4 days before reddit's 3rd party app shutdown, Lemmy daily active users has skyrocketed 1600% this month

MicroWave@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 321 points –

From 3000 daily active users on June 1, 2023 to 47500 on June 26, 2023.

According to Lemmy's documentation, "An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame."

Sources:

EDIT: check out this link for a list of lemmy apps: https://lemmy.world/post/465785

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It is very clear that new content per day has been steadily increasing the past 14 days.

Lemmy is no longer just promising, it is already good. With signs of getting even better.

With more active users, more niche communities should soon be able to do fine too.

I already didn't read past the first few hundred comments on reddit- Lemmy already feels almost as good to use, way more than mastodon did coming from Twitter.

Mastodon is simply not as good. Lemmy achieves its objectives very cleanly and seems to leverage ActivityPub the best in the fediverse by far.

Watching the last 3 weeks has been exciting. Dead subs springing to life & much more content. New subs every single day.

Oh so lurkers aren't counted as active? That's even promising since many users on any site never comment or post.

Indeed! That would be me, but I would now like to contribute to the totals so I am contributing this fairly worthless comment!

Another relatively useless comment! Just to contribute :)

I've probably posted as much in Lemmy in a couple weeks as I did on reddit in several years, but as the say, be the change you want to see.

Yeah I lurk for the most part, but I'd like to contribute to some subs someday with the projects I'm working on!

Every now and then lurkers have to prove we're still here

Okay, here's my first comment.

Your comment was so insightful I just had to upvote it thus increasing 'engagement'. Am I helping?

Even if you do nothing else, make sure to upvote content and comments, and subscribe to communities. Bringing content over from reddit (or even just googling stuff) to the new applicable community would be extra helpful (a lot of empty communities at the moment).

Things keep looking better here, so I'm optimistic about lemmy.

So active users doesn't include users who are only browsing/voting on posts? If so that's even more impressive.

I've been mostly a lurker on Reddit for the past 10 years but something about Lemmy just makes me want to engage in the community more than reddit ever has. Also it's been incredibly impressive how quick lemmy improved over the last weeks.

I was frequent poster/commenter on Reddit before having a mini burnout by so many of my comment chains just randomly escalating into pointless arguments by toxic people, so I turned into a long-term lurker after that.

Conversations on Lemmy are definitely way, way more inviting to partial lurkers like me who want to join in conversations once in a while without having to think about some random toxic people basically hijacking the conversation I'm having to satisfy their need to vent their toxicity onto the internet.

I wasn't a lurker on reddit. But damn, lemmy has somehow supercharged me into posting and commenting at ten times the rate I used to.

I still think that Lemmy needs to be more user-friendly before it starts to gain a lot of traction. Right now, the decentralization is an aspect that makes it so great, but it also creates a lot of pain points.

A month ago there was only around 1k active users and the two primary devs. Things have blown up FAST, but they are working overtime to make changes and establish coordination to help improve the overall experience.

I agree. I lurked on Reddit for most of my time there. But here, it feels like I can get a fresh start and be a part of a new community. Kinda feels like I have a responsibility too. I want this place to succeed, so I have to contribute.

I just signed up. Coming from reddit. Hopefully this is a good alternative.

We are all testing the waters. After a day i can say that the platform have a huge potential. Just be sure to use a well updated, fully integrated app for the best experience.

I'm really hoping we get more and more users here. I miss having the niche communities that were still populated.

I've been here for a couple of days, if anything, I'm pleasantly surprised. This is not Reddit's first clusterfuck, and although there were alternatives at the time. It's finally nice to find something that isn't full of bigots.

That has been the great thing about it, rediscovering that people can talk to strangers on the internet and actually be normal about it. Conversations here don't seem to devolve into fights as they invariably do on mainstream social sites. And I don't have to keep explaining to people that it's possible to care about other people, a concept which several people on Reddit told me was incomprehensible to them.

I think it shows that the great migration from Reddit is actually happening. After the 1st of July, we can expect to see Lemmy growing even more since the changes on Reddit are gonna be in full effect.

I won't use the official Reddit app, so my phone Reddit usage will drop to zero on July 1st.

This is great and exciting news, but we do need to keep things in perspective. Jumping to almost 48,000 daily active users is great, but Reddit has about 55 million. That's essentially a rounding error as far as Reddit is concerned.

People keep wishing death upon Reddit. I understand the emotion, but I wish Reddit a long life. Let it be the grease trap for doomscrollers, reposters, and political and corporate infiltration. I don’t want millions of people to join Lemmy. I want the mythical 1% active content creators to jump ship.

I'm curious what the make up of people migrating are. It could be the early adopters that helped Reddit build out the platform ahead of Digg collapsing. It could also be people who were looking for an excuse to leave because they didn't really like Reddit for one reason or another. I think I fall more in the fed up with Reddit and looking for anyone/anywhere doing it better.

Agreed. I imagine the devs and admins here are looking at it as a bit of a deadline of sorts. It's going to be a big bump in traffic, best to have as much as you can in place.

If you can have useable app out by then, you'll get a big sudden surge in interest. It's just a really nice opportunity for an aspiring dev.

I'm really trying, the main thing I miss is the amount of content and the general navigability of reddit. Finding new subs was so easy and lemmy feels harder to just browse imo. I've moved to the lemmy RSS and deleted my reddit bookmarks to help keep me from going there out of weakness though.

We'll see to what degree the migration stays/works. I would be very happy to see some competition in this space.

It is a bit harder due to fragmentation but it will get better, don't worry. Also plenty of new upcoming apps.

Replying from connect for Lemmy, that just got approved on the play store. Not sure if it'll be my endgame app but looks snazzy enough. I look forward to trying a few different ones, and to seeing the general functionality get better around here.

I think it's going to be rough for sometime but the numbers seem promising thus far.

Particularly when compared to any other reddit alterative.

This feels great. The posts right now seem a lot more genuine compared to reddit lately. Keep it up!

There will probably be another bump on July 1st, and probably more to come as Reddit makes more horrible decisions going forward.

100% honestly, I'm not married to the whole concept of the Fediverse - I think it's interesting and solves some problems plaguing modern social media, but has other issues of its own - but Lemmy has, overall, put out a good showing in the various instances' content so far. So here I am with an account and actively posting. Looking forward to continued growth!

Man, I knew I made the right decision to promote "Barbie" on this Lemonworld thing instead of reddit.

Oh, hi Margot Robbie. I loved you in Suicide Squad... the first one, I couldn't be bothered to watch the second one. Sorry 😅

The site has felt way more usable in the last week, too. Haven't had much time to contribute myself, but I was browsing Active last night and thought to myself "hey, this feels just like the Reddit I know and love"

Once the niche communities take the plunge, its endgame for Reddit

have been loving it so far, the jerboa app is either a bit buggy or this instance is having troubles

wishing sync devs could eventually adapt for lemmy, as i really liked the ui

The sync dev is currently working on a Lemmy version. It won't be long.

From what I've heard, this instance should be able to upgrade to 18.1 this week, and that'll help with bugs big-time, just had to wait because version 18 did away with captcha and that's needed to help keep out the swarm of bots.

I wanted to join lemmy 2 years ago but it was strict and my appeal got rejected. Now in ya face

So not even counting the lurkers

Yeah, lurkers aren't counted. Only those who have commented or posted within a specified period.

Worth noting we probably have a much higher engagement percentage than the average atm. Young community, cool new idea, gets people excited. Since the service isn't really ready for primetime yet, the only way to really pitch in and even just vent enthusiasm is to make content. For most of us that don't have dev skills anyway.

Found my way here as part of the Grand Reddit Migration. Applying for refugee status please. (1st day on Lemmy, looks good gotta say)

Your application looks good; you just need to write an ending for the following sentence: " Fuck ..."

Fuck that cretinous spez and his money-grabbing lobotomy business plan.

Double edged sword as it is, I'll probably prefer Lemmy anyway...

Just been lurking until now but I guess we can +1 that active user count. Just waiting for sync to add a lemmy app and then it's full steam ahead.

Sync is reddit to me, so when it goes down I can't see myself going back. I set up a Lemmy account yesterday and am impressed so far knowing it's still in the early stages. I'm excited to see what LJ can do with Lemmy.

I've definitely noticed the uptick in the number of communities and new posts. Exciting times.

I'm gonna comment so as to be counted as active.

i opened up this thread with the intention of doing just that— glad to see i’m not the only one lol

Does this metric include all federated instances, including Kbin, or is this just lemmyy.world ?

using lemmy this past week or so just lurking gives me some hope for the future of the internet during a particularly bleak part of a general decline… i’m so happy to be here. let’s make this work!

Had to restart my instance so I'm commenting here to make sure I add to the active user count. Looking good, Lemmy! Let's hope we can keep this momentum going into the next month (and beyond)!

As a Reddit user for over a decade that got perma-banned for reporting repost bots and blatant misinfo --- Glad to see new site where I can actually be involved.

Just realised I have not replied to anything yet, so using this thread to check it works.

I've just registered, read this last night and had to comment just to be a part of it. Happy to find a really good alternative.

Thank you for showing the growth in ACTIVE users, not just accounts. Its still impressive, and more truthful!

Image Transcription: Line Graph

[A line graph is shown depicting the number of users on Lemmy over one month's time. The horizontal axis lists the date of each reading, with an interval shown for every day. The earliest date begins at '2023-05-28' and the most recent date is given as '2023-06-26'. The vertical axis measures the number of users, with intervals marked at every 5,000 users, with an upper limit of 50,000 users. There is a green trend like and a blue trend line graphed from plot points at every horizontal interval. The green line is labelled 'Active users monthly' shows increase over time. The line remains flat at approximately 1,000 users from the '05-28' date mark to the '05-31' mark, then begins to gradually increase to approximately 10,000 users, starting to show a trend similar to the beginning of an exponential growth curve. At the '06-11' date mark, the line begins increasing at a relatively steady rate, with the last marked date showing just over 45,000 users. There are two points in which the line shows an apparent indication of levelling off in user count, before then showing a sudden increase in users again, with neither of these points significantly impacting the overall upward trend. These points are at the dates '06-16' and '06-21'. The second graphed line, the blue line, is labelled 'Active Users Half year' and starts at approximately 3,000 users, but follows an almost identical trend shape as the green line as it increases approximately parallel to it. The blue line ends at around 48,000 users at the final graphed point.]

^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

Great! Deleted both of my Reddit accounts for about a week now.

I'm not sure where I will be moving forward, but I would say more likely that not it will not be on Reddit. That much I do know. I will still use Reddit on occasion, but the sense of community is mostly gone for me.

I've been here around a week, came over from Reddit of course. I'm still hanging around over there, because I enjoy watching dumpster fires, but I've been pretty active voting and commenting here.

Let's goooo! Feeling like refugees fleeing war and finding a new home, far from conflict.

I'm new, myself. I hope more people start coming over.

I'll also become active with this comment so I can be counted!

It’s so exciting watching these new communities pop up on here!

Also, shoutout to all the devs working on cool Lemmy apps like Memmy, Mlem, Liftoff and wefwef. My week has been pretty entertaining checking these out!

Which one you recommend?

All of them are great, honestly, though I’m currently using Memmy as my main one, as that one seems to be more feature-complete.

Today I discovered wefwef, which is a web app, and was blown away by how good it works, so I’d recommend you check that one out, as well.

Adding a comment to ensure I'm being flagged as active. Can't remember if I've posted or commented since joining.

I'm only one person but I never returned to Reddit after the blackout. They could do a complete u-turn and even make sp*z that little fucker walk the plank but I would still be done with that place.

I am really excited to see the community we build from here on out.

Giving this place a shot... Can't be worse than Reddit

It'll definitely be better than Reddit. Reddit has honestly gotten pretty terrible in the last few years. Fediverse may have its flaws but it's still better than what Reddit has become (and ultimately what Reddit's for-profit wannabes will become).

It certainly is better than Reddit, although that's not exactly hard to achieve to be fair.

This is great news for Lemmy, let's hope that community grows even larger, as more users leave reddit.

Even if that continues the next 5 days in a row. that's no big deal for reddit. it's barely a fraction of a percent of reddits userbase. Spez couldn't care less i thinks. the only thing that would probably hurt reddit is if everybody deletes all their conten and accounts. and it would need to be a much larger scale. nothing will change. never underestimate the lazynes and unwillingness to change of people.

As long as there's a vibrant community outside of reddit, it totally helps to break that reddit addiction. Ever since I joined Lemmy, I barely even bother with reddit anymore.

Just came over from the Apollo sub! Hope this can serve humanity in the same way Reddit once did

And with all the apps pooping every 3 days it's getting even better!

I currently use Jerboa on Android, do you recommend any others to try?

wefwef.app and LiftOff are both looking pretty good!

Hope Lemmy grows at a steady pace so the resources can keep up. It's amazing it's handeling this amount of Traffic already.

Hi guys just made an account and deleted the Reddit app (after giving up hope and deleting Apollo). Guess this is where I’m hanging out now

Hoping that Lemmy grows and is a viable alternative to Reddit. Honestly just looking at lemmy.world and all of the activity and communities, it appears to already hit that mark!

Lemmy looked a bit complex, coming from Reddit, with the great app Sync for Reddit, but I like it here so far. Hoping Sync for Lemmy will soon be there!

Good news: it’s in development, and a preload should be available sometime today!

Same. I'm willing to pay almost any price for it.

To be honest, i am using reddit via Apollo and lemmy but as soon as that shuts down im transitioning to lemmy full time.

This seems like very important information worth sharing in general but also wherever these stats are posted including in the software itself (via (?) or tooltip).

It also means that the real number of active users, which includes lurkers, is actually higher.

I still think the majority of registered users are bots though. I don't think we have actually have 2,000,000 people on here.

What's a good estimate of lurkers? 10% of actives? 200% of actives?

No one is in disagreement that bots are the majority of registered users.

I'm a little bit of a lurker yes. I comment when I think I can add something to the discussion, but I usually like to read more than I contribute unfortunately.

+1. Bye Reddit. Hello Lemmy! Struggling a bit to find my way around. Excited to find so many people willing to contribute to make Lemmy their new home. Feels good to be here.

I’ve been lurking and trying to figure it all out so I’m not part of that stat so I’d imagine there are lots of folks like me. I’m not super active on Reddit but not having Apollo means I have to lurk somewhere else.

Always lurked on Reddit but happy to be counted as active on Lemmy!

When I first signed up two weeks ago, the highest-voted posts might have had about 20 upvotes. Now I am regularly seeing posts in the hundreds. It makes me wonder what the first post to reach 1000 upvotes will be?

Lemmy feels really good compared to reddit

Agreed, after using it for a few days it's actually not too bad. Doesn't quite have the QoL stuff that some of Reddit's 3rd party apps had but it's still pretty good.

the dev of Sync is making a Sync for Lemmy app. I'm assuming it's going to be a similar UI to the Reddit version, which I'm stoked about because that was the majority of my Reddit experience

I'm here from reddit, too, so the number just went up one more.

Didn't initially like the look of lemmy and tried Kbin, but kbin randomly was slow and has no way to hide posts. Lemmy seems snappier and more concise...hoping to find some ability to hide content if you upvote it. I love clearing my feeds up once i've seen content once.

edit: I see there's a hide read option in settings! What constitutes a read post on a desktop PC? Opening comments? simply scrolling past it? Interesting...

edit 2: ohhhh shit, opening comments AND it hides on upvote - fuck yes, well i'm here to stay then.

Cheers!

Instead of deleting my Reddit account, I'm replacing all my comments there with, "edit: //I've moved to Lemmy //"

Damn if only that wouldn't have taken me years lol

It wouldn't had! https://github.com/deestan/PowerDeleteSuite There are scripts doing it for you, you can also use them to edit all comments before deleting them. I used the one I linked. It's a fork since the original had some problems with rate limiting.

Unfortunately I deleted my account on the 12th but I appreciate it lol

Anybody knows if this counts kbin users as well?

No, only lemmy instances. Kbin has a different way of counting active users it seems like.

So, just to understand it better: Lemmy counts only accounts registered at Lemmy's instances? It wouldn't count count me as an user (even commenting at Lemmy's communities) because my account is from Kbin, that's right?

I think Lemmy's Fediverse is harder to censor as well? They have a sprawl of domains that can federate to censored ones.

Would love an iOS app or third party app but Lemmy is still good on the web 👍

~~Most are bots though

Many instances have over 40k total users but only 10 people or so active

I think about 250k is the number of real people (still very impressive)~~

That's why the post used active users as a metric. From 3000 to 50000 is still quite a leap. I am actually not necessarily looking forward to 100millions users. A few thousands interesting/ed people in a given community is way more than enough.

@MicroWave I had never heard of the Fediverse or kbin before the protests on Reddit. I’m really hoping this all takes off. I’ve been enjoying my time here so far.

Same. I knew about mastodon but couldn't imagine a viable reddit alternative taking off so soon. And now, we've got lemmy and kbin users seamlessly talking to each other. It's amazing.

@MicroWave posts bring back that era of exponentially spending more and more time looking at graphs back when the pandemic was on fire hahah

this keeps getting touted but isn’t it a huge number of bots causing the rise?

Bots have inflated the total users count (around 2.4 million), but they aren't active (yet). So for now active users is a recommended way to measure the fediverse. But once bots start posting, we'll have to find another way to track real user activity.

This is just really disappointing and gross. Is there any way to not have bots absolutely everywhere?

Yeah, it's absolutely disappointing and gross. Bots have been actively probing for obscure instances without registration validation and flocking to them. Good thing the top real lemmy instances (like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ca) have been much more vigilant about that.

Are those instances defederating from the bot-filled ones?

Yeah, those instances are defederating from the bot-filled ones, but new ones are still popping up (although seems to be slowing down a little for now).

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I don't see how that could be done, the bot owners can always just spin up their own new instance where they control sign up requirements.

Other instances can then defederate from the spam instance but they can quickly spin up a new one.

Gonna be interesting to see how it's solved.

Require that membership in the Fediverse be approved?

The fediverse is decentralized, anyone can start their own lemmy/kbin/mastodon/whatever server and make an account they just approve themselves.

If you mean some kind of global approval then that destroys the whole point of the fediverse.

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My understanding is that's causing the rise in accounts (2.5m!) not the active accounts data

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