As a result, our instance https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ got 625 new user registrations (of which 536 where accepted) in the past 24 hours! And the registrations are not abating even now. We still get like 10 new ones per hour!
I suspect this is probably the largest advertisement, for lemmy specifically, since the main reddit blackouts 1.5 years ago.
Have your own instances also seen an influx of new users?
As one of those newbies?
Hi. It is the two millionth day of September, give or take a few thousand.
September beeth eternal
For the past thirty two years, and counting.
I was there at the beginning. Just a wee Luser. Such fun and wonderful times for eleven year old me to be punted into.
*uparrs
Good, the Piracy community over on dbzer0 is much better than the subreddit anyways.
2025 the year of lemmy
the year of the
snakelemmingOn a more serious note: I wonder if the year of Lemmy will never come. Constant de-federation and churn might splinter it again, much like distros did kinda splinter the Linux desktop.
There will never be “a lemmy”. There’s no canonical “lemmy” out there. There is only 1000 independent websites, sharing select content with select neighbours.
We either accept this, or we return to corporate social media.
and the linux desktop
I switched fully over and am in the process of degoogling and de-microsofting my life. No more easy defaults of VS Code, back to custom configuring my emacs. No more surveillance, self-hosting and encryption. No more shitty windows gaming, Linux and Proton for gaming bliss!
Vscodium has been a very usable replacement for me. You lose some of the ms first party plugins (ssh being the most notable) but largely it just works otherwise.
With the advent of the steamOS console, you’re actually correct! If it’s anything like my deck it’s trivial to launch it in desktop mode and use it like a normal linux desktop. This is the gateway to putting linux in front of bored kids everywhere.
steamOS console
Wait what?
Awww sadly it was just a rumor. https://bsky.app/profile/gamingonlinux.com/post/3lhe2febew22h
Even so, hook up a steam desk to a monitor with a mouse and keyboard and that’s a linux desktop, that’s right now today.
pop the champagne 🍾
we are celebrating tonight
Everyone remember to be kind to the newbies, not assume that they immediately understand how the fediverse works, and not to talk about your favourite Linux distro until the second date
Teach them about beans.
And how to hold your poop in for a few days for… reasons.
I was there. In the ancient times.
So, my second-favorite Linux distro is Arch, BTW
I can talk about Linux distros on my date? But I don’t have any dates. Oh, right.
Some supermarkets have them
Neelix, is that you?
What were you saying about Slackware? Who said Slackware?
No, I said, “I like the slacks you’re wearing.” They would go nicely with a red hat.
M’lady. tips fedora
Oh please honey, you gonna scare them. Now kids, welcome to Lemmy! Take a minute to visit and make yourselves confortable. Tomorrow I’ll show you my Nobara.
Narrator: They use arch btw.
Second date? I’m getting a date out of this now? Oh. Oh man. This is intense! I didn’t even know she LIKED me! Wait…I don’t even know who we’re talking about!!!
If they’re coming from Reddit, they probably expect a little negging.
Why would you go on a date with someone if you didn’t know their religious opinions (favourite init system)???
The entire point of c/piracy is sharing freedom. Why would you not talk to people about Linux? (plus the torrenting tools are just so much more efficient there…)
It’s a joke on how off putting the computer nerds can be here to normies.
Guess I am one of the 536 newbies hahahaha!
Check out phtn.app and Voyager for Lemmy (app/PWA).
WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE LINUX DISTRO
And why is it Arch
Welcome! Happy to have you!
Guess I am one of the 536 newbies hahahaha!
Welcome my friend! Spread the word around. Be part of the resistance!
Yes, trying my best to spread the word!
Welcome!
So, what’s your take on all the Lemmy.ml drama? What do you MEAN you don’t know what I’m talking about??? Is this your first day on Lemmy or something? Oh, it is? Oh.
Ignore me. I’m making bad jokes.
Welcome! How are you liking Lemmy so far?
Welcome to Lemmy!! We are called Lemmings over here! Or whatever you want really. I may have drank too much beer.
Thank you fellow lemming!
My instance is small potatoes, so no new applications for me (so far). =(
Who wants a short instance name D:
That instance name is great!
For what it’s worth, your instance name is spectacular!
Thanks! I was very lucky to get it. Finding the domain (name) is the longest part of the process for me. I go through so many permutations before actually pulling the trigger on one.
What is it? Looks like badass something but the Voyager app doesn’t scroll it.
badatbeing.social
Thanks.
Socal or social?
Edited! Haha I ruined it, the social is the whole point 🤦♀️
social
Nothing against Southern California =)
Noice
to any new user, or new lurker, welcome!! the begining is kinda shit, but it was as well when you started on instagram/reddit/tiktok, you just dont remember it. i dont remember my upstart into the fediverse because it has been such a short part of my independent-net journey.
I remember my start and immediate end on Bluesky. Got banned for saying the white ones were better. I was discussing Eneloop batteries!
Lol for real?
The main thing I heard about Bluesky is that it costs like $100 mill to run your own instance or something like that, so they only have one main instance for now. They technically have federation, but for all intents and purposes, it’s just another centralized corporate service waiting to be enshittified.
As far as I can tell. It tells me my profile and anything I post is restricted, never see any replies. I guess an AI moderator got upset.
I’m not a Lemmy admin, but from what I’m seeing, there’s been an uptick of 4,000 Lemmy registrations within the last 24 hours.
There’s now 477,048 Lemmy accounts.
Whaaaaa??? Last I heard there was like 60k Lemmy accounts total. What the fuck happened since October???
Monthly active accounts vs total accounts: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Aside, looks like pixelfed is growing too?
What a terrible graph - see if you can spot the 4% daily drop…
Feel free to share if you find a better one!
The data is good - it’s interesting to see the trends - but I just don’t love the layout of how a lot of it is presented
You’re not the first one commenting on it, but it seems like it’s the only graph we have about those stats at the moment.
these stats areee… not the best? fuck i hope we dont fizzle, this better just be the begininng
The typical ratio is 1:9:90, meaning only 10% are actively posting or commenting. The Lemmy numbers fit to that surprisingly well, although you would think a few more lurkers would at least vote sometimes (which Lemmy reports as active in the monthly stats). My guess is that the lurkers don’t even bother to sign in.
46K active users is nothing to sneeze at. Most old school forums were hella active with just 1K
Discuit has less than 200 commenters : https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/cauipqZt
Am I confused, or is that link not a forum?
Sorry, wrong link: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/cauipqZt
One of the more commonly recommended reddit alternatives aside from Lemmy. Goes to show how far ahead we are of any other alternative, they all have virtually no activity.
Also note that we bottomed out around 37k in October 2024, so we have seen pretty significant growth since then, and it seems to be accelerating.
Is voat still a “reddit alternative”? When they launched like over 10 years ago that’s how they billed themselves. Then I think their user base was mostly conservative, which might have prevented some people from trying it.
Posts and comments are on the rise!
(although the posts are all coming from like 3 people)
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world and @MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world, please accept your standing ovations!
:P
Holy shit! Nice!
And haven’t noticed instance specific influx but recently there are a lot of users posting/commenting that have the “baby badge” on Voyager app, meaning the account is new. Feel like this influx of new users already started last week.
Haven’t been on reddit since I deleted my account during the blackouts / API fiasco and man, Lemmy/Fediverse has been fun.
It’s weird how people smell babies, and are like “smell that baby! It has baby smell!”
But at some point they stop. I’m 41, and nobody ever lifts my shirt and smells me.
You just go to the wrong bars man, or so I’ve heard
Nice!
And to answer your last question, yes. Jlailu is having an influx of new users coming mostly from r/France. From what I’ve read they’re coming after the r/whitepeopletweets (or something like that) ban.
Nice!
There was a post by @inlandempire@jlai.lu on !growthefediverse@slrpnk.net about it
Out of the loop here…what is /r/whitepeopletweets? And is it as racist as it sounds? Kinda seems like the type of people you don’t get excited for coming over here if they banned the community.
Nope nothing about race, the name was just an answer to blackpeopletwitter, which is the same idea. Posting screenshots of funny tweets.
There’s one here on lemmy !whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
From what I’ve read the sub got ban after mods took time to delete violent comments about DOGE employees. Their names got leaked, peoples started to say dumb shit, often violent. Musk threw a fit about it and Reddit banned the sub.
Making death threats is obviously a good reason for a ban but apparently the reason Reddit gave (unmoderated sub) was false as there’s screenshots of the post being actively moderated with plenty of deleted messages. But it’s those kind of posts with 18k comments so I guess it was moving too fast for the moderator team.
I might be wrong, I just read about that from the r/france post our refugees came from. I did not explored in detail as it’s on Reddit and I just don’t care 🤷🏻♂️
As far as I recall it’s about blatantly “white” tweets, to underly how clueless and detached from reality they are.
But it may have warped into the stratosphere as of these days…
No, I think it’s just me on my instance (that probably has the capacity for 1000+ active users) and the steady influx of suspicious accounts that pass the email verification and captcha and then either post nothing, or post adverts get banned/deleted and it goes on.
Mind you I don’t really advertise the instance either. So that’s likely why.
I suspect people coming from reddit don’t understand the fediverse (I know I didn’t when I first got here). So they go to the hosting instance and join there, not really understanding they can join any instance and then join the community (if not already on the instance).
Kbin.life is a neat domain!
A landing page of sorts for small instances could be neat - a list of small instances welcoming new users, what their moderation policies are, software, philosophy of (de)federation, and other basic stuff.
It’s easy to find the big ones, but for those looking for smaller instances they can be harder to find.
Thanks. I think at the time I made an instance (about a year and a half ago I reckon), there was quite a batch snapping up kbin/lemmy on every tld imaginable.
It’s actually not a bad idea. “The front page of the threadiverse” so to speak. There are plenty of instance lookups out there, but they’re generally self discovered. Something that helps match a user to a smaller instance cannot be a bad thing.
Having large instances is a good thing of course, especially for hosting larger communities. But, in order to remain fully independent, smaller instances that can be run truly as a hobby on affordable hardware are essential for the fediverse in my opinion.
I think it’s also a bit utopian to expect everyone to make an informed decision about which small instance to sign up for right away. It could be nice to have a little overview ready for whoever has been using lemmy.world or some other big instance for a while, understands how the fediverse works, and wants to migrate to a smaller instance for some reason or another.
Personally I wasn’t really sure where to go after Kbin.social, and my decision on Kbin.earth was pretty random. Happy with my decision though!
Captcha and email verification are trivially defeated by bots. If just getting lurkers is a concern, try using a registration application form like we do. Do you at least see these lurkers as MAU? (i.e. just voting)
No. I see several genuine looking users that registered and did nothing (fine I guess). But there’s a lot with very similar <somethingnnn>@gmail.com. Some don’t do anything and so far I’ve left them. Some are clearly posting advert crap and they get deleted as soon as I see it. Every now and then I just go through purge the rest that are clearly bot accounts.
If I was actually getting genuine active users I might look into making a form or otherwise making it difficult (not sure if mbin has that ability mind you). But seems I don’t really get real users. Just me, posting and commenting all day.
What? You delete the advertising bots??? Rude. What if I’m the type of person who’s up at 3am watching infomercials about the cleaning products? And now I come to Lemmy to find the advertisements telling me how to find the hot lonely singles in my area? I want the hot lonely singles! That’s a thing, right? For hot people to be single long enough to get lonely? And then they’re like “I’d date ANYONE at this point!” and that’s when I swoop in, like “You’re all out of options now! I’m in!”
And you’re just going to take that away from us? Tsk tsk tsk.
Well. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone advertising hot local singles using my instance. I’ve mostly seen medical adverts and random websites (for products not services). So, you’re not missing anything I think.
I have registration application enabled and I am getting 0 registrations.
You need to somehow get your url out. Usually if you’re just “generalist” people don’t see a big reason to register compared to something like lemm.ee. Also new servers have another issue is that one doesn’t know if they’ll be around long enough. We’ve lost so many small servers in lemmy when their admins discovered it was more trouble than it was worth.
Huh, we have had users signing up at a higher rate than usual, but we go through bursts and we are generally pretty low volume so I thought nothing of it. Amazing to see you make the front page!
Hopefully at least half of them stick around; the MAU count is much more impactful in terms of post frequency and variety than the total number of users in general.
Every reddit shock, more people register on lemmy, as it’s the only valid alternative, then around 10-30% of those stick around. The more reddit enshittifies, the more shocks it will experience until a tipping point is reached.
The latest one only got weakened by reddit panicking and rolling back their “bug”. My suspicion is the next time they will try to enforce it, they will first make sure all lemmy links are banned.
I think you’re probably right about that. I’ve always said the next big migration will be when they turn off old.reddit, but perhaps they’ll be wise enough to blanket ban links to all the largest Lemmy instances by that point.
Lemmy really needs to buy ads on Google. I know…Google is just awful.
But doing a search for “reddit alternatives”, the first result is reddit.
I’d be willing to chip in some money to get that going.
Who is ‘lemmy’ though. Without someone making money there is no motivation to do that.
The only link that doesn’t work for me is lemmy.world.
world
Oh ok I’m not alone, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t suscribe to the community from lemmy.worl
Is that link (lemmy.world) banned reddit wide?
They are helping us load balance.
Yeah, it either errors out or hides your comment if you link it. Other instances are fine (excpet for .ml)
Isn’t .world the most populous instance? Hmm…
This is interesting. I get the impression that some admin/mods truly don’t understand how the Fediverse operates. They ban one (or a few) instance name(s), but there are so many more that they might not even recognize as Lemmy links, which get past the radar.
At the same time, there are fears here that .world could become disproportionately powerful compared to other instances, due to its high user count.
So in a way, Reddit blocking traffic to .world while permitting links to other instances can benefit us all. Smaller instances gain users, which is an important step toward balancing things out and keeping any one instance from becoming too powerful. Thanks, Reddit!
(I recognize the irony of saying this while having a .world account. I wasn’t aware of its standing in Lemmy when I made it. I am also still learning the Fediverse myself and don’t know how to transfer my account to another instance yet.)
Even if they don’t stick around they probably know that the days of reddit allowing stuff like piracy and rom resources is coming to a close, so even them just seeing lemmy as a fallback plan to keep in mind is a positive move in the long run.