[Lemmy active users] 28th of September was the only day with more monthly active Lemmy users than the previous one, probably thanks to the release of Boost for Lemmy

Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 365 points –
lemmy.fediverse.observer

Link to the daily stats: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

By the way, welcome to everyone who joined thanks to Boost!

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I've been following the stats closely. There were actually several times that the active users ticked down and then ticked up the next day, the most recent being September 19/20. But I suspect that may be a statistical artifact, whereas the increase on September 28 is legit. It looks like about 1000 new accounts were created/became active on that day.

User attrition has slowed significantly in September compared to August. We should stabilize somewhere in 30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year, which is not too shabby. We are unlikely to see another big wave of growth until the code is significantly more mature, but the current userbase is fairly well established and self sufficient.

I can't wait until we get that next wave so we can have more sports fans and humanities types, but you guys are alright for now 😅

As I said a bit lower in this thread, on Lemmy World we recently switched the default view from 'local' to 'all' for the new sign-ups. But it might be a good thing to do this once, for all existing users. Ofcourse with a proper announcement and an explanation on how to change this to 'local' or even 'subscribed'. It might give communities on other instances a bit more exposure as well.

Sounds great. I mean, given the size of lemmy.world it sure doesn't hurt it and it will certainly distribute more user attention to smaller communities, which will hopefully activate smaller communities from remote instance, which will in turn make the overall conversation quality on lemmy better.

Excited to see whether it will be a noticable effect but I would think so

It looks like about 1000 new accounts were created/became active on that day.

I remember @antik@lemmy.world mentioning similar numbers, so that's probably this.

We should stabilize somewhere in 30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year

That's what I foresee as well.

so we can have more sports fans and humanities types

Discoverability of those communities is probably the first issue to fix. I tried to address it a while back, maybe I should do another one of those posts: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2410183

We changed the default view for new users on LW from "local" to "all" communities a few days ago.

Interesting, hopefully new joiners won't stumble directly upon communities that might push them away ha ha

Imagine joining thanks to Boost and the first thing you see is "boost? Ewww go away, use Foss"

Don't get me started on this, FOSS gatekeepers can really have a detrimental effect on the platform.

I love FOSS as much as the next guy, but if my cousin is asking me support for an Office issue, I'm not going to tell them to install LibreOffice.

Same. Using Linux and FOSS for over 20 years but that Boost announcement thread was toxic. We just started removing those comments and banning them from the community. Those people don't see those 1000 people that came here thanks to boost will now more than likely come across Linux and Foss related subjects anyway. No need to push it down their throats and push them back to reddit.

Honestly there are people doing this because they know it annoys people.

Ofcourse there were people calling me a "poweradmin" because of it, but I have thick skin 😁 And a large banhammer 😏

30,000 range for MAUs before the end of the year, ... current userbase is fairly well established and self sufficient.

I see it differently. It looks like the majority of communities struggle with not enough content/discussions, many de-facto are blogs of mods/creators where others are passive subscribers.

It looks like the majority of communities struggle with not enough content/discussions

This is true, but also subjective. How do you define enough? Enough to doomscroll or enough to check for 10 minutes daily? All we really need to be self sufficient is enough content to keep people coming back regularly, we don't need to replicate reddit.

many de-facto are blogs of mods/creators where others are passive subscribers.

This seems like an exaggeration. Most communities that have quality content also have quality discussion, in my experience.

This is true, but also subjective. How do you define enough? Enough to doomscroll or enough to check for 10 minutes daily? All we really need to be self sufficient is enough content to keep people coming back regularly, we don’t need to replicate reddit.

Right, this is subjective. For me the main criteria is: if I want to get an answer to a question, especially a non trivial one which is not releated to lemmy/fediverse - I should better go to reddit. And I think lemmy should better replicate reddit with this

This seems like an exaggeration. Most communities that have quality content also have quality discussion, in my experience.

Probably, can you give me example of such communities which are not about fedeverse, technology, foss or memes?

For me the main criteria is: if I want to get an answer to a question, especially a non trivial one which is not releated to lemmy/fediverse - I should better go to reddit.

You're not wrong, but I don't see why Lemmy would want to replicate reddit in that respect. You don't need to spend any time on reddit or even make an account to take advantage of that functionality. You just Google your question and add reddit to the end and voila.

Probably, can you give me example of such communities which are not about fedeverse, technology, foss or memes?

I also skipped the gaming and political communities because there is an absolute boatload of that content on Lemmy, as I'm sure you're aware. These are some communities that I am subscribed to that jumped out as being fairly active.

::: spoiler Communities

!lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works

!woodworking@lemmy.ca

!ukcasual@lemmy.world

!trees@lemmy.world

!thefarside@sh.itjust.works

!solarpunk@slrpnk.net

!showerthoughts@lemmy.world

!moviesandtv@lemmy.film

!calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world

!casualconversation@lemmy.world

!imageai@sh.itjust.works

!anime@lemmy.ml

!futurama@lemmy.world

!noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works

You don’t need to spend any time on reddit or even make an account to take advantage of that functionality. You just Google your question and add reddit to the end and voila.

I was talking about asking my specific question, not googling for information.

Thanks for the list - agree - these communities are are rather alive, what is promising.

Fwiw, I've been consistently getting answers and solutions to my questions and issues on lemmy.

Did you notice that the Average Lemmy Comments by Day looks really weird? Some of the sudden jumps could be attributed to real life events, but I’m more inclined to think there’s something buggy going on with the way three numbers are logged. Besides, there’s also a sudden dip!

Just came in from reddit, so from a newbie point of view so far so good, altho the content and users are not as expanded as reddit i think its a matter of time. people are haphazardly looking for alternatives and the only reason people stay is because of the interaction. I for instance immediately tried looking up the threads i was subbed to reddit as well. Its there just not as big and ill gladly trade it in instead of dealing with reddit any longer.

Be the change! There was a community dedicated to rail enthusiasts in my city that I really liked on Reddit, and it's not super active here but I'm doing my bit and trying to get something posted everyday. It's taken a bit, but the people have come!

Also I think it's one of those things where there are actually people there but nobody knows what to post, or is worried they won't get any engagement. My experience is that there's actually a lot of people that just subbed to the communities here that are similar to subs they liked and then either forgot about it or again, don't want to be the only one talking

Yeah absolutely agree with you! When people started "protesting" in the absolute most hypocritical ways i knew it was done (people joining /place out of "spite" was an absolute joke to me)

And in my experience only 2 types of people roam reddit now, the ones who dont give an ef (and thats fine) and the people who complain but secretly don't know they are in a unhealthy relationship and just stick with it because thats all they know and just like to complain.

So id we all put in a bit of effort in it itll be just as big as reddit.

Heck yes! And do leave pointless comments like this, no one knows you're here until you post or comment.

Damn, 40k monthly active users on lemmy? That's much less than I expected. And the number's dropping.

Well, at least for me, there's no going back to reddit.

I wouldnt be surprised if much of the extremism on lemmy puts a lot of users off, tbh. Ive been seeing more and more remarks about it.

Extremism? I've found it to be much less extreme than says /r/europe or /r/conservative

What kind of extremism are you talking about?

I've had to go ham on blocking entire communities on here with Sync's filter feature. Reddit at least has so many niche, active communities that you can actively avoid the /r/Europes and the /r/conservatives. With Lemmy, if I scroll through my subscribed communities, I get the same posts for days on end - if I scroll through everything, I get a bunch of Linux and FOSS circle jerks as well as "Tankies", "Anti-Tankies", commies, fuckcar communities that aren't even realistic with the timescale they want things changes, and even more recently some posts from conservative communities.

Like, don't get me wrong - I refuse to go back to reddit, but I've definitely had the desire to just quit using Lemmy because it feels like there isn't much here for me.

🤔 I've blocked a fair few too and find that contributing to different communities helps. Can't wait for everyone else to do something if you don't do something yourself.

It's still pretty small compared to reddit, and if only 1% of the 40k post, then that's 400 people posting. You can easily have an impact at this point in time.

I've made posts both on this account and a different account from a different instance in the more niche communities that I'd like to see move here and got zero up votes, downvotes, or replies. I've even messaged the mods of those communities to discuss ways to get more traffic and got no response.

I'm willing to keep trying, but the majority of users aren't and that's something that Lemmy is going to have to overcome

It was what reddit was at the beginning too. Reddit would have to pull another reddit or two to get more traffic and increase the number of content creators / sharers.

IMO, the cat is out of the bag now and we will reach an inflection point some day.

There's a mechanic advice community now on lemmy.world (I think?) And we're not.. idk, not bad yet I haven't seen any ugliness myself as of yet. Hopefully it will stay that way!

Yeah. I guess it will vary from instance to instance, but from my personal experience, viewing "All" on Lmemy isn't noticeably more political than /r/all. There's maybe less diversity in the stories, and more memes, but still. It's not bad.

Reddit has absolutely been way worse at times, by the way. When T_D was allowed to run roughshod over the front page, and spez bent over backwards to not ban them despite clearly being a nuisance and breaking the rules.

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Monthly active users are an important metric for companies trying to sell advertising. It's less important for a community based application where profits are irrelevant. What is more important is how valuable the content is to you, and if it's not, you can put in an effort to provide content you, and others, find valuable.

Although less important in other places, knowing that there probably about 400 people sharing most of the content (1% of 40k), is still important.

I think a negative trend is really important... if we are shrinking we are shrinking. Content will decline if the trend isn't reversed.

Fuck Reddit, but I also feel like Boost will give us a boost. It's got some features I've yet to find on other apps and hopefully will make Lemmy a little easier for people like me who made the switch

It's also pretty much exactly like the app for reddit was which had a big following so hopefully will make it easier for former boost on Reddit users to switch to lemmy

The activity seems to reflect those numbers.

Happy you're enjoying it!

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We need more normal users on lemmy tbh. So far, my impression of lemmy is that it's full of tech enthusiast. I'm one too, so I largely enjoyed it, but eventually it gets annoying and tiring listening to tech bros and FOSS diehards whining about something not being open source or something. I just want more normal content from normal people. I hope boost and sync gets more former Reddit users to sign up.

Just have to be patient while reddit continues to ruin themselves. They just got rid of ad personalization opt-out, what's next?

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I joined reddit using boost. So it's natural to join lemmy using boost. Kinda feels like home ig.

I had already stopped using Reddit, just waiting for boost to drop. The only content I find lacking is adult content. Memes, gaming, and news all have enough users here that even though it's less than reddit I'm not missing out. Maybe it will get me to spend a little less time on my phone. But between this and Mastodon I'm happy to pioneer a new kind of social media.

Do you mean porn? There’s a whole instance; lemmyNSFW.

Unfortunately, I'm gay. I'll see if they have anything I like.

Nice, Boost was definitely mentioned in a lot of the applications I approved.

Hey, good to see you here!

I was wondering, would it be possible to have !sexmemes@lemmyf.uk as NSFW for the whole community again?

I get that a few posts might need to be tagged as such from time to time, but most of the content there is mostly SFW, and quite funny.

You too!

It is tagged NSFW now. I messed around with in not being a few times but have left it tagged for a while now. It definitely gets more activity when not tagged. Which way were you meaning in your post? You confused me with the last part.

Alright, let me clarify. There are currently two ways to tag content as NSFW

  • the whole community
  • per posts

It seems that as now the whole community is tagged, while actually most of the content there is SFW, and it could maybe be possible to untag the community, and only tag specific tag posts that are NSFW?

I’ve had various people reach out to me about it including @freamon@feddit.nl who runs the trending bot and asked me to keep it tagged NSFW. I’ll untag it again and see how it goes lol.

Ah, I see. It's borderline, actually. Like the last one with Bambi and the shower can definitely be checked at work, but with the text, maybe not ha ha

This thread, while pointing out that there's some negative trends in active users that can be concerning, actually gave me some hope that there's many more people here with interests besides Linux and communism. Honestly I find this promising for the long term existence of Lemmy.

Hey now, we've also got anime, flurries, soil scientists and mechanical keyboards.

Are you a soil scientist furry who likes anime?

I created an account on Lemmy.world earlier this summer but it remained dormant for the most part because I tend to participate in these kinds of forums from my phone. It's similar to a preference to watching movies and television shows on a television. I wasn't streaming until apps and services became available to stream and watch directly on my TV. I just wasn't going to watch on my phone or computer except once in a blue moon.

After experimenting with several apps, Boost for Reddit was what I preferred and used for a long while back there. As soon as Boost became available for Lemmy, the ease of participating here for me was as smooth as silk. For others that Boost was a fave with, it's probably the same.

It's great that activity is on the rise on alternatives such as Lemmy.

I can confirm it's the same for me. I was actually trying to avoid lemmy for a while and would only hope on for 5 minutes or so a day, but now that boost is here it feels really natural to want to participate, and even just scroll top for a while

Kind of the same for me. Just to add that I only heard about Boost after the whole thing came about

Tried some apps, and decided to wait until this one became available.

It's a very similar experience IMHO, love the customization options.

With all the political extremism and propaganda on here I'd be surprised if numbers stabilize any time soon.

You'll never fully be able to escape crazies in a network built out of human beings. That said:

  • It's important to remember a lot of people in the Lemmy-verse are there because they were banned from Reddit for being too obnoxious.

  • The next update will allow users to block entire instances which should help cut down on some of that

Also, moderation here is way more lenient than other platforms.

I believe part of what you may be seeing was a bug that was preventing moderation actions from federating properly. Fixed in 0.18.5

Yes the KBin spam issue right? Also because it's decentralized a bad actor can start their own instance and moderate however they want.

Kbin moderation actions being incompatible with Lemmy's is a different issue as far as I'm aware.

Depends on what you're here for, reddit had a bunch of extremists but they were cut out of r/all so it was less obvious. Here you get a glimpse of everything and should take care of your home feed by subscribing to what you want to see. On my first scroll of lemmy I start on my home feed, then browse all if feel l haven't found anything to read, adding to my subscribed communities if I find anything good.

I've been just blocking every political sub

I've been blocking most as well, but I don't like that solution because social media is the de facto modern town square. We need to have these conversations somehow.

Finding an app I liked really helped improve the experience, since it made things feel less clunky. Most of my use is through mobile now.

There's 4 million posts on lemmy a day? Where?? I go thru maybe 500 on top day and by the end of it I'm in things with like 3 upvotes and 0 comments

There are instances that just mirror content from other sites which leads to a ton of posts with zero discussion. They have been defederated by the larger instances because it spammed the all-feed.

Is it possible that people browsing anonymously and/or logging in with the same account on multiple apps influenced the numbers?

I admit that I've been bouncing between Sync and Boost since the release. I like both for slightly different reasons.

I think users are only logged in users, to be confirmed

I thought monthly active users was the number of accounts that have made a comment or post in the past month.

Logging in with the same account on different apps shouldn't influence the numbers at all.

Precipitous drop in average posts on the same day, so definitely possible something was counted twice.

I think a big part of the problem is the sign up page, which is being worked on. Also, lemmy.world goes offline just about every day and is one of the larger instances so lots of new users go there and then have a bad experience. And it needs to be made easier for users to find out about all the third party clients available to browse Lemmy because the default client leaves much to be desired.

Most people won't go out of their way to switch instances when lemmy.world goes offline enough to make them quit the fediverse, or try navigating around the base client and become upset at all the unnecessary button bloat and missing basic features like blocking an instance.

lemmy.world goes offline just about every day

Is it still the case now? I was under the impression the site was much more stable since a few weeks: https://lemmy-world.statuspage.io/

I haven't noticed any outages recently. I'm pretty sure the situation has gotten better at this point.

Maybe. I switched to lemm.ee about a month ago

1 month ago means that account just fell out of the active monthly users list, and I'm sure you're not the only one, so yeah those issues are likely part of the drop shown here

~3.5M posts per day across ~40k active users?

I think that's total. As servers go offline, the total number of posts can go down. I guess "average" refers to the total posts on the network, checked every hour or whatever, then averaged across the day.

Bots and automated tools to be blamed here if stats are accurate.

I cleaned up my feed but now I only have around 7-15 posts in the feed section each day and ~3 are interesting.

the 30th also gained slightly over the 29th, from 38,867 up to 38,940

I've been on Lemmy for a while but just disliked the previous app options. Now with boost its becoming a daily thing to check in! Love boost

I personally had 4 active accounts in August, until I settled on one instance I like. Very likely many others did the same, so these numbers are far from perfect.