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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[–] Skavau@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The user you are replying to has specifically sourced lemmy.world data there, which is not going to give you an overall for the wider fediverse.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This here is a better source: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=1000

That's all of lemmy over the last 1000 days.

Most important takeaways:

Active users tend to only grow during special events (usually "Reddit pulls some new shit") and then declines slowly as people fade back out.
When instances close, users tend to just disappear (as when Lemmy.ee closed down). The Lemmy.ee users seem to have just disappeared instead of migrated to another instance.
Number of active servers is in a strict decline. Apart from the initial rush, smaller instances seem to go down and don't get replaced. Most users seem to prefer to use big instances.
Comments again shows the total number of comments available, not new comments coming in. As you can see, the angle of the curve gets slightly flatter over time, meaning that activity drops. It also shows well that when instances get closed down lots of content just disappears.
Posts also shows a similar decline, though even stronger than comments.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

When instances close, users tend to just disappear (as when Lemmy.ee closed down). The Lemmy.ee users seem to have just disappeared instead of migrated to another instance.

I suggest you look at the piefed activity indicator for more context here.

A big chunk of the lemm.ee base went here, and its gaining servers where Lemmy is losing them.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, that makes sense. Though still Lemmy.ee's closure is a drop of ~4500 monthly active users while piefed only totals ~1700 monthly active users in total.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh yes, it has some impact - but the slow decline of Lemmy instance activity has to be contextualised with whats going on Piefed (and to a lesser extent: Mbin)

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Kbin exists as well, unless something changed since the last time I looked.

But one thing is for certain: The whole field isn't growing right now.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2 points 15 hours ago

kbin shut down, mbin is the sucessor

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sure, but it's not at the level of decline some doom about here. It's mostly stable.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah, that's true.

What is a bit of a fact though is that Lemmy and the other Lemmy-likes are basically a set of forums and not a Reddit killer.

In fact, all of Lemmy's and Lemmy-likes' usage statistics combined are about comparable with the Crackberry forum or the LTT forum.