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PixelFed has increased the Fediverse's monthly active users by over 40% in the last few weeks, how do we feel? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 months ago by koncertejo@lemmy.ml to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn't?

I feel like I didn't really recognize having different "platforms" like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a "first" impression with people.

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[-] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 68 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
  1. The official Pixelfed app just has a nicer looking UI
  2. There's not really a competing app for people leaving Insta like there is Bluesky vs Mastodon
  3. Pixelfed's content is mostly visual so it's easily digestible to casual users and you don't have to scroll past dry Fedi arguments
  4. Better discover features so users don't have to do a bunch of legwork to find who to follow

Just my guesses though, but like any social media it really depends on if big creators will switch and if users stick with it over time

[-] br0da@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Is the iPhone app still missing darkmode?

[-] Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

What about Android? I don't see dark mode in options.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 50 points 4 months ago

The tide lifts all the boats... there is also a noticeable uptick in Lemmy registrations, at least here on our instance.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 17 points 4 months ago

The tide lifts all the boats...

Exactly. I do not care much for Pixelfed. Or Mastodon. Or Friendica. Or really much of anything other than Lemmy. But I just stood up my own PixelFed server, so if someone wants to get away from Meta, I will happily support their decision (and pixelfed.social's server by offloading resources) and they can find me there.

[-] simple@lemm.ee 13 points 4 months ago

Yup, I spotted a few Lemmy accounts that were less than a week old recently. Very nice.

[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 10 points 4 months ago

I think I've also seen new communities being created too

[-] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago

This makes sense to me.

All these people had to pick an instance and now probably understand how to do that.

That’s the biggest hurdle to signing up for lemmy or mastodon.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Me in 2024: "Which one is the main one?"

"There is no main one"

"Which one is the biggest?"

"Lemmy.World"

"Thats the one for me!"

"THATS NOT HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO IT!!!"

".....but that's what I did."

[-] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users

Feel free if you have any questions"

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 24 points 4 months ago

Pixelfed's monthly userbase has gone from 15k to almost 300k in the past month. Absolutely massive for the fediverse.

I'll probably try it out eventually^TM^

[-] TehBamski@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago

[-] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 20 points 4 months ago

Glad to see more people introduced to the tech bro free social media.

[-] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 months ago

Yeah! Here we're not tech brothers, we're tech gender neutral siblings, or even tech sisters

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

We can't want the Fediverse to get bigger but be scared of normies when it does. I say welcome in! We should be mindful to listen to the new recruits, because their feedback is the most unbiased.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 14 points 4 months ago

Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn't?

I suspect image browsing is less reliant on specific content creators, so Pixelfed probably has an advantage there compared to something like Mastodon. You're only going to move to Mastodon if the people you wanna follow are there too, while if you're for example just looking to browse pictures of food and cats you don't really care who is posting so you're not as reluctant to try Pixelfed.

I don't use either Instagram or Pixelfed though so might be totally off base here.

[-] Kraiden@kbin.earth 6 points 4 months ago

What? I respectfully disagree. The reason I struggled to stay on Pixelfed, and recently Loops too, is because as a new user all I was seeing was classical art, and landscapes (and the odd weirdo) but nothing actually entertaining. Loops at least has people copying stuff from TikTok. I'm not condoning that behaviour, I'm just saying as a casual new user, that was pretty much the most compelling content.

Maybe I was doing it wrong, but IMHO the content creators are the core of any social media. Pixelfed and Loops will both live or die by the creators they attract

ETA: I love weirdos by the way, that wasn't meant as a negative. If anything, more please!

[-] moleverine@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I never vibed with Twitter or Instagram, so I struggled with both Mastodon and Pixelfed. It wasn't until I started looking for content based around my hobbies that Pixelfed really started becoming interesting to me. That, and having the ability to be absolutely deluged in pictures of cats if I need a morale boost. Mastodon is still something that I'm having trouble getting value out of. I may just end up being a Lemmy and Pixelfed user.

[-] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

👍

[-] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

IG was always much bigger than Reddit.

Good to see people moving to Pixelfed though.

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago

So far so good! Some very unscientific observations from spending an absurd amount of time scrolling local on pixelfed.social:

The people coming from Instagram and TikTok seem way less grumpy than the microbloggers. People are having a lot of fun and not complaining about much. It's kind of a trip seeing happy, joyful people on the Fediverse to be honest. Everything in the world suuuuuuuucks right now, so it's felt like a bit of a refuge. Sometimes I'll accidentally bounce over to the global feed and oh man is the change in tone jarring.

People don't seem to have a problem with servers like the Twitter migrants did. Folks are still talking about it a lot on Mastodon though. I've literally not seen a single post about Pixelfed being "too complicated" to succeed, whereas it was (and is) pretty common to see "this place is great and all, but..." posts in the microblogging neighbourhood. Not sure why this is but it might be because the people coming to Pixelfed are generally younger than Mastodon users. This is just a guess, but I'd estimate the average age of Mastodon users is maybe mid-40s. Most of the people pouring into Pixelfed appear to be in their mid-to-late-20s. Perhaps those folks are just more accustomed to servers through Discord and gaming? Though people are generally captioning photos and not writing out lists of things they're unhappy about and they could also just be unaware of servers altogether...

Pixelfed is easily the most diverse "corner" of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren't. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.

I've seen a bunch of people on Instagram promoting Feb 1st as "Global Switch Day" so hopefully it'll keep blowing up.

[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.

This was a huge part of why I now spend more time over on pixelfed as opposed to here -- I have a few accounts I've used here, and every single time I'm in a thread about a woman who's been sexually assaulted, or about a woman's shelter, etc, the 'not all guys'/'men suffer too' bros come flooding in. I've logged out of accounts for weeks, switched to another one, just to let them scream into the void of my inbox for awhile, and it happens every time. I befriended a woman here when I responded to one of the most sad-to-read replies in one of those threads, that read like: "Women are often abused by men--not all men, just some, and I want to reiterate that this is about those specific men..." and it just went on and on trying to placate the inevitable furious white men in the comments section. As someone who lived as a white man for over forty years, I know just how whiny, sad, and ridiculous they look, and they they still get their way.

Over on pixelfed I haven't once had an interaction even close to that. It's extremely pleasant, people helping each other learn the platform, people asking for help in bad home situations, and it's a community. People have messaged me when I made mistakes linking things in extremely pleasant ways, and two people debated alt-text (is it helpful to those who use audio captions, or is it training AI?) without once insulting each other. Lemmy was very briefly that, yet there's a lot of tribalism that is not only unnecessary, and frankly, childish. I'm quite often embarrassed of my fellow men here.

(Well, non-binary now, yet I still feel the experiences of 40+ years of being a man are helpful.)

So anyway, I agree pixelfed is a lot more inviting, and a lot more diverse.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

and it just went on and on trying to placate the inevitable furious white men in the comments section.

I think that's, usually, not necessary. The "going on at length" part, that is. People want to know you're not literally Andrea Dworkin, trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF "women are always victims, men are always perpetrators" narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.

Complications might arise when you're trying to simultaneously assuage hurt men and misandrists. I fear it's either "'kill all men' is toxic" or "'kill all men' is a valid expression of your anger, let it all out", there's no real space for compromise, there.

That all said your post and this reply probably wouldn't have happened on pixelfed so your point stands. Disengagement is perfectly valid.

[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

People want to know you’re not literally ... trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF “women are always victims, men are always perpetrators” narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.

...

/face in hands

Okay I took a minute and I have to go through this with you.

People want to know you’re not literally Andrea Dworkin, trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF “women are always victims, men are always perpetrators” narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.

So just so I'm clear, all women have to make clear they don't think what Andrea Dworkin does (sigh), because all men aren't responsible for men as a group being, statistically, the perpetrators of rape, partner violence, etc?

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago

If you start a sentence with "all men" then you should take a step back and say "fucked-up men" or suchlike, is all I'm saying. That was even three words, not five. You can also say something like "men should speak up more often", that's a general call to action, and not a blanket verdict on individuals who might be reading it. The "yes all men" of this song (total banger btw).

This is a general norm I apply to everyone regarding every topic: Don't paint groups with broad, antagonistic, brushes. It never does any good, no matter who does it to whom or whatever the excuses are one might be able to come up with to justify it. The means are vile, the ends at best neutral, there's no benefit to be had.

Also side note at least according to the statistics over here in Germany partner violence, if psychological violence is taken into account, is almost exactly even among hetero couples and, in the overwhelming number of cases, mutual: Assholes hook up with assholes they just, statistically, express it differently. Things might very well look differently where you're from, another reason to not generalise.

[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If you start a sentence with “all men” then you should take a step back and say “fucked-up men” or suchlike, is all I’m saying.

No. Also in no example was that how anything started. I said women can talk about being victims of violence and men always do what you're doing right now.

Also side note at least according to the statistics over here in Germany partner violence, if psychological violence is taken into account, is almost exactly even among hetero couples and, in the overwhelming number of cases, mutual: Assholes hook up with assholes they just, statistically, express it differently. Things might very well look differently where you’re from, another reason to not generalise.

image image

The current crime statistics analysis on intimate partner violence by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA, 2024) shows that a total of 167.865 people were victims of intimate partner violence in 2023. This is an increase of 9.1% compared to 2022. 132.966 (79,2%) victims were female and 34.899 (20,8%) male.

The statistics recorded the following attempted or completed crimes:

  • 59.1% intentional simple assault
  • 24.6% threats, stalking, coercion
  • 11.4% aggravated assault
  • 2.6% rape, sexual coercion, sexual assaults
  • 0.2% murder and manslaughter
  • 2.1% other offences

The European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published the study “Violence against women. An EU-wide survey” in 2014. For this study, around 42,000 women between the ages of 18 and 74 were interviewed about their experiences with violence in the 28 member states. In Germany there were 1,534 women. Around one in three women said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once since they were 16 years old.

1/3 of German women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence. ONE THIRD.

Stop trying to make this something that's even between men and women. It isn't. You're giving these guys in my inbox furious about exactly the reason for my original fucking comment a green light to do this shit by hand-waving the reality women face.

If this is how Lemmy is going to be, I'm so thankful pixelfed is exploding in size because women deserve the goddamn break.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago

I said women can talk about being victims of violence and men always do what you’re doing right now.

When men talk about being victims of psychological violence, what happens then? That they have been driven into depression, even into being violent, by an intimate parter, parent, or such?

How do people react? How did you react?

[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

When men talk about being victims of psychological violence, what happens then?

They are reminded that if they wanted to talk about that, they were more than welcome, but a thread about a woman who was talking about her sexual assault isn't the place to 'what about us.'

Also cool dodge of having your entire argument torn apart only to abandon it and switch to a different one.

I was a young man who was sexually assaulted, and by a woman, and I still know that doesn't mean that it's equal. It's people like you who de-legitimize what I went through by making it seem like a game of Brinkmanship with women, when in reality it was the women I spoke to who got me through it, and the men who asked if it was possible for me, as a man, to be raped, and then mocked me for it.

image

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago

I was a young man who was sexually assaulted, and by a woman, and I still know that doesn’t mean that it’s equal. It’s people like you who de-legitimize what I went through by making it seem like a game of Brinkmanship with women, when in reality it was the women I spoke to who got me through it, and the men who asked if it was possible for me, as a man, to be raped, and then mocked me for it.

And what I'm talking about doesn't invalidate that for even a second.

I can't relate to it because male culture doesn't work like that over here but, sure, it sucks. Still doesn't make sense to ignore psychological violence in the overall picture, though. I'd call the stuff the men display there narrative violence: They internalised that they can never be victims, and then accosted you with their self-perception.

They are reminded that if they wanted to talk about that, they were more than welcome, but a thread about a woman who was talking about her sexual assault isn’t the place to ‘what about us.’

This isn't one of those threads. Yet what did you do? We had a thing going on, there, there was banger music. Seriously if you haven't yet listen to it. Use the UK subtitles.

The only place I know on lemmy on which it's possible to have a whole thread about this is !mensliberation@lemmy.ca. Press doesn't like to talk about it, presumably because of a predictable "what about the women" pushback, so it never comes up in the news communities. Plenty of sociological research exists, though.

Also cool dodge of having your entire argument torn apart only to abandon it and switch to a different one.

I didn't want to go into the weeds of how BKA statistics are police statistics and in no way, shape, or form, suitable for anything without taking both the actual criminal statistics (cases brought to trial as well as convictions) and other surrounding factors such as under/overreporting, current force focus, etc, into consideration. According to police statistics, if you report your phone stolen and then retract that because you found it again, that's a theft.

[-] TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

I'm a man, and I was assaulted when I was younger, and you are exactly why men don't come out about it. We look like whiny snivelling little children who try to pretend this is the fault of women while we live in a goddamn patriarchal society and have men at every step preventing the very care we need. A woman ran the support group I went to, a woman ran the shelter I had to stay in, a woman held my hand in the fucking hospital, and at every step men insulted me and laughed at me and asked if I was a fag, because they thought the woman was good looking. This absolute bullshit where you blame women like it's their fault they're attacked by men, like it's their fault for talking about it, the entire 'mens lib' movement is garbage and forces those of us who've been through assault to be represented by the worst our sex has to offer.

The best thing you could do to help men like me is to shut your goddamn mouth and at the very least leave us to the care of women, because they actually do seem to give a shit and at no time ever blamed 'all men' for what I went through.

Fuck your reductive bullshit, fuck ever being tricked by the wealthy into attacking women on their behalf, and I still hope you never go through what I did.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee -1 points 4 months ago

Do you seriously believe that there's not a single man, in the whole wide world, who has your back?

[-] radiantshackles@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Don't wanna throw cold water on what should be a celebration, but are these all distinct active users? I have separate accounts on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, and Loops--do I still count as one active user, or am I four? If the latter, I think it's plenty likely that others like me have simply gotten used to the first fedi platform they chose and are branching out as they learn about more. Maybe doesn't account for all the growth, but would explain away some of the meteoric rise.

[-] drapermache@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm excited. I'm one of those users, but I haven't used it much because I can't find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I usually see the same articles get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I never used Instagram or Twitter so getting started on Pixelfed or Mastodon seems a bit daughnting for me. But I assume it you like platforms like that, you just search out a few people you enjoy and then add more from their content and others do the same and eventually it'll all click into what people had in those corporate owned and controlled products.

[-] liv@lemmy.nz 0 points 4 months ago

I had kind of the opposite. Never used instagram but for some reason pixelfed just felt right and I started posting there when I joined the fediverse.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Awesome, glad to have you here future friend. If you know of people that may be of interest to add for mastodon/loops/Pixelfed please let me know and don't be shy, I am always open but haven't found time to search

[-] liv@lemmy.nz 1 points 4 months ago

Me too. I can't find you on pixelfed?

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'll have to figure out how to link you, I don't have anything much there yet. Just a few pictures. My name was lifeinmultiplec there as it chopped the name. I assume I need to give you an instance to find me though .

Edit: maybe this will help: https://breeze.pictures/p/lifeinmultiplec/786636194842492930

[-] liv@lemmy.nz 2 points 4 months ago

P.s I'm liv@pixelfed.nz

[-] liv@lemmy.nz 2 points 4 months ago

Thanks, cool! I was able to start following you by searching for lifeinmultiplec@breeze.pictures in my instance. For some reason your pictures aren't showing up for me yet but maybe it will populate soon.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

It's barely news worthy. Small mostly unknown service gains 400,000 new accounts. Ok. 400k.

Instagram apperently has 4 BILLION accounts, with 143 MILLION monthly users.

400K sounds great, until you compare it to the pie. It went from less then 1% to less than 1%.

Growth is great and all, but since it's January, I'd rather see a retrospective of where they stood on Jan 1st 2024, and where they stood on Jan 1st 2025. With a detailed analysis on all the fluctuations (which at this point I would assume to be nothing but upwards) but also, what caused each event.

But hearing a single month, with an influx of 400k seems like a non-story, and won't be interesting until Jan 2026 when we get the 2025 retrospective. And we put into context that this was when meta decided to go all political, and ban searches for "democrats", and the whole drama with tiktok.

[-] Sergio@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 months ago

Agreed, tho if they grew too fast the pixelfed infrastructure would just die...

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago

I wonder how many of those users are the same person with multiple accounts on different platforms.

[-] bradd@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

It's strange to me how quickly I get +/- feedback on lemmy compared to actual comments and the replies that I get are almost always zero effort compared to what I get on reddit.

I get the feeling its normal for lemmy users to create multiple accounts and use them to sort of multiply their votes. What's worse is mods can see who is voting and so should be able to do something about it... so are they as guilty?

[-] Hominy_Hank@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

Nothing works on pixelfee for me. Half the photos are just black. It shows an account has a lot of posts, but I don't see anything. Searches being up results but selecting one of those results produces zero results.

How are y'all getting pixelfed to work?

[-] QualifiedKitten@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

What instance are you using? How are you accessing it (browser, app, etc.)?

[-] Hominy_Hank@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Pixelfed.social

Using the app. It doesn't even load for me on browser. I am assuming it doesn't work on browser because of something I got in unblock because it loads on mobile browser but it's very unresponsive on mobile browser for me.

this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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