this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
-22 points (33.8% liked)

Ask Lemmy

34787 readers
1312 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I feel like there used to be many more posts on my feed..... I hope I'm imagining it...

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] RaoulDuke@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 9 hours ago

Yes. The lead singer of Motorhead died a few years ago.

[–] gigachad@piefed.social 59 points 1 day ago
[–] FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

There's too much in-fighting and drama for it to be dead.

I'm smoking weed about it.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online 2 points 9 hours ago

Good to see you around

💚 Thanks mate. I'm never too far away. I've had more going on IRL lately but I spend most of my time on crazypeople.online communities these days too. Mysteriously the vibe there is right up my alley. 😜

[–] LambdaRX@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lemmy has minuscule portion of users compared to mainstream social media. It doesn't mean it's dead.

[–] chaosCruiser 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I like the current vibe. If Lemmy grew suddenly 10x, I’m sure some of that small place energy would be lost.

[–] FishFace@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (5 children)

It could afford to grow 10x but not 1000x.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] cdzero@lemmy.ml 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I came across in the big Reddit migration and while I loved the idea, it felt like every third post was about the meta or Reddit. I ended up dropping all social media. A few months ago I started passively reading Reddit again and as many predicted, the whole vibe is just off. So I began checking back here a bit and it's a bit closer to what I want now. It feels like there is a bit less going on than back then, and I'm totally okay with that.

Be active and be what you want to see. This is a community driven system and you will get a lot more out of a community by participating over just observing.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Libb@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (6 children)

This. There is too little new people joining and not enough incentive to join.

Imho, the biggest deterrent beside the lack of users is the 'politics' that's almost everywhere (so, so often accompanied by anger when it's not hatred). Sure, it's more problematic on some instances than others but it's almost everywhere. That's also relatively easy to filter out of one's feed but it still needs to be filtered manually which may not be the most interesting thing a brand new user may want to do... that is if they have not already been dissuaded to join just by reading the default feed?

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Sarothazrom@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

It feels newborn, if anything. Like 30-40% of comments I see are from users < 30 days old.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

<30 days old means nothing.

Lemmy users are more paranoid about government, could be just using discarding their accounts often.

I've been on lemmy since the reddit API thing, but this account is only 2 months because I've tried quitting lemmy a few times, and I failed because I'm bored and I need a soapbox to vent.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

it feels like early reddit. a lot of the same style and content. and a lot of replies in threads that are trying way too hard to be edgelordy but just seem crude and naive.

[–] Mike_Hunt@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i feel as if I'm seeing more engagement on posts sometimes, so i would say no

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (2 children)
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

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.

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not that I can see

Subscribe to more communities

!trendingcommunities@lemmy.cafe is good for finding new ones

Edit: Although the bot seems to have stopped posting recently, maybe it's moved?

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 19 hours ago

That bot stopped working, !newcommunities@lemmy.world is probably the place to go

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Throwing this out there in case you are just scrolling through "all":

Your instance is small and you won't see content from communities no one on your instance has subscribed to. An example:

I see posts from a community on "all" that I haven't subsribed to, but someone on my instance has subsscribed to said community. Otherwise we on sopuli would not be fetching updates from those communities and I wouldn't see it on "all".

There is a project (forgot name) that makes bots on instance subscribe to new communities from an instance but not sure if it's still working/set up on your instance.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 1 points 19 hours ago

That's the one, thanks Blaze.

A bit, yes. BUT I go away for a few months and then return to Lemmy with full force. When I'm active here it feels like an active space, when I'm not active, it feels a lil dead.

So the issue is more about the way you engage with the community.

Also I think Lemmy data is available. Posts per month, users etc.

[–] Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 19 hours ago

It's not dead, it's just not matching the level of activity of users as the numbers of users there is reported on paper.

I'd like to see Lemmy get a lot of microcommunities like Reddit but the problem is, one user can do so much.

[–] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not even kind of.

I want a digest I can read for ten minutes a day, rather than spend six hours churning through a hellhole.

I have a life to live.

[–] urheber@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

Okay, valid. I don't, so that makes sense.

[–] SnowMeowXP@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Add more channels (?) I mean, I preferred passive consumption of content too. But in lemmy, there needs to be more posters.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I sort by new and hide anything read so I always get the freshest stuff. I like that there is a limit so I am more likely to close the app and so some reading or learning rather then scroll forever.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

Definitely. Really nice to "run out" of posts to remember to actually close my app once in awhile.

[–] FridaySteve@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

I know I am. Spooky, huh?

I don’t get that feeling at all. Maybe your instance isn’t federated with many other instances?

Also, what’s the comparison for what “alive” looks like? Lemmy’s like the message board I always wanted.

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 3 points 23 hours ago

Try piefed. The frontpage experience is wildly different.

[–] Psaldorn@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

View all and block what you're not interested in, that way you automatically get to see all the new stuff.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 2 points 22 hours ago

Nah, seems like it's growing week after week.

load more comments
view more: next ›