Lemmy.world grew from about 51k users when third-party reddit apps started to shut down to about 84.8k users at the time of this post.
Definitely felt some growing pains in the past few days, but it’s great to see the platform more active now that things have become more stable.
So, welcome reddit expats!
14k users per week, 22k users per month, makes it look like a bunch of people tried it and then didn’t come back.
They shut the API off on Thursday/Friday, and it’s a four day holiday weekend. Not sure how final any numbers could be right now.
I’m not sure how accurate that part of the stat page is, given we have very little usage data compiled into a short sample size, during a time of high growth.
Most people don’t know that the lemmy.world instance was only started on June 1 or June 2 this year, and is only a little more than a month old. A month of crazy growth to become the most popular Lemmy instance that fast, with more growth likely to come.
Some of them probably moved to a different instance, but yeah
Reddit is a read-only site for me now, and only when I’m searching for something specific. All my “forum browsing” time goes to Lemmy now. Can’t wait until I can unfollow the last few Twitter-only accounts (public transit alert accounts) so I can complete my migration to Mastodon.
Yeah trying to keep Reddit activity to a minimum myself. Not missing it tbh, other than troubleshooting posts through the years lol
If you have a problem post it to lemmy. We can try help.
if you are reading reddit only then I recommend to use libreddit.hu Doing this wouldn’t give reddit their juicy traffic
Or even better: install the libredirect extension to do this automatically, not just for reddit.
woah this is sick, thanks!
I am one of those users.
Don’t even feel the need to go back to reddit. This platform is going to take off.
Already has. A can of fucking beans had 5k+ upvotes.
6k now.
With care and love we can build a new and better reddit
Hell yeah, let’s keep it up! :D
Reddit feels like a dinosaur now to me.
But dinosaurs are cool. Don’t compare Reddit to a dinosaur.
I feel it, can barely reply from all the errors being thrown.
Try another instance, as close to your home as possible.
You can browse the map here https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/map
That’s really neat but the closest servers are private, lol.
I wouldn’t sweat so much picking a close server as long as it has enough users to be around for a while, reasonable rules, and isn’t under too much strain. Just by getting off the big servers, you’ll have a much faster experience and access to the same content.
I moved from lemmy.world to this one that specializes in my interests, and it’s running great.
Indeed. If I remember correctly VLemmy is in Ireland, and yet I’ve gotten consistently fast responses from it except during server upgrades. I think the size of the instance really does matter here.
Those are good tips, thanks, I found a smaller one recently and it’s MUCH better, things are actually loading now, lol.
It’s comfy; my setup almost never fails to load or post anything after load-balancing myself elsewhere.
Good tips! I should have explained a bit more, but by getting a server as close as possible, your ping should theoretically be lower than an instance that’s far from you (I know, the internet is not a straight line to the server).
The best way to test this is by pinging the server in a CMD prompt/terminal.
Good idea, opened up another account with our northern Canadian brother sh.itjust.works/ for backup
Yeah, I also have one on lemmy.ca, the ping is more consistent (both are 2-3ms).
I paused using lemmy.ml because 90% of the time it doesn’t work
I tried changing my profile picture on both desktop and mobile and keep getting thrown an error :/
Well at least it’s not something that super important
I can wait
Popular instances like lemmy.world have felt a lot of growing pains recently.
I’ve made a secondary account at sh.itjust.works for enhanced shit posting capabilities, since it seems to be more responsive at the moment.
I feel bad for the lemmy.world admins that have to keep up with the software needed and costs accrued to handle the world knocking on their doorstep. I hope advertisers hit them up soon so their bills become easier to pay. While advertising was annoying on reddit, I’m more than willing to put up with it on this instance of lemmy, the admins have earned it.
I hope advertisers
I think this is an unpopular stance here. I’m not certain how else admins keep things running, but my limited time on Lemmy suggests people are hostile to ad-influence on how things run.
with this pace of growth i wouldn’t blame them it they got advertises. and i believe that most people here use adblock anyway
Ruud also runs Mastodon.world which has 160k+ users and manages to survive on donations alone. Not sure where the cutoff point is for when that is no longer viable, if there is one. Mastodon.social is huge and takes sponsorships and also gets some grant money I believe. They don’t run ads per se though and claim all sponsors accept contracts stating Mastodon is not going to be run in a way that is influenced by sponsors.
Just stop accepting new people
There’s no reason to not push them towards other instances
I’m beginning to feel this way too. We need to distribute the load, especially at this early stage.
What is also missing from the big picture is a dedicated “About” link in the navbar of Lemmy instances, providing users with a statement of detailed information on the people/organizations behind a given instance, its location in the world, its hardware, etc. A byline in the front page sidebar isn’t enough.
I hate to be the one to say this, but yeah, there’s a big reason why they shouldn’t be pushed to another server, at least not right now at this switchover from Reddit point in time.
Most normal everyday people don’t even know what federation is, and tend to not like it when they find out, as it causes extra work on their part.
They just want a central location where everyone is socializing together, and don’t care at all about the fediverse, except as maybe an escape hatch if some c-suite type goes evil.
There’s already a hurdle people jump over on change in general, so we should minimize the effort of that change and coming over to Lemmy from Reddit.
Edit: typos
I created an
instanceuser on programming.dev and have had almost no issues seeing other posts.You don’t need to understand how it all works to use it
Please just donate… No need to invite ads here.
Unfortunately, the reality is that it may become necessary.
Donations can be a saving grace if enough people donate regularly. But such is dependent on people’s willingness, their own financial stability, and how stressed servers are (how much it’ll cost to upgrade and/or maintain infrastructure.)
It’s great if it’s viable. Means there’s less outside influence. But that’s if.
As far as I’m aware, Wikipedia has been able to maintain it purely off donations. But I’m not sure if Lemmy could.
Maybe? One thing Lemmy does have going for it is that the majority of users seem to be aware how… Fragile? the fediverses can be. There’s arguably more passion behind the users and maybe willing to throw support out.
But hard to say.
Wikipedia is able to pull that off because wikipedia is a digital encyclopedia, not a social forum to add comments to or respond at a massive scale like lemmy is or reddit was. A majority of services either get their revenue from ads, or they start off not doing that but eventually have to cave in and let ads in.
I think ads can be annoying sometimes, but if they’re done in a similar way reddit did them before their downfall, then it would be tolerable and at least give the lemmy.world admins enough money to cover server running costs
Just joined their patreon today!
Most importantly: Lemmy instances are not being run for profit. There is no need to make exorbitant amounts of money to pay shareholders. Right now it’s enough to cover hosting costs, in the future you probably want to be able to pay a couple of people as well.
Commercial instances are not off the table, but I hope we can avoid it. If it happens, I hope it will not be about profiting directly from the users, but instead through e.g. professional services. Imagine a company that hosts instances for entities that are willing to pay (I see this especially in the microblogging/Mastodon space, where for instance governments want to run their own instance).
Or maybe nonprofit organizations. Though I’m having a harder time imagining why they’d need a social network site, especially if it’s federated with our shit posting “sublemmies” or whatever we’re calling them here.
NLnet already sponsors the development of Lemmy. They donate money when certain roadmap items are achieved (which has slowed down due to the efforts to make Lemmy scale). NLnet sponsors organizations and people that contribute to an open information society.
Places like Lemmy are not just shit posting. Just look at the immense value of the content at reddit. Google became so useless when the blackout happened. LLMs like GPT4 are trained for a large part on this human generated content. It’s absolutely vital that this information is not controlled by a handful large corporations as it is now. Federated social media could break this pattern and bring back a free and open internet.
There’s likely more room for growth as several apps are still working as they move to the subscription model, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another mini wave on the horizon!
Also the releases of sync and boost are sure to bring another surge each.
Wefwef is great, but if Christian did Apollo for lemmy there’d be a pretty bloody big wave. The guy deserves his rest though, given everything.
I’m personally liking thunder so much I’m getting back into app development so I can contribute. Getting a flutter environment set up right now.
Thunder is pretty good. It’s one of my 3 favorite Lemmy apps (which are currently Connect, Thunder, and wefwef).
There’s likely more room for growth as several apps are still working as they move to the subscription model, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another mini wave on the horizon!
It’s mad, even when it wouldn’t load I felt no need to return to Deddit. Keep up the good work all.
I’m happy to be here. Thank you.
Anybody know how to reply to people rather then to the whole post? On memmy
@Enamel94 Swiping left on the comment will give you the option to reply directly to it.
Thank you, I’m getting old I think ahah
Swipe to the left on the post you want to reply to.
I was using Bacon Reader for Android for the last 10 years. For me it was the only way of using Reddit. I’m now checking Lemmy. I hope we can build a vibrant community here. I’m not coming back to Reddit.
Also a fellow ex-Bacon Reader user, same deal. So far I’m using Connect for Lemmy to try to get a similar feel, what app are you using?
Jerboa is the closest I have tried to the Bacon Reader experience.
I’m using Jerboa. Its good and its very similar to Bacon Reader. I’m just missing the bacon reader setting “hide read posts” and the hability to swipe to navigate and read posts.
Connect has both ;)
Liftup, which is somewhat close to BaconReader too. Couldn’t use Jerboa due to it not connecting to lemmy.world at the time I joined.
Tried wefwef too and it’s great, but the iOS-adjacent UX is not right for me.
That’s the app I used exclusively. Have you found a Lemmy app that is similar? I’ve tried Jerboa, Connect and Liftoff, but I’m still looking for something comparable to BaconReader.
RiF being killed was the last straw for me and Reddit.
They just don’t care so long as they are making money. I was doxxed twice last year thanks to two different user on a fandom I moderated. They didn’t care that I was openly DOXed, pretty much them saying that it wasn’t their problem.
They just don’t care about people, just how much trouble they will get in and how much money is to be made.
So this whole “only money matters” ideal is a symptom of a larger issue that is going to get worse.
FYI, you can patch RiF with Revanced to use your own OAuth token. I did it, and it works, but I’m not actually using it anymore/haven’t been to reddit for a while.
I just did it as more of a “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” thing than anything else.
I deleted RiF and removed all shorcuts and icons that lead to reddit
I’m going with a mixture of cold turkey and “out of sight, out of mind”
Thankfully lemmy helps.
Same. Used AlienBlue for a short while until I got an Android phone. Then moved to Bacon Reader for the following decade.
Reddit is effectively dead to me. Without BR there is simply no way for me to interact with the site, plus I go out of my way to avoid reddit.com in search results.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I like to think it does for their traffic statistics.
Similar for me but, Apollo. Reddit was only tolerable because of Apollo, and now that it’s gone, I am too. wefwef is quite close to it though. Im enjoying it so far.
Wefwef is amazing, how can someone make it so quickly while the reddit app sucks?
Wefwef is a labor of the love and passion of its creator. I’m guessing the Reddit app devs are burned out and constantly getting requests like “How can we integrate Blockchain into the app?” and “Is it possible to add ads to the comment section?”
Truly have no idea if this or other similar projects will succeed long-term, but I do think that any alternative puts much needed pressure on social media companies to stop sucking ass.
Here’s to hoping it keeps growing. Gonna need content other than beans though.
Every platform has their “bean” content. I spent enough time on Reddit to have dealt with the constant “the narwhal bacons at midnight” comments we used to deal with.
Oh I agree, it’s more that lemmy doesn’t really have “big engagement” content yet to spread out amongst the beans. Even text-based posts would do wonders. Mid-profile AMAs or a good asklemmy post going viral and hitting some of the content creators on other sites would really help boost this as a true alternative.
For my part I just hope my niche communities migrate over so the twelve of us that play ToME can geek out about the updates.
“Midnight chili better with rice 5/7”
I remember that time, it wasn’t as cringe while it was happening… I think… I hope
Chili does sound like it’d be better with rice though.
I’m about to unsub from lemmyshitposts for a good while. Still sticking around though, this place is home ✌️
I actually don’t mind the smaller user base on Lemmy at all.
First work day since shutdown, I survived without Reddit, I’m sure I can continue doing so. Lemmy has plenty of potential yet already “good enough” to take Reddit’s place.
That’s the funniest thing - I’m one of those senile Digg to Reddit people. Digg to Reddit was something I felt and dreaded. Reddit to Lemmy was a relief. There is not as much to click but everything is worth a click.
Beans
I fuckin love this place
That is Good.
It would be better if those users were more dispersed across more similarly moderated instances, but it is for sure a good thing that the threadiverse is expanding
