A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Looks like Pixelfed's growth spurt is slowing down. Absent any new external stimuli I'm guessing it'll stabilize around 200K to 300K monthly active users -- over a hundredfold order of magnitude from what it was just a month ago.
Frankly, whatever secret sauce it is that makes social media popular is also what drives them to be such shit and be so shit for society. I like Lemmy way more than I like Reddit, and even though I have to go back to Reddit from time to time to fill the needs of my niche interests (which can get no traction where there are not mobs of participants in the greater whole) I never ever look at my interactions there and go "I wish Lemmy was more like this."
It's a conundrum.
Lemmy reminds me of why I liked reddit in the first place. Back in 2010
I've been spending more time on reddit recently, and it's not because I like it better. Somehow that algorithmic infinite scroll just makes time disappear despite being largely ungratifying. It's the same with Youtube. Whereas with Lemmy I check the first, and maybe second page, and then I feel like that's all I need for a while and go do something else.
Preach brother. The reason I love this space is because it is so small. So much better visibility, so much less one-liners and rwddit garbage to sift through to find a real person. (fe I also choose this guys dead wife! Cue laugh track)
I've seen people in multiple conversations under the same post. It feels more alive and personal than seeing Click to show 3456 more comments
Plus all the newer redditors repeat the jokes not just at the optimal times, but just constantly, forever
And my axe!
I dunno... it's like the difference between a chain restaurant and your favorite local cafe/pub/diner. The chain restaurant has its benefits, but you have the best interactions with your buddies at your local cafe/pub/diner.
Yeah, all apps advertise "no algorithms" - well those algorithms are what is pulling users back and back again and the more you get people to open your app - the more likely it is that they'll contribute something.
I have to remind myself to open Pixelfed. Which is how I want it to be and how it should be. But I also understand that none of my friends will go there and look at nothing and then check in again a day later.
As per my other comment - the algorithm is only part of it.
A big aspect however is the slickness and ease-of-onboarding for mega-Corp apps. It’s a thing that would relatively easy to begin work on.
I’ve seen first hand the amount of time and money even growth-stage startups spend on onboarding and have lots of first-hand reports from peers at the big girls - it’s a critical part of success. Make it easy to get started and easy to stay using.
It’s missing from most fediverse experiences. Pixelfed being a serious contender for an on-boarding rethink.
“time-to-value” - we want that as low as possible.
Other events will cause additional spikes for Pixelfed, Mastodon and others. Unless the US Oligarchs are going to stop supporting Trump's bat shit crazy policies they will keep pushing group after group off of their platforms.
It will be easier for the next wave to join as their is already content and already people they know and many issues addressed.
Their platform is Mastodon tho
I feel insane that no one has commented this yet??? The data clearly only starts in November. At minimum this is our second plateau and I seem to recall more that have happened lmao.
I haven’t been posting as much as I was initially. That might be it.
You are very optimistic about the user retention 😅
People might stay there more than on Lemmy. Pixelfed seems in a better shape than how Lemmy was during summer 2023, with the constant DDoS on Lemmy.world and the language bugs preventing comments...
I think you're on to something.
I also think there's a difference in where the network effect kicks in for different types of social media. IMHO, Lemmy has just enough activity to not feel empty, and even then I wish there was more comments to interact with and more niche communities. With Pixelfed, I feel like as long as there's enough interesting posts it makes sense for people to visit regularly.
You're 100% right about that. I've never ran out of nice posts to look at on Pixelfed. I think the medium & format is a lot less addictive and a lot more relaxing/positive, which might help to explain it.
It depends. I don’t feel forced to go on there because it has none of my friends. Obviously I’ll go once every few weeks to check out cool photography but I’m really not an active user there.
The Pixelfed app isn’t very good right now compared to instagram was when it wasn’t terrible. Hope that Dan hires an actual UX designer to update the app with his kickstarter money. And that he can integrate loops with it as well.
I've been trying to set it up for 2 weeks now, the docker containers. There are so many backwards decisions, it's pretty clear he doesn't understand docker unfortunately. The entire app could be a snap to set up, but it's such a convoluted setup that it scares a lot of people away. (It pretty much is scripted assuming you will run it on a VM, and a high cost one at that).
The fact that it's built on PHP and Laravel in 2025 says a lot, and the fact that he started Loops this year on the same architecture also says a lot. It just doesn't scale, it's locked to a single host, and he's finding that as the servers are tipping over.
Haven’t tried self hosting Pixelfed. Just mostly been trying it out on the main instance. I’m really shocked that it’s a mess to deploy with docker if it’s on PHP/Laravel.
I hate PHP these days for dev purposes but I think laravel ought to be able to scale enough to run most Pixelfed instances. Facebook ran PHP when it was much larger than Pixelfed.
Facebook had to basically rewrite php so it would scale though, it's called Hack now
The fediverse has had a very low retention rate. My bet is that after a year MAU will come down to 60k. That is if meta doesn't embroil itself in another controversy.
Idk, Lemmy also inreased it's userbase by a factor of 30, mainly from a single event. It had like 1,500 MAU before summer 2023 and now we're at 45k. So I'm not sure what to make of this. I kinda agree though, it'll stabilize at a lower number than during a hype period. And Pixelfed aside, the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now. I hope we've learned from the past and drama that happened and we don't need to repeat the same things.
the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now
Dunno, from Fediverse Observer, it looks like lemmy and mastodon are growing slowly over the last couple weeks. (the mastodon stats look a little weird tho -- there's a plummet on Jan 30th that looks like a data collection artifact.)
There has definitely been an uptick in sign-ups - first around the Inauguration (despite being a UK instance) and then with Reddit's pornmaggedon. In between it didn't drop back down to the old rate in between. db0 have seen a.massive spike recently too.
Though, I'd argue if we were awesome and had something truly nice to offer, we'd grow on our own. And not just if someone else messes up and becomes unbearable. But it's complicated.
The retention is bad because the new user experience is abysmal. It takes a lot of effort, even for a tech savvy user to get Lemmy & Mastodon to a usable state. Most people are not going to do that and will churn out when there's no interesting content and the app does weird things like shows you the same posts over and over, if you don't manually change settings for things like "hide read posts" in Voyager.
I can get about one user at a time, if I sit with them and explain it. The Fediverse is essentially the scene in Silicon Valley when Richard sits down with the focus group to explain to them for 3 hours how his software works. It's really cool. It should be the way forward, but the masses have no idea how this works and don't care to. They want a button to install. They want to search for their friend and find them immediately. I haven't found any fediverse software that can just do that much, let alone everything else that's expected.
(This is a serious question)
Are Pixelfed communities generally accepting of cannabis related content, or is that seen as a no go on most servers/connections made with an account?
I recently started using Instagram again here and there because of cannabis related communities and such, which they seem rather relaxed with at the moment (just to connect with folks), and a transition could start for me granted there is an opportunity for sensible cannabis communities to exist - I'm a medical user and it has to be a part of my life due to the required usage for my conditions, I hope this is understandable.
Regardless of if the answer to my query isn't favourable to me, I hope this platform expands and continues to gather a larger userbase.
Support JPEG XL or HEIC/HEIF and I will join ;)
I was under the impression that Jpeg XL was written out of modern browsers due to Google pushing their image format instead or are you talking specific support with in Pixelfed app?
Sadly yes. It's included by default in Apple devices and there are talks to bring it back with a Rust implementations. I think Google walked back a bit from their standard setting bullying practice with the antitrust lawsuits / threats of getting broken up. No idea if that will continue with the Musk administration.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/3102
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/749
here's your issue trackers.
I must say though, this seems like a strange feature to draw the line on, is it really that important to you what image format is used?
Yes. JPEG is limited to 8-bit (which works well with rec.709/sRGB) and modern displays and cameras capture much more than that (typically 14).
sRGB has a very limited color gamut, and using a wider/HDR color profile (eg rec.2020) with only 8-bit per subpixel would result in colour banding.
I don't want to limit my photo development with poor color definition.
Thanks for the links (I'm already subscribed).
Not for me but I can see how it would be for some people joining a platform focusing on image content.