Lemmy's active userbase has been stable since September 2025 (media.piefed.zip)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Blaze@piefed.zip to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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A post from 2 days ago presented a graph that showed an important variation in the active userbase: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/52565659

Using the daily rather than monthly view on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 shows a much stable line (especially if you take into account Piefed's growth: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120 )

Going through the comments in the other posts, a few recommendations that can help with the overall experience

use different feeds: either using different Lemmy/Mbin accounts (one account per type of content), or Piefed personal feeds, but being able to browse different feeds such as "Good news", "Hobbies", "Art", "Life advice" help to see more content than politics and tech
discover communities: subscribe to !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, !fedigrow@lemmy.zip and !newcommunities@lemmy.world to add active communities to your feeds
go to general communities rather than specific ones: the current user base only allows so much specialization. Your favorite city builder community may not exist, but !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works does. !stationery@lemmy.world and !pen_and_paper@lemmy.world may be inactive, but !journaling@sh.itjust.works is not.
use a client that allows for comments consolidation: I don't remember which mobile apps does it (Sync, I think?), Piefed has that feature built-in too. It allows to see all comments on a cross-post in the same view: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/928874/worst-in-show-ces-products-include-ai-refrigerators-ai-companions-and-ai-doorbells#post_replies
report toxic users and avoid communities that do not handle your reports: quite a few comments mentioned that issue in the other thread. Mods can't see everything, reporting helps to keep the atmosphere of a community enjoyable.
use a client that implements keyword filters: quite a few mobile apps and alternative Lemmy front-ends do, Piefed has it built in. It can really help avoid the "doom and gloom" overwhelming your feed.

Finally, a few communities recommendations for lighthearted communities

top 40 comments

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[-] wioum@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

[-] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

inb4 "FUCK SPEZ" spamming in every comment section

[-] desmosthenes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

fuck spez

[-] hector@lemmy.today 1 points 1 month ago

Reddit just claimed I threatened violence by calling joe rogan a cynical tool playing his flock. Nothing even close to violence or harm calling. I tried to give him a chance as he was a bernie supporter, and could not stomach his bad faith lies on everything from the president to him castigating environmental protesters.

I think it was in bad faith, for other reasons. Their link to the offense does not even show the offending comment to you anymore either.

[-] Bazell@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

LOL. You have beaten my record, since my comments were, at least, containing phrases that could be classified as threatening violence without the context of a whole comment. But your case is a new level. My applause.

[-] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Spez here. Hey, come on, man.

[-] Klear@quokk.au 1 points 1 month ago

Fuck FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world

[-] wioum@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

fuck spez

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 3 points 1 month ago

Another top quality blazepost. Thanks for those community recos

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Happy to help !

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

Some additional uplifting community suggestions:

!upliftingnews@lemmy.world
!lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
!aww@lemmy.world
!cats@sh.itjust.works
!dogsincostumes@lemmy.world (not terribly active lately but not dead either)
!piefed_joy@piefed.social (not well-known and specific to PieFed)

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 1 month ago

!lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world is inactive, we spent a while promoting the !wholesome@reddthat.com to decentralize from LW.

Same for !upliftingnews@lemmy.world and !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social .

[-] michael@piefed.chrisco.me 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Woo we staying!

Also anyone know how to use their API? https://api.fediverse.observer/

I would love to make a "treadiverse" combo line. Cause its hard to look at when piefed is slowly going up, lemmy is slowly going down, and m/k bin is going all over.

EDIT: Never mind, found it. Theres an icon on the right hand side.

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

So what's going on here, most likely, is that the intake of new users is declining as opposed to people specifically being driven off the platform (as some users allege).

[-] Dagnet@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's stabilising so either we are down to the really stubborn user base or it's the start of a steady growth

[-] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 1 month ago

Who is being driven off lemmy by who and why?

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 0 points 1 month ago

Oh people making the claim that Lemmy being too political or too hard-left drives users off and is responsible for the user malaise. I'm sure that's true, but not to an appreciable level.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

Here is one such very relevant post: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/16hkxua/why_im_giving_up_on_lemmyfediverse/

A really interesting discussion in particular is below the reply saying:

The issues you brought up are very much on Reddit too. They are just more noticeable on Lemmy because there aren't enough niche subs or fluff to drown them out.

Other replies included "I did end up shutting down my instance.", which continued on with "But, for me, seeing people blindly bash the USA every chance they get, It's a turn off." - like, I get that the USA is unpopular (especially now), and also I am okay with the Threadiverse remaining small, but I did want to push back against this magical type of thinking that we can both have our cake and eat it to, in the form of both bashing people from it and also reaching out to invite people on Reddit (who are primarily from the USA) to join us here. Maybe Lemmy will have more success by marketing itself as more "European" (or at least "non-USA", so maybe European + Global South)? Whatever goal we want to aim for, we should keep our eyes open as we aim directly at it, imho.

I do not think that all or even most Threadiverse instances should defederate from lemmy.ml, but on the other hand it would be extremely nice if just ONE instance would do so, which we could then share to people on Reddit as a nicer entry point for those more centrist-leaning users who are primarily people from the USA. Or else decide that that goal is (collectively) not what we all want. The latter being what ended up happening, whether intentionally or no.

Fwiw, Lemmy has gotten much better over the years in this respect, imho, with many more instances having banned lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net specifically.

Like, look at those contortionist comment replies trying to state that, e.g.:

(if anyone's out of the loop - lemmygrad isn't "lemmy", they are usually defederated by regular instances and their content isn't visible in "lemmy" as it is colloquially understood)

This topic is a MAJOR, oft-repeated reason why people on Reddit refuse to come here and check us out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jjl8g5/i_tried_lemmy_again_after_a_year_long_hiatus_and/ (the title there gets cut off but continues with "it's still beyond terrible"), and here is that post's concluding paragraph:

If you have a very narrow worldview, politics is your entire personality, and you enjoy dry, charged humor then I guess Lemmy is a good alternative for you, but if you're anybody else it's not worth it. Reddit is not good, everybody here agrees. However, despite it's numerous flaws it's still a product than Lemmy at it's very best. It's simply not a viable alternative imo. Even Instagram and Tiktok are better alternatives than Lemmy.

Note that I do not agree, just stating how these people said that they felt, if that is helpful for a diagnosis of the state of affairs and what we could potentially do to help mitigate those concerns. e.g. I successfully petitioned for discuss.online to defederate from hexbear.net, thinking that could help make Redditors feel more welcomed here. Although now I am placing my hope more in PieFed (which e.g. allows users to perform their own personalized defederations without needing admin approval to block all users from any specific instance), while giving up much hope for Lemmy to keep up with its wondrous pace of adding new features.

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 0 points 1 month ago

Those two links are 2 years and 9 months old.

The Threadiverse gets regularly okay feedback on Reddit, as show the several posts on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

Has anything changed since a year ago in this regard though? Tankies are still here, lemmy.ml not defederated from anywhere, hexbear almost disappeared but managed to come back. We made discuss.online a better landing space for newbies, but now the shift is more towards PieFed, which I mentioned several thoughts about in a separate thread.

Not only on Reddit, even on Lemmy there are a bunch of people bashing on the tankies being present on Lemmy, in that community e.g. in the recent discussion at https://piefed.zip/c/fedibridge/p/795307/r-redditalternatives-comments-ask-for-alternatives-piefed-and-lemmy-are-mentioned-a-few-ti, like this comment:

That’s the problem, they do manipulate it. There was a thread a while back that showed how ml basically shows up as one of the random instances to join, like 95% of the time. So it’s not actually random.

We can say all we like how we wish that it were not a problem, but people on Reddit seem to disagree and not want to join regardless. Though I have noticed that either positive or negative opinions are very rarely delivered these days in r/RedditAlternatives. I wonder if people are simply tired of the subject and now just tune it out like noise. If so, then we missed a major opportunity to offer a true alternative to Reddit. Hopefully there will be more, and I am not suggesting to give up, only trying to highlight a major issue of concern so that we can move forward.

Chiefly imho, by recommending PieFed rather than Lemmy instances (and strongly preferably one that defederates from hexbear).

[-] Bazell@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago

Lemmy is being too political. We don't like it.

Meanwhile Reddit:

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

The difference, one would assume, is that on the whole, Reddit's political biases influence more what is not shown (much like lemmy.ml banning people for any criticism of Russia, China, or North Korea, or the echo chamber in hexbear), whereas Lemmy's tankie issue also manifests as people actively sea-lioning (e.g. Cowbee) and (especially from hexbear) overt trolling, which shows up more in people's faces. Both are issues, neither are good.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Always claims of sea-lioning, but never any evidence. You've had me blocked for over a year now, why continue this crusade?

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

I've come across some people who have no idea what "sealioning" even means. There used to be a hb user "Ulysses" or something, like three years ago, who accused me of doing it after I replied to their reply to my reply, and that's the only conversation we'd ever had. I pulled up the definition of sealioning and the comic which the word originated from, and they just say "no that's not true, stop sealioning".

I feel like some people just think sealioning means "this person keeps replying to my posts", as if conversations on a public forum are somehow uncalled for, or unusual.

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

It's a real thing, for sure, but more often than not is used as a conversation terminator.

[-] BlackDragon@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago

The sealion in the original comic is completely correct, which makes me very suspicious of anyone who dismisses someone for "sealioning" and as you say, it usually is just used as an excuse not to engage with what someone is saying.

The sealion in the comic overheard someone being racist against them, and stepped in to say, "Hey, why are you being racist?" And for some reason is wrong because... they're persistent? Or because they're annoying? How is that not literally just every "anti-woke" argument?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Agreed! They take issue more with the argument style to dismiss the substance.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

The sealion in the comic overheard someone being racist against them, and stepped in to say, “Hey, why are you being racist?” And for some reason is wrong because… they’re persistent? Or because they’re annoying? How is that not literally just every “anti-woke” argument?

I think the point is that the sea lion is feigning civility while harassing someone over a casual opinion.

My response would be that if we extend the metaphor, like you did, and substitute the absurd 'sea lions' for a race, then harassing the racist doesn't bother me. Bigots don't deserve peace. It's absolutely harassment to stalk and interrogate someone who doesn't want to talk, I just wouldn't care that they're being harassed for airing such bigotry.

(On the other hand, if we assume the original opinion is not a metaphor and replace it with a similarly absurd statement, like enjoying pineapple on pizza, then the sea lion would be acting unreasonably. If someone followed you around online and kept bringing up how you prefer pizza to be prepared, demanding a calm discussion and insisting on peer-reviewed proof that pizza tastes better a certain way, while you ask them to stop, that harassment would obviously be uncalled for. For what it's worth, the author made a comment that it wasn't meant to be "analogous to a prejudice based on race, species, or other immutable characteristics." - but I say it's a though-provoking interpretation to explore regardless)

[-] BlackDragon@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 weeks ago

If it wasn't meant to be analogous to prejudice based on immutable characteristics why did they make it prejudice based on immutable characteristics? Sea lions in the universe the comic takes place in are clearly sapient people, capable of complex thought, communication in English, and the ability to navigate human society. The person in the comic isn't being "metaphorically racist" or expressing something "analogous" to racism; they're simply being racist.

As you say, what the sea lion is doing is harassment, it is hostile, it is aggressive, and the racist depicted in the comic deserves it. It is model behavior, we should make people dread the idea of expressing racist views in public.

If you substitute the racist opinion for a mundane one, of course the comic changes and the sea lion becomes unreasonable. You've completely changed what the sea lion was responding to. If you swap all the Nazis in Wolfenstein with peaceful dogs who aren't doing anything, now it's a game about being a cop. Now you're being completely unreasonable by shooting them. But that doesn't tell us anything about the validity of shooting the original Nazis. When we look at the original context of Wolfenstein, shooting the Nazis is completely reasonable because they're Nazis and not dogs.

Furthermore, even if we do substitute the racism expressed in the comic for a more mundane opinion, like enjoying pineapple on pizza, it still seems inapplicable to internet arguments. A significant part of the reason the sea lion is unreasonable is its persistence. At no point do the other people in the comic engage with the sea lion but it won't stop harassing them. But on Lemmy, this behavior is so universally punished that it almost never happens because it would obviously get you permabanned from your home instance no matter what it is. Most people I've seen accused of "sealioning" are simply replying, one comment at a time, to people who are actively engaging with them. You can't be "sealioning" unless you are following someone who isn't engaging with you somewhere else, meaning in this context a different thread, to demand further engagement in the conversation. Which, again, would get you banned so fast that I don't think I've ever actually seen it happen on Lemmy.

On no level do most accusations of "sealioning" seem to hold up to scrutiny, in my opinion.

[-] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 1 month ago

Idk this left and right directionalism is worthless online, where half of users are fake influence agents with bots and mechanized troll legions.

Now with chatbots, certain parties have the better ones, to flood social media, pretending to be all rypes. I imagine are a factor.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social -1 points 1 month ago

I saw this post on lemmy.ml just prior to the USA election, seemingly portraying the bOtH sIdEs myth that helped encourage people to not vote and thereby get Donald Trump elected:

Make of that what you will.

[-] prettybunnys@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

maybe the real problem is Nicole left us

[-] ShadowRam@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago

My problem right now is I'm on Fedia.io and I'm liking the interface, but more and more, what used to be other instances popping up in my feed, are disappearing, and I feel like I'm missing 1/2 the content that lemmy has to offer.

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Make another account lol

[-] Vegan_Joe@piefed.world 1 points 1 month ago

I honestly like the small, eclectic vibe better.

I don't know what the number is, but I'll arbitrarily say, anywhere under a quarter million is perfect.

I know the federation model provides a strength against the cascading list negatives that plague popular platforms, but I don't doubt that with a large enough user base, exploits would certainly seep in, particularly with ease of AI bot manipulation and astroturfing.

It reminds me of the Linux saying "security through obscurity".

[-] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

I'm curious to know what PieFed's user base would look like.

Most people simply don't know about Lemmy/PieFed.

I think once features mature a bit more, if there is another rexit we could see numbers tripple or more.

Many people didn't stick around with previous rexit's because the UX sucked.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

That is exactly what happened. https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats shows for instance that the numbers spiked from 352 MAUs (monthly active users) in May 2025 to >1k in June, then again to >1.6k in July, where it has mostly stabilized and we are currently at ~2.0k (half of that on piefed.social itself, half distributed across other instances, see list at https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list, click Active Users a couple times to sort that descending).

PieFed.social alone has 964 MAUs, now making it larger than such well-known instances as programming.dev, discuss.tchncs.de, lemmygrad.ml, sopuli.xyz, slrpnk.net (which announced a decision to migrate over to PieFed by the end of 2026).

Below PieFed.social, most instances have only a hundred or so users, but this too is a sign of healthy federation where many new instances keep spinning up - exactly like Lemmy where e.g. startrek.website has 152 MAUs, ttrpg.network has 127, ani.social has 172, mander.xyz has 196, and so on. Over a thousand users distributed across many instances is much healthier than all of them on a single one.

Note that most 3rd party apps haven't caught up to the PieFed software's latest API changes, so e.g. users of Voyager are mostly getting the same experience on a PieFed instance as they would have on a Lemmy one (iirc no polls, user or post flairs, categories of communities aka Topics and Feeds, etc.) - except even there, back-end changes can still be very impactful to the user experience (such as the ability of a mod to move a post from one community to another, or the ability of an end-user to block all users from a specific instance without needing admin approval to perform defederation).

[-] Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 month ago

In the repost on the Chile community, also saw one or other comment about Lemmy being toxic. I do notice a certain "toxicity", though from certain corners and which seems to stems more often from what I call "misery posting", which would be posts whose main focus seems to be to make the given topic appear like a lost cause to the reader (even some "meme" communities seem to fall on this).

Since some communities seem specially prone for such posts, I second blocking those as you notice the patterns to try to make your feed healthier, and to hopefully make such places shrink into a healthier size. Or at least, if you got the patience and resistance to mass downvoting and mobbing, to post in those communities and within their rules what to you is positive. Alternatively/Parallel to that, one could make sure to react accordingly to posts, instead of uninterestedly hide everything in feed as the user scrolls.

Otherwise, a given environment shrinking or tanking in growth could also mean people that use it are growing apathetic or anomic to popularizing it, to which I repeat my suggestion in the Chile community, change starts by small steps. So for example, if someone is on a platform compatible by extension but without an ActivityPub bridge or function active (e.g. Threads and Bluesky), to explain to them they could activate it, and e.g. Fedi Brdigy is working on Lemmy compatibility, so more potential users going around. Also, if you see a funny meme or the sort, you could share the link, provided it has a decent blurb preview on the platform to be sent.

Also spikes happen anywhere when competing platforms have issues, so current retention might just be its natural one.

And even on a Lemmy account I have (thus little noise from microblogging) and while highly curating my feeds there, the amount of posts is almost too much for me to be able to go through. So by observation, the "threadiverse" as a whole seems rather healthy in numbers.

[-] homes@piefed.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Mlem (iOS) doesn’t exactly consolidate comments across crossposts, but it does list, at the top, all of the crossposts, how many upvotes/comments each one has, and links directly to them. It also works across Lemmy, piefed, and Mbin accounts/instances.