this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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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)
[–] 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.

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[–] 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!

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

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

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[–] BeefandSquints@lemmy.dbzer0.com 66 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I honestly think that the whole internet is in decline.

[–] cmbabul@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago

I was just thinking everything seems to either be in decline, stagnation, or regression.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Maybe the whole age verification thing is keeping people offline.

[–] BeefandSquints@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Missing the Internet of my youth makes me feel older than almost anything else.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fewer things are sadder than the reality of the Internet compared to what we envisioned early on.

[–] BeefandSquints@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's perhaps the greatest tragedy of my lifetime, I'm truly not exaggerating. We went from the free sharing of the majority of human knowledge to forcing people to sell their souls for YouTube money.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I feel the same way. I was a CS major in the early 80s. I watched the internet become something amazing, and then I watched it rot. Heartbreaking.

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[–] CocaineShrimp@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I'm not in a country with the age verification thing, but has it been turned on for Lemmy servers?

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[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 48 points 2 days ago (2 children)

When I run out of stuff to see on Lemmy, I touch grass. Simple as.

I feel way more in control of my online experience when endless scrolling isn't possible.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 14 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This might seem like a clever way to say "sour grapes" to me. Saying that "little content is good because it avoids endless scrolling" is as weird as saying "living in the desert is good because it helps me control my diet".

To address the point: activity seems very much slowed down, and we have two years since the Reddit "exodus" and very little progress to show. We are yet to convert any significant significant community, most people just accepted the status quo and you can bet that the few active people around here still rely on Reddit to find content and repost here.

Aside from this meta-discussion about Lemmy and the Fediverse, there is basically no native group or community emerging.

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[–] Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 41 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah the twice yearly post asking if Lemmy is dying.

Ah the twice yearly post

[–] lasers4eyes@piefed.zip 31 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Hardly bothers me. I’ll be scrolling for maybe 2 minutes and reach yesterdays posts, get caught up. It’s nice to be on social media where you aren’t constantly scrolling.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Same. I feel like Lemmy is really a lot like early Reddit (pre 2012) and the sizes of the communities are perfect. You can actually contribute to a discussion instead of drowning in 20k inane joke posts.

Some niches remain underpopulated but I feel like this will eventually rectify itself as the more critical and thoughtful people move away from vapid platforms like Reddit, FB or IG. We'll continue to welcome them with open arms.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 2 days ago (10 children)

I’m doing my part! Just joined a couple days ago. Thought I could stick with Reddit but it got too far to the right for me. They crossed a line I can’t ignore, but I like the format, so I’m here. I knew Reddit was going to be winding down soon so I didn’t put as much effort in. I’d like to start a couple communities here, whereas I wouldn’t have tried over there. I just hope the toxic people who run the communities there don’t see what I’m doing and try to invade. I mean we could use the numbers but not the toxicity — though I feel that that comes with any influx of new users.

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[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Your instance, lemmy.ca has blocked or defederated from a significantly high number of other servers. So that's the reason

[–] Kierunkowy74@piefed.zip 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You may want to check the list of instances defederated by your PieFed instance out then as it may by much longer that on lemmy.ca...

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[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 17 points 3 days ago (4 children)

It's summer, a few active posters are busy with either kids or time off

!fedigrow@lemmy.zip has a weekly thread for active posters, it used to be more active in June

It's fine, people will probably come back in September

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[–] Ypsilenna@lemmy.zip 16 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I recently re-joined Lemmy, so I am not sure how it changed, but I am mostly a Mastodon user and I noticed that people were flooding it in large quantities when something stupid happened on Twitter (again), and then leaving it after a short while to go back to Twitter or quitting social media altogether. I would suspect that people either started going back to Reddit, or decided to get a mental health break from the internet as a whole (which wouldn't surprise me, the internet is pretty depressing lately).

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[–] lorski@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

Seems the same

[–] troed@fedia.io 12 points 3 days ago

Same amount of posts, more comments. I'd wager on growing.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm actually coming back to Lemmy. I left reddit, but then went back to it with limited participation. And now it's truly a cesspool. Lemmy may not be a perfect replacement, but it feels better. I should have never left.

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 10 points 2 days ago

I rarely post but comment a fair amount. To me, it’s only been recent, but I’ve noticed a decline, too.

[–] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There are plenty of new posts created, the problem is that most of them stay at 0 comments for ever.

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[–] lowspeedchase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I'm relatively new here, the only negative thing I notice is mods/creators reposting the same stuff every ~6-24 hours to make it 'seem' like there is more activity, which I think backfires more than not.

[–] 11111one11111@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Are you sure you arent seeing posts of the same community being hosted from other instances? Ive been here a while and havent seen any reposting within the same community of the same instance. (Or atleast not repetitively.)

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it is, maybe we are due for another growth spurt but from here on out I genuinely think a critical mass has been achieved where it will simply make more and more sense for people to come here.

I do think we face a real inertia right now where the general public has become convinced corporate social media sucks because people suck not because corporations suck and we need to refute that misconception if we want the fediverse to have a vibrant future.

It is really frustating how evidently unhappy most users of corporate social media are about their social media use, yet they show no signs of stopping and when you start to provide an alternate vision of social media they immediately shortcircuit to "social media is bad, I don't want more".

I do think if we don't start pushing back with an affirmative positive vision of why social media can be good we may see a period of depressed growth but I don't see that happening yet personally.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I don't think it is, maybe we are due for another growth spurt but from here on out I genuinely think a critical mass has been achieved where it will simply make more and more sense for people to come here.

Maybe for English and a handful of major European languages, but there's no way I could recommend the Fediverse (at least the Threadverse; I don't hang out on Mastodon) to an Arabic or Japanese speaker. In that area it's still severely lacking.

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[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

I've definately noticed it too. I've tried to look for stats, and most seem to indicate that there is plenty of activity, but I dont really see it. At this point, I can scroll through the day's all feed in like 20 minutes, nonetheless my subscribed feed. I kind-of wonder if theres one or two instances with a lot of bot activity effectively inflating the numbers.

Edit: Is there a way to see monthly posts by instance, or compare percentage of posts? That would be an easy way to prove or disprove my bots theory.

Edit 2: fediverse.observer shows monthly (Or rather, total by month) local posts by instance but not federated, and their overall stats are warped by a few bot instances that you can't filter out. That said, for local posts on a few of the big instances, the rate seems stable. That said, smaller instances are shutting down so I don't know if that has an impact on the overall posting rate.

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[–] surfrock66@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (6 children)

I think Lemmy needs a better way to federate communities, so if you sub to say a "Star Trek" community on 3 instances, you don't get the same post 3 times, but instead it's somehow linked and content federates; this would be at the community and not instance level, so there's more community self-governance, and communities can migrate instances without so much intervention from instance admins. I think that will really help growth and decentralization.

[–] artiman@piefed.social 12 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Piefed has this with reposts

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 7 points 3 days ago

Its so nice.

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[–] trk@aussie.zone 8 points 1 day ago

I think I've just reduced social media participation in general.

I still browse a lot but with so much AI bollocks and rage bait and engagement farming and any other manner of "fake stuff pretending to be real stuff" going on it just doesn't seem worth it to actually participate much.

Best case: I get some upvotes, and my comment is stolen for training an AI

Worst case: I get no upvotes, and my comment is stolen for training an AI

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 8 points 2 days ago

Also re:lemmy/piefed - there are quite a few people who are very loud and vocal about things, and a lot of the opinions here lean to the left a lot. Not that it is a bad thing, but some folk appear to have got fed up of this and as a result have migrated elsewhere. I like it here, but it can be far from helpful at times

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I’m definitely bored of it.

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[–] artiman@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I haven't seen activity declining, but I have seen good quality posts declining I have been seeing more low quality posts recently

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