cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/12971023

Hi folks, out of pure curiosity, I was poking some graphs.

It’s been about half a year since the big API protest, so I was curious to see what Lemmy’s crtitical mass looks like, what the staying power is, etc. Screenshots taken from https://the-federation.info/platform/73 on 2024-01-09. I’m posting screenshots because they’re a snapshot in time, and because that stats server is very slow.

Because I’m posting on lemmy.ca, I’ll post quite a few related to this instance, but it’s probably more widely applicable and you can get graphs from your instance too. I’ll also post some lemmy.world and lemmy.ml graphs, since they make interesting points of comparison – biggest server, and original server.

First, lemmy-wide total users count, where this is a rolling one month window. If a user was online within the month, they count here.

First observation – there’s some jagged edges in the graph due to things popping in and out of the federation. So it’s probably more useful to look at single servers. Lemmy.world came online pretty much coincidentally with the API protest and had open registration, so it makes a good data point. You can see the surge of users, then the plateau of the people who stuck around:

Lemmy.ml below has a similar curve, plus some sort of data artefact.

As does lemmy.ca, below:

I suspect the data artifact is related to the transition from 0.18 to 0.19 and something changed in the way active users was counted in between. Lemmy.world is still running 0.18.5.

Notes: The difference between the peak and the plateau is higher on lemmy.world and lemmy.ml – I suspect this is because they were more popular places to sign up during the protest. Whereas lemmy.ca has retained more users, as a percentage. Still, the total number of active users on each server is quite low.

In the same order (total, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.ca), total posts. The slope of this line represents post rate. Steeper line is better. Flat line means dead instance.

And comments. I wish there was a comments to posts ratio, which would be some indication of engagement levels. But you can sort of work it out.

Anyway, looks like post rate has decreased slightly since the initial bump, but are still looking good. But the comment rate hasn’t flattened as much. So the users that were retained seem to be more engaged than the users from the initial bump. I think this is a good thing for the health of lemmy. Likewise, the growth in supported apps, improvements to the software (Scaled sort in 0.19 is night-and-day better than anything prior!), and others will allow lemmy to not only survive, but be ready for whatever influx happens next.

I want to send a special shout out to all the admins, particularly on my home instance of lemmy.ca, and the coders who keep improving things. Thanks for giving us all a home!

  • BedSharkPal@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    Thanks for this. Unlike on Reddit I feel much better posting here knowing I’m not helping some company make more money.

    Gives me the old internet vibes I’ve come to crave

  • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    Thanks for sharing this, this is really interesting.

    My hope is that when Reddit announces their IPO, more people will start talking about wishing for alternatives. I hope this motivates a few people who checked it out and left and lots of new people to take a first look, and when they do I hope they find an already active community that produces enough content to retain more people and generate more content.

    • Troy@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      When the reddit API protests occurred, lemmy wasn’t really ready for the influx either. Historically, when a social network dies, it’s some combination of a protest and there being a pre-existing landing place that is ready to receive the influx. In the case of digg dying, that was reddit ready and waiting.

      But lemmy had so many rough edges and was almost entirely unknown at the time of the reddit protest – bugs, missing features, no apps… For most reddit users, even with the 3rd party shutdown, moving to lemmy at the time was objectively worse.

      You’re right though – the next time something happens, lemmy is now established, the apps exist, many of the bugs and missing features have been dealt with, etc.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Another important detail is that Digg v4 pissed off most of the userbase, so the impact was pretty much immediate. Reddit APIcalypse pissed off only power users instead; the impact will only come off later (sadly likely past IPO).

    • Chainweasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Those results might be slightly skewed by alternate accounts. When I first joined during the Reddit Exodus I created this account on lemmy.world, but the instance suffered a LOT of downtime for the first month or so, so I created a few other accounts on lemmy.ml and sh.itjust.works so I could still browse while lemmy.world was down.
      After the instance stabilized I pretty much stopped using the other accounts, so I, personally, am 2 of the people who “left” by leaving the other accounts inactive.

      • Rolando@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Same. It wasn’t clear how to choose an instance, so I ended up creating accounts in three different places and posting a couple times before settling on this account. I haven’t used the other accounts in months, so they’re part of that surge.

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Looking at the rest of the data (especially the sustained linear increase in posts across the whole network), I’m increasingly skeptical that the drop in “active users” is really all that meaningful. Speaking for myself, when the big migration happened I created three accounts on different instances, but I’ve found myself only consistently using one of them. If a significant percentage of the rest of you did similar, that means there could’ve been what looks like a huge drop in the number of “active users” even though the number of actual people using the platform remained the same!

    • Papanca@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Yes, i made four, because when i joined Lemmy, everyone seemed to urge new users to spread across the fediverse. So, i did. But over time, i did away with two accounts and am contemplating ditching another one.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      I think posts is being inflated with bots copying reddit, my subscribed feed has noticeably slowed and even trying to find more communities to get more posts hasn’t been a huge help.

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
    1·
    10 months ago

    My sympathies to anyone who has to use reddit because their niche community either doesn’t have enough activity or doesn’t exist at all.

    I’m more of a casual user who’s just here for the news and memes, so fortunately I don’t have that problem.

    • Troy@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Okay, more serious answer. You look like you’re on kbin, so I don’t know if this applies – nevertheless.

      On Lemmy 0.19, the Scaled sort algorithm is such a good improvement over (Hot/All/Top/…) that existed prior to 0.19. It’s basically a Hot sort, but it’s weighted by community size. So if you’re subscribed to a small community, that gets one post a week, it’s still likely to end up in your feed. I’ve noticed a huge improvement when switching to it as my default sort – suddenly that weird music community I subbed to, but never noticed any of the posts – is in my feed. Etc.

      Lemmy.world is still on 0.18, but when they upgrade (I have no information on that process) I suspect that people should be switching to it as their default sort for a better experience if they’re into niche topics.

  • Lung@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Personally I love Lemmy as is, and as long as it doesn’t die out, I don’t care if it goes mainstream. The mainstream has a lot of apathetic trolls and idiots - Lemmy feels like early reddit did, when it was just nerds, techies, pirates, and the servers were down every day - but Lemmy is better because we rallied around open source this time

    • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I feel similarly, except I wish more users were interacted with my sports communities too. Guess it’s a “have your cake and eat it too” kind of problem.

      • Troy@lemmy.caOPEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Chicken and egg problem. Communities are too small to have conversation, so no one goes there for conversation. I’m a hockey fan. On reddit r/hockey is huge and busy, but so are all the team subs. Whereas on lemmy, if I post to the team sub, it’s just crickets. So I suppose that if all the hockey fans all hang out in [email protected] together, we might have critical mass for a conversation now and then. And we can worry about our team subs later, if the general community outgrows one place.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      It’s interesting none the less. One explanation for the plateau is that many people signed up for difference instances, either because they didn’t know how federation worked or they disagreed with the instance and wanted to be somewhere else. Not as many people necessarily went back to reddit as the numbers might suggest.