this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping.

Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren't attracted enough to become regular visitors.

Curious to see at which number we'll stabilize.

Next peak will probably happen after either major features release (e.g. exhaustive mod tools allowing reluctant communities to move from Reddit) or the next Reddit fuck up (e.g. removing old.reddit)

Stats on each server: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sure, 6-monthly users is increasing (and plateauing) and people sure are posting more comments, but those graphs do not paint a good picture and do not suggest positive user growth.

Yep, this graph basically shows that growth hasn't stopped, it was just overtaken by the drop in Lemmy users. I will return to it a bit later.

Every time someone says “Good, less users is a good thing”, they’re saying nothing needs to change because that’s what they want

Only if it's taken outside of context. Okay, I admit I shouldn't claim "No one said that", but in many cases people aren't celebrating the decrease of Lemmy users. For example, OP clearly stated:

It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping. Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.

From my perspective, this decline is a consequance of a rapid growth during last months: people were promised with a new reddit, but they got lemmy, with its quirks and issues. Of course, some people weren't satisfied with it - and when protests on reddit came to an end, they could finally abandon lemmy for the platform they were actually interested in.

That's why I pointed out on the fact user growth never stopped - Lemmy's still attracting new users, just people who weren't interested in lemmy in the first place decided to leave.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Side note: OP did originally have the phrase "And that's good for lemmy" (or something very similar to that) in the title of this post, but they've since edited it. I don't know of a way of recovering what the original title said to be certain but it's worth knowing this, as that's a lot of the context behind this thread around why people (like myself) are decrying those that are saying it's a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the "good thing" part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as "it's a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it". That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good, I'm glad you're not actually trying to spin the whole thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Glad to see you're glad!

Have a good one

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I saw it too. Seems like OP wanted to bait to read the post text and not just scroll away with dreadful thoughts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the "good thing" part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as "it's a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it". That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems the discussion moved to a doomy direction though. People kinda just read the title and then say that lemmy is basically dead and we should move back, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, that's what I wanted to avoid by having a positive spin, but I got so much negative feedback that I changed it.

That's life, I guess

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not the only one who saw that. I saw it too. In fact, that's why I clicked the link.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did edit it, because I was getting too much negativity on the "good thing" part of the title.

I did not even intended as bait, I meant it as "it's a good thing that the community will stop thinking that everything is fine and actually reflect about how to fix it". That was my first comment with the post, but it got buried into the rest of the reactions.

Later threads like https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2243096 and https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/2241408 seem to show that some people are indeed becoming aware of the issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

oh in my feed I'm seeing this discussed a ton now. I didn't think you were baiting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's nice, have a good one!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

growth hasn't stopped, it was just overtaken by the drop in Lemmy users

Can you explain to me how this isn't a complete contradiction? How has growth not stopped while users have? That doesn't make any sense to me. Are we saying there's user growth or not?

That's why I pointed out on the fact user growth never stopped - Lemmy's still attracting new users, just people who weren't interested in lemmy in the first place decided to leave.

I'm trying to understand your viewpoint here, but I'm just not getting it. Overall users are in decline, that's not good. Sure, I have no doubt that we're still attracting new users but we're still losing users as well - more than we're attracting. We're at a net loss of users and that's not good.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You said Lemmy can't attract new users at this point, I provided the evidence new people are this getting into the platform, it's just that statistics is overrided by people leaving us since reddit became usable yet again. It's one-time event though, just like reddit exodus was, so user growth will be positive again soon.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You said Lemmy can't attract new users at this point

Can you please point out / quote where I said this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

here:

but it clearly needs to go a lot further to start attracting users again.

from this comment

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

From the same comment:

positive user growth