No
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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Ask Lemmy
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Lemmy has minuscule portion of users compared to mainstream social media. It doesn't mean it's dead.
I like the current vibe. If Lemmy grew suddenly 10x, I’m sure some of that small place energy would be lost.
It could afford to grow 10x but not 1000x.
That kind of growth would probably require many new instances too. I don’t think the current ones could handle 1000x load.
Probably the architecture will need to change significantly. (A decent rule of thumb is that a given architecture is good for an increase of about 100x, then it needs to change, then that's good for the next 100x and so on).
I don't even think most instances would be able to handle a 1000x increase even if it was spread across new instances. The amount of traffic coming into instances would also be up by a large multiple to account for the new users, communities and subscriptions. And given some of the cost concerns I've seen already, that would probably cause some instance admins to throw in the towel.
Also synchronization could become an issue. On the other hand I would really like to see how robust activity pub is. Can it actually handle large scale federation like this.
Well presumably donations would increase at a similar rate. In theory.
Obviously we all want the Fediverse to grow, but it has grow at a slow rate so it doesn't overwhelm the instances financially or in terms of management. So new tech developments can support admins and community owners at dealing with increased traffic, and the trolling that would come with that. And so instance owners can appoint new admins to deal with rulebreakers.
Piefeds relatively fast development rate will, I think, come up with many efficencies and tools here that would mitigate instance owner burnout.
Dead, no, stagnant, yes.
This. There is too little new people joining and not enough incentive to join.
Imho, the biggest deterrent beside the lack of users is the 'politics' that's almost everywhere (so, so often accompanied by anger when it's not hatred). Sure, it's more problematic on some instances than others but it's almost everywhere. That's also relatively easy to filter out of one's feed but it still needs to be filtered manually which may not be the most interesting thing a brand new user may want to do... that is if they have not already been dissuaded to join just by reading the default feed?
The default Piefed onboarding process asks you how much politics you needs, hides at least "trump" and "musk" if you want to, and suggests you a list of diverse feeds/topics to join.
Maybe it could be even more agressive and add other words to the blocklist, but it's not too bad as it is.
Like I said, it's something that a user needs to configure. It's already (much) better with piefed but I don't remember being asked if I wanted to filter out anything (politics or otherwise) when I created my Lemmy account back then... and the default feed's content was not the most thrilling experience for me ;)
It's something I think we discussed a few months back (not 100% sure) and I still wish for the default feed of a new user to be empty save for a few tags/categories they would need to click in order to see something in their All/local feed before they even subscribe to any community. I don't know how to put it: by default, the All/Local should only display all of whatever I'm into not all what's published ;)
I still wish for the default feed of a new user to be empty save for a few tags/categories they would need to click in order to see something in their All/local feed before they even subscribe to any community.
I just created an account today on Piefed.social, and that's what the default feed is: empty.
Weren't we referring to Lemmy?
The default Piefed onboarding
I was always mentioning Piefed, which is a better option was new joiners for that onboarding experience (and other features).
totally agree on that.
Not that I can see
Subscribe to more communities
!trendingcommunities@lemmy.cafe is good for finding new ones
Edit: Although the bot seems to have stopped posting recently, maybe it's moved?
Throwing this out there in case you are just scrolling through "all":
Your instance is small and you won't see content from communities no one on your instance has subscribed to. An example:
I see posts from a community on "all" that I haven't subsribed to, but someone on my instance has subsscribed to said community. Otherwise we on sopuli would not be fetching updates from those communities and I wouldn't see it on "all".
There is a project (forgot name) that makes bots on instance subscribe to new communities from an instance but not sure if it's still working/set up on your instance.
There's too much in-fighting and drama for it to be dead.
I'm smoking weed about it.
Good to see you around
Good to see you around
💚 Thanks mate. I'm never too far away. I've had more going on IRL lately but I spend most of my time on crazypeople.online communities these days too. Mysteriously the vibe there is right up my alley. 😜
A bit, yes. BUT I go away for a few months and then return to Lemmy with full force. When I'm active here it feels like an active space, when I'm not active, it feels a lil dead.
So the issue is more about the way you engage with the community.
Also I think Lemmy data is available. Posts per month, users etc.
Add more channels (?) I mean, I preferred passive consumption of content too. But in lemmy, there needs to be more posters.
Not even kind of.
I want a digest I can read for ten minutes a day, rather than spend six hours churning through a hellhole.
I have a life to live.
Okay, valid. I don't, so that makes sense.
I sort by new and hide anything read so I always get the freshest stuff. I like that there is a limit so I am more likely to close the app and so some reading or learning rather then scroll forever.
Definitely. Really nice to "run out" of posts to remember to actually close my app once in awhile.
Yes. The lead singer of Motorhead died a few years ago.
It feels newborn, if anything. Like 30-40% of comments I see are from users < 30 days old.
<30 days old means nothing.
Lemmy users are more paranoid about government, could be just using discarding their accounts often.
I've been on lemmy since the reddit API thing, but this account is only 2 months because I've tried quitting lemmy a few times, and I failed because I'm bored and I need a soapbox to vent.
it feels like early reddit. a lot of the same style and content. and a lot of replies in threads that are trying way too hard to be edgelordy but just seem crude and naive.
Try piefed. The frontpage experience is wildly different.
I don’t get that feeling at all. Maybe your instance isn’t federated with many other instances?
Also, what’s the comparison for what “alive” looks like? Lemmy’s like the message board I always wanted.
It's not dead, it's just not matching the level of activity of users as the numbers of users there is reported on paper.
I'd like to see Lemmy get a lot of microcommunities like Reddit but the problem is, one user can do so much.
Nah, seems like it's growing week after week.
I know I am. Spooky, huh?
View all and block what you're not interested in, that way you automatically get to see all the new stuff.
Eh, its more alive than like ham radios or Meshtastic. More alive than Briar's Public Forums. Good enough I guess 🤷♂️
I feel like there’s more going on now.
Nope.
At least my list of content filters keeps growing every day so more and more threads gets hidden. There's not really much content here for people who are not into politics or rage inducing news articles. Sometimes I wonder why I even keep coming back here.
Compared to reddit? Yep. But I'm brand new and I like the quieter vibe. Although I've got no idea how this platform works, I do feel like im cut off from stuff as a feddit. Uk person