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

  • Mantzy81@aussie.zoneEnglish
    5·
    16 hours ago

    I’m fairly new to Lemmy and started an account when all the api’s went down (because the reddit app suck) but ended up back there when I got one of them to work (at cost).

    Until I got banned for “hate speech” by a random mod because they didn’t know the lyrics to Fairytale of New York and appeals go nowhere and then I commented on something on a different user account and got perma-banned for ban-evasion. All dumb.

    So now I’m back on lemmy permanently, trying to find as many communities as I had in my reddit subscriptions (I had a lot), and bringing my daily engagement here. Would be good if numbers went up, but also, there’s a lot of idiots on Reddit too. The Fediverse needs better SEO to drive engagement. I haven’t once seen a solution to a problem (e.g. IT, tech or DIY) that links to a fedi page.

  • DimiK@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    22 hours ago

    I’m completely new to Lemmy and fediverse in general. I wonder if there have been any initiatives to promote Lemmy more and help it attain the critical mass of people.

    For exampe, having a Lemmy or Fediverse month, when the community attempts to advertise to friends that don’t know about it yet. If a few of the main instances participate in this, I’m sure the community could come up with some great ideas for spreading the word.

  • Zink@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    21 hours ago

    So are we living in some kind of Bizarro Eternal September?

    Where instead of being flooded with normies, a few dozen thousand of us are walled in behind barriers to entry that the greybeards of old could only imagine.

    It’s like a social experiment that would be unethical if we weren’t all self-selected to be here. Will we flourish or will we go mad?!?

    Given my experiences so far, I’m gonna ride this thing as far as it takes me. Just today I was inspired by a fellow lemming to format my entire hard drive just to switch to a slightly different Linux distro. On my work laptop! :>

  • shiroininja@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    1 day ago

    Lemmy is the only Corporate social media replacement I’ve stuck to for years. I’ve never gone back to reddit. I don’t need it. I like the vibes here and it’s just busy enough to suit my needs without allowing me to doomscroll nonstop new content.

    • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      I like Pixelfed too, for all its bugs. I would like to drop Instagram for it, but I’ve managed to convince exactly zero of my friends to join PF lol

  • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    Any spike or steady sharp increase would just be a sign of bot infiltration.

    So steady numbers are better.

  • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    need to include places like piefed and mbin in this too; reddit is just reddit but here you can be either lemmy, piefed, or mbin and talk to one another.

  • termaxima@slrpnk.netEnglish
    91·
    1 day ago

    Personally I still relate to the other graph. Lemmy posts can sometimes be much too focused on negative things, so I sometimes take pretty long breaks before coming back when it gets too depressing.

    • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I think it’s kind of the inverse of what you see on platforms like TruthSocial or such. Everyone goes to those to be racist assholes. Similarly, many people go to Lemmy to escape racist/capitalist/etc assholes, and because they’ve been effected by racist/capitalist/etc assholes or their policies, they spend a lot of time discussing them.

      You almost need a population of normies (sorry) to act as a ‘buffer’, maybe? Idk, thinking out loud.

      Pixelfed is really quite positive despite the similar context, but it’s a little… “cocktail party” vibes sometimes. Not enough weird people for me, but that’s why I try being weird there.

    • alekwithak@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 day ago

      No one can suggest Lemmy or any federated social media on corporate social media. I’ve had comments removed from various platforms just for answering curious people looking for alternatives, I assume Reddit is doing the same.

    • jimmy90@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      it’s going to take more than that

      the lemmy line is going down much faster than the piefed line is going up

      looks like losing 1500 users per quarter when you take both into account

        • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
          17·
          2 days 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.

          • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            It was probably an automated decision to be entirely honest

            I once got banned for quoting a spammer to make fun of their spam. They banned me because they thought I was the spammer.

            • hector@lemmy.todayEnglish
              1·
              11 hours ago

              I think certain subjects they do not want to violate you for if not against the rules so they find a pretext on an unrelated subject, automation is their excuse.

              Just like uhealth putting ai in charge of denying claims that qualify, or the uk putting ai in charge of post office fraud, or michigan in charge of unemployment insurance claims. They were all set up to deny legit claims and flag legit claims. They deny there is a problem with software until they cannot, then oops, only the ai is at fault, as if it was not knowing.

              We have no rights in the us so social media will never get to that admitting stage. The government is the one telling them to find pretexts to violate accounts oftentimes too.

          • Bazell@lemmy.zipEnglish
            8·
            2 days 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.

    • hypnicjerk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      2 days ago

      spez learned from the last one. the ecosystem gets more closed down every day and automod’s trigger finger just gets jumpier.

  • Vegan_Joe@piefed.worldEnglish
    1114·
    2 days 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”.

    • vga@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      62·
      1 day ago

      Reddit has so much more content and frankly 80% of their real non-bot userbase seem to be ok. Wouldn’t hurt at all to get like 10% of the best of them here. That’d be about 5 million people.

      Ok, now that I think about it, 70k => 5M would probably hurt the servers a bit.

      Let’s go for the top 1%, we all love the top 1% right?

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      It’s very difficult for a set of volunteers to combat people being paid to manipulate their platform, so I’m happy with this platform remaining small enough to not be worth spending money on to manipulate.

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    A statistician explain to me why these graphs seem correlated beyond general trend? They both seem to have localized events on the same day, but given their different timescales that doesn’t seem like it should be possible.

    I raised the same concern on the other post too, but idk enough about statistics to for sure say something seems fishy.

    • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      (not a statistician) The events that WOULD be synchronized are: instances going down, users being deleted, and new user signups.

      Maybe this is enough to make them look like this. Those are the events that cause jumps, whereas users hitting the 6 months of inactive time would just be a steady, stable, gentle slope.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        36 seconds ago

        Im not sure how these stats are collected, I assume that they query each server for its to make the chart, rather than query every server every day and copy the results.

        If they’re really copying the results, then you’re absolutely correct that temporary instances outrages would cause those correlated downward blips, but I’m surprised to hear you wouldn’t just be able to query servers to get this data on demand.
        But then again if a server went permanently offline you’d lose that data forever. Hmmm