I feel like Lemmy has reached a critical mass of user base at some point in the last year.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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I honestly think that there is more direct activity here. I asked the same question on reddit in 3 different places, but had more replies here than there.
Yeah, what the hell?
I was a prolific reddit commenter for over a decade and myailbox would be empty each day
I have 600+ comments waiting for me now iny Lemmy inbox. Something is different
Because if you didn't post to small subs or be one of the first 20 or so comments on a big sub post, you'd get buried.
601 now >:)
The people who say there's no activity tend to be lurkers and they mean post activity not comments.
If you're on a big community that's usually not a problem but for the small ones it is. If you have a hobby, then chances are its biggest lemmy community still doesn't see enough new activity to feel alive.
Funny I come here every day, and every day there are thousands of fresh posts.
There is a noticeable lack of niche content though, so Redditors saying that aren't willing to see how the style of interactions on the Threadiverse is different.
I didn't like the lack of micromobility content, so I made [email protected] and we have close to 3,000 subs now.
Be the change you want to see is my advice to them.
Yeah but that's still an example of where we're at, though: niche subs rely on single committed users doing 99% of the posting to sustain enough activity.
There's nothing much to do about it at this stage though except try your best to be that user. We probably need to at least double our userbase for that to no longer be the case. Maybe more.
To be fair, we've got two committed users modding and submitting regularly now with a smattering of semi-regular post contributors and a good number of commenters.
Your point stands though, most of the comparable niche communities on reddit are far larger at least in user count.
It's just the 90-9-1 rule in effect. We're only at just under 60k MAUs. It's a great number and makes for decent activity in the larger subs but if 1% of those are regular posters that's... 600. That's not really enough to spread across niche interests, so it figures that most of them lack active subs.
Plus there's a bit of a toxicity problem.
Reddit shares that but fair has nothing to do with it: people are grandfathered into existing Reddit subs and for them to switch, they want it to be painless. Also, niche subs with fantastic mods are particularly where Reddit's toxicity problem is least apparent, as compared to coming to Lemmy and browsing by All. Otherwise new visitors go back to Reddit and complain in e.g. r/RedditAlternatives about what meanies we have over here... which is a true statement, as Lemmy was literally created by the same people who were kicked out of Reddit for being too toxic, and created this Reddit 2.0 (but decentralized, making it worthwhile).
Being told that e.g. having a bank account makes them equivalent to supporting genocide does NOT endear people to us. Take a look at Lemmy.ml, and/or hexbear.net, if you don't believe me - tbf there were far more of such BoTh SiDeS sAmE posts back prior to the USA election, and pretty much every election in a Western nation, but they still persist today. We are a Nazi bar here, by federating that content everywhere. Also, the last time I checked out that join-lemmy website, it literally gave me the advice to join... wait for it... Hexbear.net, making even defederation from such instances as Lemmy.world insufficient so long as people are being told to come here via that website.
People do not enjoy being made fun of - should they though? - hence Lemmy will never gain a mainstream audience of non-technical users from the primarily centrist or even right-leaning userbases of Reddit or X/Twitter. We can be okay with that, or do something about it, but either way those are the options, not the middle ground of just hoping that people will ignore the trolling that is far too often allowed here.
The thing I used to use Reddit for that I miss most is news on specific games I was interested in. If I wanted to actually post news about games, I would need to actively search for the news elsewhere (often times exclusively on Reddit) and regurgitate it here. This defeats the point of the me wanting the community or leaving Reddit in the first place.
I guess that depends on your reasoning/purpose for being here, but the more capable people who contribute to this place, the better it will get.
A lot of Redditors are lazy consumers though, not wanting to put forth any effort to making their spaces better.
Oh well, guess they'll just have to stay on Reddit then... 😉
Yeah, I view it as a double edged blade.
Only one way to start it. :)
I wonder if all the bot activity on reddit makes it look so busy that people are confused when they come somewhere with far fewer bots around?
I notice significantly more positive interaction with (at least what I believe to be) real humans here than I did on reddit in my last couple of years there.
People always talk about wanting to grow Lemmy, but honestly I like it a lot more the way it is. You can comment on a post that's been on All for 6 hours and still get plenty of thoughtful responses. On reddit, there was so much noise - especially on major threads - that commenting was like pissing into the wind.
The solution on that on Reddit has been, retreat into more niche communities, remove default subs from your feed. Right now the way to make Lemmy usable is to browse All, because otherwise there isn't enough content, but I bet as it grows it will go the same way.
For Lemmy that's what I used to do yeah, bc there was no better option.
PieFed offers numerous additional options though, most especially categories of communities, including user customizable and shareable Feeds. You can even have your cake and eat it too - like subscribe to no political communities to avoid them showing up in your Subscribed, but then it's a click away in the News and Politics Topic area. Or, the keywords filter options (for e.g. "Trump", "Musk", or whatever you want) include All, None, and Some, allowing you to refine your Subscribed feed to meet your interest level in a particular subject.
And then for very low-volume communities, you can even set up Notification triggers upon every new post (I also use this for a community I mod using a Lemmy alt) - e.g. poetry tends to not be highly upvoted so super difficult to catch organically on either All or Subscribed (you might have more luck there sorting by New, but this requires blocking a TON of communities like for sports and individual locations and such).
PieFed really is an entirely different experience than Lemmy! Maybe as it becomes successful, the Lemmy devs may start to port the features over? But it's doubtful, as existing requests have languished for like 5 years already - PieFed's being written in Python rather than Rust really makes a difference in such matters.
i can see the same thing, things that have been published for hours see steady activity, even some which are lively for a good few days, it feels less like flitting between a bunch of new things which is useful
I've noticed the same. I've also noticed it become slightly more combative and strawman-y with the influx of new folx, but maybe getting better again lately? Anyway, this is just going by anecdotal/vibes, and it's definitely better than mainstream/commercial socials.
I've also noticed it become slightly more combative and strawman-y with the influx of new folx, but maybe getting better again lately?
I'd like to think it's because the mods here are a lot less likely to aid and abet that shit. I don't know if it is, but that's what I'd like to think.
I think it's the same phenomenon in multi-player gaming - community hosted servers tend to have less garbage flying around compared to centrally hosted company servers.
If you run your own server, you're far more likely to care about the user experience. And if you run your own server, you make your own rules and can manage how you'd like - no obligations.
Yeah mods and admins around here put in some real good work protecting their users.
have you looked at comments on an instagram post? you'd absolutely never be allowed to to say half what gets said there here
What I like about fedi is that while we usually give people the benefit of the doubt, we don't tolerate dog whistles, sealioning, or other ""subtle"" methods of spreading bigotry and intolerance.
Whereas the big commercial platforms we on't do a thing unless it's blatant harassment, or matches one of the 12 slurs on their no-no list.
and if your admin allows that shit you can go find a new admin. no one's the only game in town out here
No wait... don't you see?
The robots have already breached our defenses.
You've seen what they've done to other websites!
And worst of all, they could be any one of us...
Are you one?
I am 🤖BEEP🤖 definitely not one!
Probably slightly controversial but I'm actually missing getting into arguments with strangers. I feel like I need some conflict in my life.
On Reddit though, mostly what they offer is arguments with robots? 🤖😜
Heh same.
I love how on Piefed you can check or uncheck "Notify about replies".
I wish I could check a box "No notifications" when posting
Piefed has an option to disable them
Not only there, but the little bell icon next to... well... everything. i.e. not only at the time of posting, but at any time you can click, unclick, click again, etc.
And you can do it for other people's content as well as your own.
You can also do it for other people too, or for communities (both of those work best for low-volume entities, obviously:-P). Like poetry tends to get swamped out in Hot, and is still fairly rare in New, so the notifications is one way to make sure to receive all of them. Or posts for a community that you moderate, even if using an account on a different instance.
PieFed is fantastic! 😍
Mbin does as well.
I need to use Piefed more.
Apologies to those who have messaged me recently.