Lemmy active users grew by an astounding 1600% in June

MicroWave@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 1016 points –

From 2,997 active users across all lemmy instances at the beginning of June, the number increased to 52,797 by June 30th. Source.

An active user on Lemmy is "someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame.” Source. That means lurkers are not counted as active users.

We're really building something here!

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Registration and discovery needs to be simplified tremendously for long term viability. But it’s a good start.

From the outside looking in, the whole model seemed needlessly complicated. So it’s like there’s a LOT of reddit.coms over here? But they’re all the same? But also different? What’s the difference? Which one do I sign up on?

But then I get here and realized it doesn’t really matter that much, since you can more or less use all of them regardless of which one you sign up for.

Something about the way users try to communicate what Lemmy/Fediverse IS, is the complicated part. It’s like everyone wants to jump straight to the more technical details behind how the model works; which probably scares off a lot of the people who just want a place to pop in and talk about their hobbies.

I just told my fairly tech-unsavvy partner the email analogy:

You sign up on Google, I sign up on yahoo, my bro-in-law runs his own from a server in his house. We can all email each other and the email looks mostly the same no matter who reads it, but yahoo isn't Google isn't my bro-in-law. Lemmy = email in general, yahoo = lemmy.ml, Google = lemmy.world, etc.

She immediately got it and has an account on some instance and has subscribed to a bunch of places.

Yep, it's email but with a nice interface and open 'threads' which we can post on.

This is probably my favorite analogy for it so far, at least as a high level overview. I kind of made the same connection myself and that’s when it clicked for me.

This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I'll be using this to help explain it to my friends

This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I'll be using this to help explain it to my friends

The email analogy has got to be the best way to describe the fediverse that I've seen so far.

Yeah, this scared me off for weeks because I didn't want the hassle. Turns out it's way easier than those dorks were making it seem!

Exactly. People last week were adamant about needing to spread out new users across different instances. But let's be honest, casual newcomers don't really pay much attention to that. They just want to see a website a lot of content before signing up. The federation concept should be introduced a bit later after they're comfortable.

yeah the people running this show need to understand that normies dont care about server hosting. they just want a feed with cat pics

Everyone wants a feed with cat pics.

Yeah, there should be simple "how and where do I sign up and find my favourite communities". I feel like there is lots of tech talk here because lots of tech stuff needs to happen before these sites are ready for the full moderation suit and for supporting the most basic aspects of Reddit communities (like flairs)...

The thing that’s weird to me is that say I like football (soccer). I’m sure there are dozens of “instances” have a soccer community, but which one should I follow? It seems like this architecture fragments the user base too much.

Agreed. I feel like the apps in development are trying to make the signup process a bit easier though, so we’ll see how that goes.

Which apps? In many of them I didn't even see a way to register.

I’m currently using the beta for Memmy on iOS. I think it’s prepping for an App Store release today. It’s a good foundation and has promise.

Is it available for download?

Here it is on TestFlight for the beta - https://testflight.apple.com/join/6jaRU6rD

I do believe I got an alert today that it’s prepping for an App Store release later in the day.

Question; cuz I’ve been using Memmy too, and I haven’t had a chance to read into it much. I don’t have the ability to upvote/downvote/reply to individual comments in the app. I’m not sure if it’s a bug on my end or if he just hasn’t had a chance to implement those features yet. Do you have that same issue with it?

Are you using the gestures? Swipe left on a comment to reply. I’m using the app right now to reply to you

That’s exactly what it was lol. I spent a minute searching for someone else with the same problem last night and realized what I’ve done.

I forget if it was covered in new account onboarding or not, but it might be worthwhile letting the dev know that it’s not always clear

I had that issue occasionally. Killing the app and restarting fixed it.

Interesting. I’ve been having that issue non stop. I may try to send in a bug report or something tonight.

I'd also caution that right now is probably a very unique time for the Lemmy world.

That’s true, that’s why I didn’t file a report right away. I’m sure all of these devs are absolutely inundated with bug reports and feature requests right now.

Ah, you know what...(im still learning too). Apparently if you are viewing content from all instances (like those your account arent signed into), you cannot vote or comment in those posts.

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if you're in iphone, go to wefwef.app with safari and save it as an app, it's infinitely better than default

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I second this. Memmy is the most stable and well developed app so far, apart from wefwef, although wefwef is only a web app currently

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Memmy for iOS has an onboarding screen starting with ‘do you know how fediverse works’

Most of the devs that worked on 3rd party reddit apps are remodeling to support lemmy. So we are about to get some really good quality apps in the next 4 to 6 weeks.

Is there a list or overview of these hopefully coming apps? I am using Liftoff right now but it’s en beta and lacks a lot compared to Apollo. Would like to test these out when they are coming. Until then I’ll just use Liftoff and suggest features for them to add.

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I keep seeing people say this but honestly registering is really easy. It took me 5 minutes to figure out how to create an account after leaving reddit

Well, sure, anyone posting here at the moment figured it out. But I’d bet there’s tons of people interested but intimidated.

I keep seeing this said about lemmy but kbin was identical to any other site. So I looked up what the process is for lemmy and, aside from like 2 glitches to look out for it was exactly the same.

Please tell me what is difficult.

My issue was I didn't know where to go to sign up. It took me a little time to understand the fediverse, then I had to figure out what instance I should sign up for. After that I started hearing some instances weren't accepting new accounts but didn't know if that was a thing everywhere or only one instance. I consider myself above average compared to the general public when it comes to my capabilities with the Internet and computer tech in general, it's never taken me days to understand stand how to sign up for a website like this before.

It does seem simple now that I'm here and understand things better. It's just a learning curve; this is unique to any website\forum\whatever I've played with before.

You have to consider that your technical proficiency is not the same as everyone else’s.

I think you're right insofar as onboarding is concerned. Once you've registered, though, Lemmy is relatively straightforward to use. Changing your user settings to display posts from ALL federated Lemmy instances on your front page helps with discoverability. That should be the default setting, but it isn't. That setting is associated with the "Type" parameter (found just below "Theme"). It isn't terribly obvious.

Before that setting becomes default, the "Hot" algorithm needs to get a major overhaul. It keeps spamming the top of my front page with posts that have zero comments and around ~1-10 upvotes as the results from federated instances start trickling in.

And sadly, the software seems to be little better than proof of concept quality. It seems poorly architected for functionality, usability and scalability.

UX is on par or better than reddit back when I joined. Mobile apps are certainly better.

Similar experience to reddit and apps, albeit slightly clunky.

I disagree. At first I was frustrated that people were having so much difficulty with such a simple process, but after a while I adopted the mindset that if they're too stupid to figure out something so mundane then I don't want them here anyway. 🤷‍♂️

Eh. This is kind of a weak attitude.

Yeah. I don’t want just tech savvy people here. I want people with non-tech hobbies like gardening and home improvement to join too.

Without diversity we are just a bunch of assholes yelling at each other about things we all already know.

This is the important part. I’m part of the big homebrewing (beer) community on Reddit, as well as some local subs for my home area. I don’t think a ton of those users can figure it out as easily as someone like myself.

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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!^

I can't wait for this place to blow up. Definitely missing some of my niche subs but hopefully they will appear at some point!!

I can’t wait for this place to blow up

Not literally though. But I have to say it's giving me nostalgic feeling of old reddit when it would struggle to keep up with inflight of new users/activities.

The community here feels significantly more wholesome than Reddit in recent months. It's nice seeing a lot of meaningful conversation without hate and spam.

I don't want to sound like a cynic but so was reddit in its early years. We were all rallying for a cause on the great digg migration. It felt great to be part of that movement (or whatever you want to call that). I do hope Lemmy keeps this spirit up for as long as it can.

The community here feels significantly more wholesome than Reddit in recent months. It's nice seeing a lot of meaningful conversation without hate and spam.

Any examples? Why not start them yourself... Im sure others are thinking the same thing and searching for them. Especially now

The thing that would come to my mind would be game specific communities, like one for stellaris, another for the last of us, etc.

If I wouldn't mind the work of moderating, I'd probably create one :)

I'm new here. I have no idea how to start a community. Any tips?

I think you just go to the top of the page and click "Create Community."

Im brand new here as well, but my guess would be to start posting stuff about whatever your topic is, links etc so people who run across it have something to participate in. I imagine its kind of a labor of love in the beginning but if its not super niche I'm sure you'd show up on searches.

What are you looking to make? It may already exist on another instance and you can just sub there if it already has users.

I'm a little hesitant for big growth, came with the first wave of Redditors back when the news was fresh, but I'm trying to be optimistic. More people means more content, after all.

I also miss the niche subs, and ngl also my snoovatar, he was a nice little guy.

The snoovatars were absent on Apollo so I don’t miss them as much but damn do I miss the content centric design - the stock app doesn’t show flairs or u names in the default view, which sucks.

working on bringing mine over. hopefully nosleep comes with - they've been on the fence

Uh. I wonder what might have caused that...

The real challenge will be seeing if the servers can handle the new traffic. It's already a bit on the slow side loading posts

imo the servers have already been having trouble from time to time. Get all kinds of weird issues. Would be very willing to see like a monthly donation goal in a sidebar or something

From the lemmy.world front page:

Donations

If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the mastodon.world donation URLs:

    https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
    https://patreon.com/mastodonworld

Today I've started a recurring $5/month donation to lemmy.world. Scaling up infrastructure to meet demand is expensive, and they need as much help as they can get to offset their costs. I'll most likely bump it up to $10 a month if the software continues to improve the UX and performance. I encourage everyone that has the means to, to even make a one time small donation to your local instance (if possible), as these first couple months will be critical in the growth and sustainability of this federated community.

just created an account. looks familiar but janky

I recommend trying the connect for lemmy app. It is the most polished way to browse I have found so far.

I recommend trying the connect for lemmy app. It is the most polished way to browse I have found so far.

This is a blast from the past. It takes me back to 13 or so years ago when all of us Digg users made the migration over to Reddit.

That’s not a bad thing, though, as this place has promise! Hopefully increasing numbers of Reddit users take the plunge as the site continues its death spiral.

It's funny yeah I remember the redditor panic when all you guys showed up, who'd have thought we'd all end up being refugees together

Speaking of janky, voting doesn't seem to actually work for me?

Might just be performance related? Are posts and comment threads loading slowly for you, by chance?

easy to say when people are hosting this out of their own pocket and devs putting on countless hours of free labor to make this work. even ads are not rolled in yet to find resources to host ur sorry ass and ignorant comment.

Reddit refugees flooding the border

Truly though. Less than 3k users a month ago and now over 50k and counting? Basically everyone here is looking for a reddit replacement. Hopefully those 3k other people don't mind lmao

I come seeking refuge from the shit storm that is reddit leadership.

The most wonderful part of this, for the unfortunately uncoordinated like me:

scrolling and accidently clicking a random card is now always a random post and not an ad launching a browser window I immediately close and curse.

It's amazing how bad it got for awhile out there.

Don't worry, I'm working on a solution to this. My proposed Lemmy client will auto-inject ads into your feed so you can really recreate the Reddit experience.

I am so new here and have generally no idea what's going on, but I an excited to be here at the beginning.

My only question is if I am required to wear pants?

Just landed here from Reddit. I feel like I need a breakdown on how to use Lemmy and KBin and the differences and just everything in general lol

Wefwef is a good webapp that looks like Apollo that’s a lot nicer than the lemmy webapp

Edited name because I’m dumb

I think it looks and feels nice, but I'm encountering all sorts of errors in literally every app (including wefwef, that decided to stop working completely as I tried to open it 5 minutes ago). While trying to comment right now, I got errors twice (this is from Connect for Lemmy).

Servers are currently upgrading, just gotta be patient for a bit until they sort it out.

IMO memmy is super nice and polished (the best app so far), the lemmy.world servers are pretty hammered at the moment, but they are due for an upgrade in the next few hours, so theoretically everything should get better. wefwef is pretty cool too

Thanks I’ll check that out! Apologies for the dumb question but I’m still new to all this but do I have to create a new username and login for every Lemmy website or instance or can I just use my lemmy.world one?

Refugee here. Been poking around trying to find the right place in the fediverse for ages, while lurking on reddit for pics, memes, and news. The impending death of reddit apps was just the push I need to finally make a decision. Happy to finally be here and looking forward to the expansion of a decentralized decorporatised internet

The biggest issue with this website is the lack of basic explanation of how it works. Imo, the moment someone visits this website for the first time, a pop-up should appear explaining what this is, and how it works in maybe one simple paragraph at most.

Happy to be here, even if I'm still confused asf as to how Lemmy works. Jerboa isn't working very well for me, but I'm super thrilled to be a part of the migration!

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Insane Growth

I'm not sure it was all warm blooded. Active, warm blooded users are probably the real metric.

Posting so I'm also a statistic.

My mommy says I am a statistic waiting to happen! I guess this is what she meant!

You’re 1 of 1 I’ve replied too, so I guess you’re kind of a big deal.

It'll be interesting to see how Lemmy grows. I am also coming from reddit but I'm excited to see how lemmy's culture grows over time.

Getting users to come and try is great, but the real challenge is to keep them on the platform and get them to contribute. Fingers crossed!

Downloaded Connect on Android and I'm really enjoying it. I hope to see Lemmy do well!

The main thing that bothers me about Connect are the 'Material You' colours. Can't figure out how to get it just black and white. So for now I'm on Jerboa.

I just have the theme set on dark mode which is what I'm used to. I haven't seen the material you stuff.

Is connect another way to use Lemmy?

Yeah it's just an app on the play store for Android. I didn't know anything about it, but after using it for like a day I've gotten used to it. I migrated from RIF.

Happy to be part of the sudden stress test of your software and infrastructure! June 30 hit and I needed a place to go. Found Lemmy. Found Connect for Lemmy. I don't know if this is the future for a Reddit-like service, but I'm pleased to see some real activity and I'm glad to be a part.

Connect for Lemmy seems the best all around Android app so far. Have an eye on Boost for Lemmy and a few others.

We'll see how this goes as usage ramps up.

That's what I'm using here. It has a few bugs (I can't turn off swipe gestures, and pull down to refresh never works), but it's minimal, to the point, and easy on the eyes. I think Boost for Lemmy has a good shot at being the popular client when it's ready, but for now, Connect seems to be stable on my device. I do like the web desktop UI.

I can't be too critical though because the whole community and user base is so young. If the Lemmy.world stats are any indication, the app userbase must be exploding too, testing paths that just haven't been tested much before.

My first comment!

Just heard about Lemmy from a random tweet. I was banned from reddit after ten years!

This feels nice. It’s cool seeing the precise up and downvote counts. Feels like ancient reddit.

I’m actually really impressed with how similar an experience using Lemmy is to actual Reddit. We don’t have the established communities just yet, but the platform itself seems like a really good replacement

I didn’t come sooner because I thought it was going to be too different. Last night Apollo stopped working for me so I followed a link talking about wefwef. Been here 10 minutes and the similarity to Apollo is awesome. I know Christian said he was going to move on to other things but if he could just invest his time in this instead…god I’d be so happy!

I'm in the same boat, but coming from RIF. Tried to use Mastodon before but wasn't huge on the interface. I'm pleasantly surprised so far, I'm using Connect for Lemmy with reverse list view and it's ...not terribly dissimilar.

That said, it's obviously still new, and slow. I'm going to see where this goes.

Yep, both Connect and Liftoff on the play store are good

Thank you for welcoming us to the Fediverse. I hope we can bring more good than bad. People are so fragile and flawed, but we can try to not be assholes or own at least own up to it if we do.

❤️ Free hugs! ❤️

Been "Semi" active on here since the Reddit black out.

Honestly, once apps are improving (though current ones are actually pretty nice) and more users are here - what would I be missing from reddit? Nothing. When I need old content I use Google to get it from reddit, but for anything new there is not a single feature I miss dearly (might be different for moderators).

This is good. I had an account on here for a couple of weeks before starting to comment, so I guess I'm now an active user.

I don't know where this site will go, but it's certainly very interesting seeing an actual community on these little servers.

Takes some time to load a single posts. 😐

The flux of users is probably more than what the servers can handle. It will take time to smooth it out.

Here from the mass Reddit exodus! Excited for a new platform to learn and explore!

Welcome! You got in before the (probably) huge influx.

Just signed up on lemmy.world after I saw Boost for Lemmy is gonna be a thing. Like many here I'm just a tiny little bit confused, but will probably figure it out.

Same, this Connect for Lemmy is decent enough and I find it a lot more user friendly than the web version but I'll be right on the Boost app when it becomes available

Active user here, checking in! Fuck You r/spez

I am new with own instance. Looking around and trying a few things. Glad it is so easy to use. Any tips for starters? Thanks for the applist

Just came over last night after RIF shut down. Might as well make my first comment here for the stats. Here's to Lemmy's continued growth.

Also RIF user, and while IMO you can use Reddit pretty decently with FF and uBlock on Android, they fucked up big time with their behaviour. No way in hell am I further supporting a company with such a hostile and disrespectful behaviour. So here I am, and hopefully, many communities will follow.

EDIT: Also first comment, yay!

I'm glad to see Lemmy is getting so much attention, just hoping not many people give up and go back to Reddit after just 2 days lol

I haven't used it in over 2 weeks. The first few days were rough (habit) but I'm good now.

I'll keep using it as long as people keep giving me something to read

Is this the last Reddit hug of death?

Until they ban NSFW content

I could imagine that being a bigger knife in the back than killing 3rd party apps.

Killing old.reddit will be big too

And probably coming relatively soon as it's much easier to scrape

From now on it's going be a slow creep of the hand up the thigh.

I don't believe so but I do think they will see continual decline after this. I'm envisioning more of a repeat of MySpace where everyone just loses interest.

I hope more communities move to lemmy, especially the mental health/support ones.

As for lemmy in general, I have to say that apart from the lack of videos, it's not bad at all, even the android apps are already better than the official reddit one (terribly slow for some reason).

What are the app options? Didn't see any in the play store

I'm using liftoff:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.liftoffapp.liftoff&pli=1

Apk of liftoff if the google play won't let you install the app: https://github.com/liftoff-app/liftoff/releases/tag/v0.10.1

others: https://lemmy.world/post/465785 and https://lemmy.world/post/401441

I can't even sign in. It basically says that my account doesn't exist.

Check that your instance is correct (lemmy.world) and try again when the server works better. Right now the server seems to be having a lot of trouble loading pages, etc, and maybe that's why it's not working for you.

Yeah, seems it was a server issue. I had used the correct instance last time as well, but it worked now. Thanks!

Just signed up for lemmy and this already feels better than reddit. Hope it gains more traction ahead.

Welcome and enjoy your stay! Feel free to DM for any questions about Lemmy or Federation in general!

Good luck, tomorrowcould be a really chaotic day

Can't wait for it to continue growing

I'm a metric!

We’re all just a statistic! Look how meaningless we were at Reddit! At least I’m represented on a chart here… I can see myself riiiight at the peak!

Suppose this post is as good as any to comment on. According to screentime on my iphone Apollo was by far the most used app on my phone.

Here's a list of lemmy apps for you to look at: https://lemmy.world/post/465785

Mlem and Memmy feel pretty similar to Apollo.

Thanks - will gave a look. Didn’t know about Apple testflight until today so used that to start testing Liftoff. Also playing around with wefwef. But it is kinda fun testing all these new apps.

RiF was my most used app for the last 10 years. It's weird not being part of my life anymore but hey Lemmy seems pretty cool actually reminds me of Reddit in the old days.

Give wefwef.app a shot. It’s a web app, but works pretty much just like a normal app, and has basically the same interface as Apollo.

It’s a little buggy, but it’s so close to Apollo that I can’t go with anything else

Adding my voice! Exploring this whole new world. It's all quite exciting.

Just moved since Sync stopped working. Hello world!

anyone know when sync will get lemmy support?

I love to see the growing numbers. The larger the numbers the more communities will be filled and the better the engagement will be.

I’m in that graph, and wow my curves look good.

I'm in this picture and I do like it

I'm in this photo and I like it.

Still not 100% sure how all this works compared to Reddit

Me either.

I just joined through lemmy world and I'm using the Connect app on Android. Just installed Mastodon too. I'm just going to be checking out everything I can, and I'll probably go try to learn more about this whole fediverse thing because it's all new to me.

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Fuck spez. What an idiot.

I can think of more colourful terms, but I'll keep those to myself.

Well nobody will hurt you here if you want to go rainbow 🤗

Curious to see the July numbers.. :o

Yeah, I think a lot of people waited until the Reddit apps were actually killed before making the switch (myself included).

Using a friend's instance now, but plan to create my own instance here soon as well. Excited to see the reddit influx, I've been waiting for over 10 years to see something like this happen, tracking federation since StatusNet

Commenting so i'm counted as active :)

The barrier to entry is super high but hopefully websites and apps are developed to make it easier for people to join. (Sync for Lemmy)

Let's also do out part and post/comment to add content to this website to make it appealing for new users.

Is it really super high? It might not be very intuitive, but there’s nothing truly complicated. Maybe I’m out of touch.

I want to say something like "we like the stock" without coming across as a silly reddit memelord. But we like the stock.

Let's go! Leaving a comment to participate, hoping the new place can handle the traffic tomorrow.

Guess i’ll just post to add to the numbers because I have nothing worthy to add! 😐

I am a reddit refugee here. Would love to be part of this community. Even got a user name I love than the ridiculous one I have at reddit. And this web app that you guys have built is Fucking awesome on iPhone and feels like I am using Apollo.

New lemmy account checking in as active! I'll grab the popcorn 🍿

Not to be a Debra downer but until we have a way of accurately IDing bots / auto-generated accounts these numbers should have a massive asterisk on them, it's interesting but not an indicator of quality

I wonder what it will be in July 🤔

Getting used to things here. Signed up with a random instance. Trying to figure out if there is any benefit to signing up with a particular instance, and if it's worth exploring for a better/closer instance to sign up with.

The benefit of having an account on lemmy.world is the amount of content already available on the site. But once you understand how federation works, it doesn’t matter much because you can subscribe to communities on other instances using the same account.

I’m on lemmy.world partly because it’s run a team of experienced admins, so uptime has been great (once we’re past this reddit influx).

"But once you understand how federation works, it doesn’t matter much because you can subscribe to communities on other instances using the same account."

I'm obviously still figuring this out, but this doesn't appear to be completely true, depending on the community. I subscribed to a community on another instance and the content isn't the same when I visit it from this instance.

I made a post on that thread https://lemmy.world/comment/690842

Yeah beehaw.org is the big exception to that statement. They're probably the strictest instance out there, and the result is that beehaw content does not sync properly.

I am so excited about what's going to happen for Lemmy, I was looking for a replacement for Reddit, and this fedverse seems to have so much potential!

Came here after hearing that Sync is being developed for this app! Can't wait to use it. Hoping this community will keep growing 💗

Let's see how many % it grows in July when shit really hits the fan.

Came here after years of using RIF. It was a good ride, let's boost Lemmy.

O shit dat me

Uninstalling RiF after using it for ~7 years was so surreal and heartbreaking. Now wefwef.app is my new best friend 🤝

I’m doing my part!

Now that I see you doing your part it feels bad if I don't do it as well, here goes me getting out of lurking.

First Post on here.

RIP RIF.

So incredibly sad, but hoping lemmy can be something special in its own right.

Using Connect for Lemmy and like what I've seen so far.

Former RiF user here. Connect for Lemmy is my favorite so far. I hope to see a LiF in the future.

I'm looking at the Lemmy instances webpage https://the-federation.info/platform/73

Why are so many instances closed for sign-ups? Doesn't seem like a good thing for the potential July 1st deluge of new users.

Why are so many instances closed for sign-ups?

Probably to keep the instances from melting with the influx of new users if I had to guess

Server costs and some instances (like beehaw.org) are particular about who they let in. That's why I just refer people to lemmy.world since it's the easiest instance to sign up with a lot of local content to draw in new users.

I'm loving Lemmy, but man they have to make it a lot easier to sign up and get on a server.

I think the difficulty adds a bit of a natural filter for those that really want to leave Reddit vs those that just want to check things out.

But yes, easy access would make it more mainstream which may be better for long term growth of the platform.

Hopefully this blows up and Reddit IPO gets cancelled

Well, I mean let's be realistic. This is never going to kill reddit (though it might lower the content quality quite a bit). Don't underestimate how many people just don't care, who just want to scroll and read in their favorite subs. The people already using the official app. Those people aren't going anywhere.

But I'm sort of very okay with that, to be honest. We don't need ALL reddit users to come here. I've noticed I like the quiet here. Comments won't get snowed over within 3 minute, people seem to be more polite and decent, commenting on posts older than a day is still 'viable.' These are all positives in my book.

There's a ton of people who don't care. Like Mastodon exists, but Twitter is still chugging. Reddit's communities are a bit more organized, but time will tell if it translates into transition. Niche subreddits seem to be continuing

I agree with you. However, I think most people like myself coming from reddit won't stay here if there is a lack of content. So there need to be more users for this reason IMO

To hijack a brain dead crypto bro phrase:

tO tHe MoOn!!!