, but at least I’ve got a fighting chance.

      I really do believe lemme is going to struggle to find people who want to stick around unless it starts to embrace fun light hearted content. I’m not sure how we’d do that as a platform, but I do believe that’s one of the big reasons people will struggle to adopt this corner of the Internet as their own.

  • heyWhatsay@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    28 days ago

    Just talk up Lemmy, the issue is most people doesn’t realize there’s another option to the popular toxic trash fires.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      28 days ago

      I’ve told people about Lemmy before. I got the same reaction everytime.

      “It looks like it’s just people talking about computers.”

      And their interest dies. Which tells me there needs to be more diversity of active communities. No one wants to come to a small platform, create a new dead community, and talk to themself.