I joined during the first Reddit exodus, and it seemed like for ages the amount of Lemmy content was generally increasing (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but overall increasing). Now it seems that when I sort by New, I get through everything since my last visit much more quickly than I used to. Is that my imagination, or is the activity declining?

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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 137 points 3 days ago (5 children)

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats

Total posts by month appears fairly linear.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 50 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Thank you, I had been looking for actual data and couldn't find it. You're right, does not seem to be declining.

I wonder if there an increasing percentage of bot posts, since I have prolific bot accounts blocked.

I wonder what's up with that number of servers decline.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I wonder what’s up with that number of servers decline.

Consolidation? Which is fine to that extent.

I'd wager many experimented with hosting a younger Lemmy, and hosts who couldn't sustain it got shaken out over time.

I wouldn't assume the rise in posts/comments is all bots, either. I don't have anyone blocked, and it doesn't feel overrun to me.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it would figure that if the activity is flat but the number of servers is declining that it's either consolidation or that people are abandoning very small instances.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

And activity is rising as far as I can tell, look at the graphs at the bottom.

[–] frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Some of it had to do with there not being enough admins to go around afaik. Lemm.ee for instance couldn’t find enough admins so they shut down. Moderating an instance seems like one of the hurdles that go along with running an instance. I could imagine some people dipped out of Lemmy for a little while if their server was deleted since they’re starting from scratch again. It took me a good month or so to make this account and ramp back up my own activity here for instance.

The admins across the servers do a good job of keeping bots out imo. If it ever becomes a problem the admins could look to adopt BlueSky’s moderation tools down the line, I feel. As BlueSky makes it easy to filter bots, misinformation spreaders, and have user level content controls.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Total Lemmy Active Users by Month

collapsed inline media

There's a big spike during summer time. On reddit it was known as summer reddit. Basically all of the kids are out of school and have nothing better to do but shitpost online. Now they're going back to school. It could be the lack of different users you're noticing. Not sure why it dipped in July though, should have dipped in August.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wasn't July 1st when lemm.ee shut down?

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ah, good point. Forgot about that. That's probably it.

The slight dip so far this month could be the beginning of the end of the summer Lemmy. Schools just started this week near me, and green is 30 day users so it should take 30 days for that to fully drop.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 3 days ago

Yeah, agreed. Between lemm.ee closing leading to people moving over to Piefed in droves and Summer Lemmy coming to an end I don't see anything concerning in the data I think.

[–] Microw@piefed.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Fediverse Observer says Piefed MAU were 352 in May, 1068 in June and 1615 in July. So thats a rise of ~1300 people in two months.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 1 day ago

@fuckwit_mcbumcrumble @AFKBRBChocolate Is this users on a lemmy instance or users on any type of activitypub server engaging with lemmy communities? ive stopped using my lemmy account because I just subscribed to those communities from my friendica account

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Also keep an eye on: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats A couple thousand people (and several communities) moved there after lemm.ee died, but we interact with lemmy.

As for why it subjectively seems to be declining... maybe you know what you're gonna see in New, and so you engage less with posts? Maybe it's time to be more of a poster!

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I noticed on the redditalternatives subreddit whenever someone mentions Lemmy and someone else is like "I didnt like it because of XYZ" someone else will often say "you should look into Piefed its much better"

Which is funny to me but at least it's working!

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 4 points 3 days ago

And if they don't like PieFed then tell them to try Mbin next lol

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

As for why it subjectively seems to be declining… maybe you know what you’re gonna see in New, and so you engage less with posts?

I don't think so. For ages (maybe two years) I'll sometimes sit in bed in the morning and browse New until I hit the stuff I saw previously. That used to take me well over an hour - maybe two - but now it takes less than thirty minutes.

[–] TheMinister@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Yeah, OP. Ten million posts a month isn’t good enough for you?!?

[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

It's not 10 millions created during a month, it's 10 millions existing posts at a certain month, whatever their creation date.

The actual number of posts per month would be the different between the total number of posts between two months.

[–] Aeao@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Ten million and one would be better

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

The last graph is total posts across Lemmy, so its only about 300,000 posts a month, although notably, about 250,000 of those are on a bot server no one is federated with.

[–] Takapapatapaka@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 4 points 3 days ago

If i'm not mistaken, the very last graph showing posts by month shows a significant decreasing over the summer, or at least specifically july (since august is not over yet). It says June is around 12M posts and July around 9M. August seems already over 9M and we're only 2/3 in, so maybe there was some drop around July for some reason, which could explain OP's feeling.

As for the reason, i'm not sure, maybe a combination of factors like some server blocking access from UK with the latest privacy bullshit, some server having signficant downtime (i think slrpnk.net had a problem with servers locking themselves up while tech admin was abroad), and maybe non-Lemmy factors like holidays (though they don't seem to impact previous years stats).

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Looking at the more detailed breakdowns, it looks like there are a couple of servers (Lemmit.online, alien.top among others) with huge numbers of posts/comments that appear to be entirely bots. Are those counted in the stats? Could those be messing with the overall graphs? If Lemmit's quarter of a million posts a month are counted, its going to make the monthly posts stat useless when even .world only has about 15k posts a month.

Edit: Comparing the graphs to the server list, it looks like Lemmit is counted, so the main graph is likely misleading. I did look through some of the bigger servers, and their rate of posting seemed fairly linear, but there isn't a good way to check overall.

[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

/thread