Ask Lemmy
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i feel as if I'm seeing more engagement on posts sometimes, so i would say no
numbers seem to disagree
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=90
I get that they've been dipping recently, but holy crow-- could it really be true that there are well over 9M posts by day?! oO (and ~14M comments per day?) No way am I seeing a tiny fraction of that in my ALL feed, altho I understand that's completely dependent on users at my instance being subscribed to communities around the FV.
One other interesting stat is that the running Lemmy instances have steadily been going down, which is naturally going to delete lots of user accts and communities, likely explaining part of the situation, here. So what if the users who choose to stay, decide to sign up via a different service, thereby 'picking up the slack?' (Mbin, PF, etc)
Indeed, on the whole the FV still seems to be growing:
https://fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=90
Those stats are total posts, not posts per day. Also worth noting that the home screen stats are misleading, as they include a bot-run Reddit mirror that is larger than the rest of Lemmy and PieFed combined, not to mention a lot of other smaller (but still massive) bots and bot-run instances that most are defederated from.
If you want to be more accurate, you have to filter through individual instances excluding outliers, and collect the data from each one to add up.
Overall, the stats seem to suggest that its lost momentum and grown stagnant, although stagnant does not mean dead either.
In which case-- what should we do?
Do you have any idea what we should do?
I've put 2+yrs in to this project, largely because... we just can't be pushed around by other hypocritical, social media services.
Normally, I'd say post more, but from a glace at your profile, you're already posting more than I would expect any individual to (Thank you.)
Beyond this, we need the Fediverse to expand to the point were it can achive a critical mass and the networking effect and its own momentum will keep it running. In my own personal opinion, there is two main avenues we need to tackle:
Gaining/Keeping new users: As it stands, Lemmy has low visibility, and when new users do try to learn more, it's extremely inaccessible. Keep in mind that even Reddit was seen as kinda niche and inaccessible, nonetheless as a defederated platform filled with elitist political and tech nerds. To improve these, one avenue is to engage in more marketing and onboarding. Things like colourful, "How to use Lemmy" image decks, screenshots reposted on other platforms, or just straight propaganda posters. We also need to improve the experience in the Fediverse, although this is more about being friendly and supportive, and calling out elitism and assholery. Larger movements like what is needed here happen through a sense of community.
Lack of compelling content: As it stands, there is far too little content on the fediverse, nonetheless anything standout. We need both more broad appeal content and more high-quality content if we want to draw users from other platforms. Options for this range in complexity from simply asking users to post/comment more (even a simple, complementary comment helps encourage others to post more), to writing bots to make relevant posts to the appropriate communities like Reddit did in the early days, to making more original content for Lemmmy (or at least released to Lemmy early), or even sponsoring/commissioning more work to be posted here.
IMO, we need a combination of both of these avenues if we want to achive the critical mass needed to make the Fediverse successful.
Yeah, I think you put your finger on a bunch of significant issues, right there. *phew*
Anyway, that's a lot to unpack for me, but one of the familiar ones is the fact that loads of Reddit-type users are swiftly put off by how extra-complicated it is to have a 'familiar Reddit experience,' here on the Fediverse. (I'm no longer technically part of the Lemmysphere, haha)
Spez melting down and accidentally giving us great PR for awhile was maybe... not good enough in itself, eh?
The problem is that for the average user, the Fediverse just doesn't offer a compelling product. Think about the average, enthusiastic poster on Reddit. While yes, they might be a power user who understands the site and is passionate about it, most (esspecially in smaller communities) users are passionate about what they're posting about, and just happen to access the community through Reddit. They don't know nor care about the underlying tech and politics, they just want to talk to others about how to grow tomatoes or what game patch 1.16 means for the meta. These users didn't care about the Reddit drama. They just kept going as normally as they could, and those who did try were largely met with dead communities anyway, so simply went back to what they were doing before.
those graphs aren't that great and easy to misinterpret: the 9M is the total number of posts, that were ever posted to lemmy. the graph just shows what that number was for each day (so for example the graph shows 8.9M yesterday and 9M today, that means 100k posts in one day)
I was mostly just looking at total active users
but fair point mentioning other fediverse apps
People are moving to Piefed