Sunshine (she/her)Lemmy Just Broke the 54k MAU Record Set During the 2023 API Exodus!
It’s so nice to see the servers are not crashing anymore this time around like how Lemmy.world did for me a few times back when I first joined in 2023 and I remember when the only app that was available on ios was just Wefwef before Memmy and Mlem came out of testflight. Today the apps are much more developed as we now have: 6 ios apps, 10 android apps, advanced search, moderator tools, user tags, in-app video playback, baby account indicator, advanced markdown editors, crossposting, watch support, expanded customizations, content filters, fediseer integration, side by side posts, alternate sources menu, song service integration, direct messages in app, gallery view, local sub count on communities, troll buster, user theme directory, open web post in app, gestures, media bias check, alt check and personal contribution stats.
qazYes I remember the lemmy.world servers being DDOS’ed every couple of days and having to switch between 3 clients and the webinterface because all of them were missing some features.
aboblawhere can I check these status? Which website do you use?
AbnormalHumanBeingThe one shown is from join-lemmy:
Also of interest for people that love statistics (which I do):
It seems like the other two tools only report about 49k MAU, any idea why?
I can’t be certain in this case, but the usual suspects are not being connected to as many servers (e.g. not scraping some because of robots.txt settings), delays in scraping the stats, or excluding some servers consciously because their stats are deemed a bit suspicious.
Die4Everon fediverse observer, you need to switch to daily stats not monthly stats, right now it says 53,225 MAU for March 13th as the latest datapoint
lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
fedidb is probably doing something similar, just showing the average for the whole month, instead of the current day
Fedidb used to have graphs for lemmy no? Now its only for all fediverse stuff combined :/
ITguruGlad to be part of it!
db0The growth in 2025 has been staggering, ngl. And this is the kind of thing which converts from a trickle to a tsunami very quickly. It never happens with one shock. But a consistent amount of enshittification shocks. Reddit’s desperate struggle for profitability practically ensures those will keep happening, so this is all inevitable at this point. The only thing that is uncertain is whether digg can recapture the fleeing masses who are not cognizant of the dangers of corporate vc-backed enshittification yet, like bluesky did to Twitter.
But a consistent amount of enshittification shocks
I think the proper term is enshittification sharts
FizzThe user growth we’re seeomg could result in an overwhelming flood of users at anytime. Which is why people should consider supporting the lemmy devs and instance admins either financially or through contributions so that the lemmy software and infrastructure is ready to handle the growth.
And then in 5-10 years the users will destroy it like everything else on the Internet…
Seriously, though, make me wrong - because this kind of model is so new to me, I don’t know, is there anything different about this that will resist it going the way of things that were once good and eventually weren’t, like Craigslist and Reddit?
Obviously a lot of Reddit sucks due to how it’s run, but let’s not overlook that part of its downfall, like with Craigslist, is the users as it grew having no respect for the model. I’ve been on my way out since well before the API exodus (and yet I was addicted and too lazy until now, that’s on me). People posting whatever they want wherever they want and having very little understanding of nuance in language (“oddly satisfying” doesn’t just mean “I like this”), misusing downvoting (I know I’m yelling at clouds, but that was where Reddit was doomed from the start to become an echo chamber, and I didn’t know if Lemmy is different in that respect - do votes determine visibility here?), moderators becoming more power hungry, and I’m sorry if this is mean, but the userbase trending younger steering content much more to “mah crush, aitah?,” fake stories for “points,” and I feel the general populace there being more gullible. Not to mention the same comments being made over and over, and I’m not talking about bots, I’m talking about constant “this is the way” and “username checks out.”
I’ve seen so many actual discussions here already that are full of real passion and good points even when they’re heated, some lovely user created and has posted around a really through socialist reading list. I’ve only seen “this is the way” once. Reddit is lazy one-word answers and downvotes. How do we encourage this and discourage that?
Anyway, I rant. This place is great now and will only get better as it grows, but I hope this model will in some way resist that downfall. But I’ve come to accept that nothing on the Internet is permanent. And also that people are gonna people and if I don’t like that, it’s on me to leave.
The difference is the way it is run. You got it. And if one day Midwest.social starts doing things you hate and treating it’s users like crap, then come on over to lemmy.world or lemmy.ca, or one if the other thousands instances.
People hosting the database are not the owners of the platform unlike Reddit. They get to tell us how we can use it just because they host the database.
I’ve already moved at least once and have been very happy it was as easy as it is.
I’ve never moved, but I assume you just create a new account and start over. Or is there more you can do?
it’s possible to migrate your subs on lemmy
it’s possible to both migrate your subs and make a direct on mastodon, but the redirect requires the old server to remain in service.
Gotcha. That sounds like a good solution.
You bring up some good points and I do believe that the model that Lemmy use can insulate it from a lot of those issues.
People posting whatever they want wherever they want and having very little understanding of nuance in language I dont think this would be a huge problem, mods can remove unwanted content and instances can decide what type of users they want to accept. As for misusing downvotes I think that issue never has ever mattered and the difference between reddit and lemmy is we have a open source algorithm to decide how content is served. If anyone can think of a better way to server content they’re free to put that in.
moderators becoming more power hungry This is an issue on every platform but Lemmy is more insulated against it than reddit for two reasons. First is that we can have the same community name shared across servers. On reddit once someone gets the catchy community name they can camp it forever. On Lemmy you can just make the community somewhere else with the same name. Second, each instance can decide how it wants to moderate its communities on Lemmy ML they are OK with power hungry mods but on other instances its frowned upon. On reddit its ignored completely.
One thing that makes Lemmy better is that its made by the users for the users. We have the code, we have the protocol its built on. This means we can have Lemmy tailored to however we want. We are not at the whim of a massive company that only cares about profit. If I have an idea for a feature i can goto the github and suggest it, better yet if I could program it I could help build that feature. If I dont like a change that is made by the lemmy devs I can fork the project and remove the change and still interact with the rest of lemmy.
Ludrolrant about eternal September, [email protected] and the young
There is beehaw.org a very peculiar instance, they defederated from lemmy.world to preserve their unique community vibe. Fediverse enables a more fine grained approach to handle those issues.
A lot of problems are still there but there are other projects that want to address them like piefed
Ye Power Trippin' Bastards - Divisions by zero
This is a community in the spirit of “Am I The Asshole” where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not. Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that. — # Posting Guidelines All posts should follow this basic structure: 1. Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards? 2. What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)? 3. Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names). 4. Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned). 5. Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied. — # Rules * Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin. * Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily. * Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers. * Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades. * Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that. * You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc. * If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post. — Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative. Make sure you follow this instance’s code of conduct [https://wiki.dbzer0.com/the-anarchist-code-of-conduct/]. In other words we won’t allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry. YPTB matrix channel [https://matrix.to/#/#div0-yptb:matrix.org]: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself. — Some acronyms you might see. * PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod. * YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action. * YDM new [https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42529622/18170904] - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly. * BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited. * CLM - Clueless Mod: The mod probably just doesn’t understand how their software works. — Relevant comms * [email protected] [/c/[email protected]] [https://lemmy.ca/c/fediverselore]
Jumutalemmy already has a bunch of echo chambers, I think it’s inevitable from the design of a network like this where the user selects what content to view and be served
I think it’s really important to consume social media/whatever this and Reddit are conscientiously. Be aware you’re in an echo chamber and step outside from to time. Sometimes it’s just annoying (I was really into the show Mr Robot, and one of my many Reddit rage-quits was just being sick of seeing any speculation about where the show was going that was anything but the accepted popular opinion being downvoted) and sometimes just misleading (we all thought Trump couldn’t win), but there are so many ways it sneaks into your consciousness. For me, the tribalist culture wars became really glaring. We hate everyone who drives a car. We hate anyone who has a grass lawn. You can’t advocate for something there without making it about hating everyone else. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I firmly believe a lot of that is by design. I’m sure it will bleed over here eventually if there is a large exodus, but I hope there are counter measures.
UltraGiGaGiganticIf your instance gets destroyed, there will be others to join.
This seems unrealistic in my opinion. Normal people really don’t like to donate, unfortunately. I think that Lemmy needs to make it so anyone can easily self host an instance without too much fuss. Something like docker on an old laptop. I know they have docker containers for Lemmy already, but in my opinion, they aren’t simple enough to set up. And there should be an option to bundle it with a wireguard VPN tunnel, so that they really don’t need to fuff about with reverse proxy to browse on your phone. This way, the cost is distributed across all users. It should be that setting up a domain and port forwarding should be the largest hurdle.
Its not unrealistic. I don’t think anyone expects 50% or 100% of users to donate. Also sites sustained off ads get less than a few cents per user. Donating literally anything puts you ahead of an ad supporting user. If Every lemmy user donated a dollar a year there would be 500k in rev to support the development. When the culture shifts from everything must be free to everyone giving a little to the services they use we can easily fund the costs of these platforms.
You can host an instance very easily on low spec hardware but its a lot harder than giving a small donation.
In the sims modding community people pay $5 for a dress and modders make over 100k a year. This is because sims players are happy to pay for things they find valuable.
Normal people really don’t like to donate,
I’m on a medium-small instance; if %5 of users donate a dollar a month, the hardware would likely be paid for.
If lemmy.world had %0.01 of users paying, they could probably cover their hardware, storage and network fees.
If you’re not paying the admin’s mortgage, it not that hard to chip in. Unlike the other “options”, no one is getting ad revenue or selling your data, if that’s not worth a cup of cheap coffee a month for 1:20 people they have their priorities in the wrong places. .
I can tell you as a sample of one that everything you just said would scare me off
DeeYeah. Reddit is currently enshitifying in overdrive. They used to just do dumb features nobody wants, but now they are actively harming the base. The entire Luigi over-moderation this is just bad, and it feels like they want the formerly leftist site to go full maga now. and even if I do have to use it, the website often tends to not function properly these days, with the site constantly reloading, or voting functions to be broken. This is the year of lemmy.
I figured the planned paywalling of content was going to be the last straw for me, but then they gave me a fucking warning for upvoting. I made a Lemmy account the same day. Fuck them.
The paywall shit is still planned for this year afaik so be prepared to see more of Reddit heading this way.
aceshighI got a warning for a comment. Ive been on reddit for almost 13 years and have never been warned before. It’s crazy. My beliefs and writing style haven’t changed. Reddit has.
Yup. Literally the day they announced that shit I peaced out.
want the formerly leftist site to go full maga now.
Reddit and X, sitting in a tree.
MudManSo by my math and some googling, that's about 0.0000005% of Reddit's MAU.
On the one hand, cool, growth is growth.
On the other hand maybe it's... healthy to stop looking at Lemmy as an "alternative" to anything and start thinking about it as this small forum you like to use sometimes. Worked for me in the 90s, works for me now.
Totally, we don’t want numbers for the sake of numbers. We need passionate people who are ready to ditch other mainstream ones for federated alternatives. Then only we can grow.
Gradually_AdjustingI super agree, would rather have one decent regular than a thousand average redditors who don’t fit the vibe around here
Like Haskell’s (unofficial) motto, “Avoid success at all costs”. Depending on circumstance, that should be read as “(Avoid success) at all costs” or “Avoid (success at all costs)”. We’re mostly in the latter condition I think, with only a couple of things (such as DMs) being shoddy enough that success should be avoided.
The problem with (very) low user count is the more nieche things will not have activity.
Yep. Which ends up being why old forums were such tight-knit communities. You ended up hanging out with a handful of people. I'm mostly fine with that. If anything, it requires starting something yourself for your niche interests and being fine with it being dormant most of the time.
I think this is where lemmy/fediverse shines compared to reddit: you can have instances for niche things, yet be able to communicate with other instances. And each instance is free to have their own rules and (de)federate with others. Also the improved tools for searching/posting/modding of lemmy compared with old forums.
Sure. I mean, having a single log-in for all of that is definitely useful, as is being able to chat with others. Defederation as a moderation tool is... overrated, but it is there.
Why do you think defederation is overrated? Genuine curiosity.
Well, for one thing it only works asymmetrically. It's fine if you have a very specific source of issues that you can isolate and cut off, but it's not really useful if what you have is hostile users across the network. And it only protects the larger space. For smaller instances it's a choice between functioning as social media or not existing at all.
It's extremely far from a magic bullet, it is not resilient to large scale, systemic issues and the only reason its limitations haven't been apparent is that the AP ecosystem is too small to suffer most of the issues of larger social media.
Aaaaand it's designed to function via the petty squabbles of FOSS developer arguments, which I hate anyway, but that's a me thing.
ALSO with this model, maybe we can get away from the 24-hour news cycle mentality where a post that’s more than a day old is dead. Comment on something from 2 weeks ago!
Reddit is calculating its MAU differently. They seem to be counting even not-logged-in users coming from search engines - without that numbers like “1 billion monthly active users” really don’t make any sense and even that is a crazy metric, if you think about it. There is no way that 1/8 of humanity is browsing on Reddit in a month. Lemmy seems to count only users who are doing something (submitting, commenting, upvoting)
It doesn't really matter. For one thing, MAU and unique users are different metrics and they're both valid, so if Lemmy is counting verified uniques they can just call it that.
For another, I looked at the data for logged in users and Fedi's MAU is 0.125% of their daily logged in users, so the point stands regardless.
If they’re doing that, it means they’re counting unique IPs, which is a ridiculous metric. Even lemmy would have easily 10x the MAU with it.
Again, doesn't matter. There's data on logged in users and it's also many orders of magnitude larger than Fedi.
By most independent metrics Reddit has more visits than Netflix. Than Pornhub, while we're at it. It's one of the top ten most visited sites on the Internet, and by most accounts it's actually grown since the "exodus".
I don't use it and I do like it here, but the idea that Lemmy is somehow encroaching on it is absurd. And self-defeating, too. Lemmy and its satellites are very worthwhile for what they are... a gnat in the wind as a Reddit alternative. Better to measure them on their own merits.
Yeah, see my rant elsewhere in this comment section, but I personally do not desire Reddit 2.0. More users here will be good, but if Lemmy ever becomes the size of Reddit, even with its differences, it will not be what we want it to be anymore
reddit has the advantage that you need it to make google useful these days
Agreed, but the proportion of users that contributed and made it a positive experience there was significantly smaller.
Quality over quantity.
bdonvrYou’re off by some orders of magnitude.
It’s 0.005%
But that’s based off of the 1.1 billion number I saw. Somehow I very much doubt there’s 1.1 billion people with accounts who login and browse at least once a month.
Yeah, 1 bill with all the bots and alt accounts maybe.
In spez’s wildest jizz wet dreams there are 1 billion Reddit users.
Also never underestimate how many bots there are. And how many users have 10+ accounts. Seeing less evidence of that on Lemmy so far, though who knows honestly.
Blaze (he/him) Reddit is inflating its numbers by a wide margin.
A sub like old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ has 150k subscribers, but the activity definitely doesn’t reflect that compared to [email protected] and the 9k weekly active users
It may or may not be.
It is definitely not inflating its numbers by the orders of magnitude it'd take to make a dent on this particular takeaway.
comfyand start thinking about it as this small forum you like to use sometimes
Well, that’s how I felt three years ago, before two (relatively) huge exoduses.
asudoxIt’s very exciting to see 48k MAU jump up to 55k in such a short time.
The MAU of lemmy.world is ~18,600 which is a bit greater than the combined MAU of the next 7 instances (a big help here is lemm.ee which has ~7000 MAU). This is a really healthy spread of users and it means we don’t lose lemmy if the biggest instance goes down.
Compare that to Mastodon, where mastodon.social has more MAU (~372,000) than the combined MAU of the next 30 instances at least (I gave up counting). Thats not healthy for the ecosystem. Though tbf the total MAU of mastodon is ~899,000 so without mastodon.social they will still have ~527,000 but it will be very spread out.