Total monthly posts exploded after Spez enshitified Reddit, and is still growing steadily month over month.
That suggests that the current decline in monthly active users is primarily because lurkers who only came to lemmy after initially hearing about it on Reddit, went back to lurking Reddit.
The number of users that are contributors is still growing, and that’s what’s important.
Thanks for the positive news!!
There’s also folks like me who came, 15 years on Reddit and I haven’t been back.
Those of us who actually interacted with the platform and left aren’t going back.
I'm close to that too, but I think mine was 13 years. The weird thing that I've noticed is that most of the time I was on Reddit, almost no one I talked to in real life used Reddit. I struggled for years to try to get people to check the site out. Now that I left, I swear I hear someone I know mention Reddit exponentially more often. The average person doesn't give a damn about how shitty the platform has become, because they weren't around to see what it used to be. The average person WANTS to see ads interspersed with their cookie cutter content with stupid ass features like chat and followers. Good riddance.
I'm a counter example. I contributed on Reddit, moderated my own subreddit with a couple of thousand viewers; couple of tens of contributors
I haven't been back to that sub, haven't appointed any other mods. If automod can't handle shit, shit isn't being handled
I have been back to other subs. There are small inoffensive places on Reddit that simply haven't moved
I still visit those subs, still write on them, just not nearly as often
Edit to add: checking today, those subs are becoming less good. With no good app, so many of the prolific commenters don't comment much now. I also had a reply to a 2015 comment I made. I thought stuff was auto-archived much quicker than that
My Reddit account was 12 years old. I'm staying on Lemmy forever, monthly active users be damned.
Same, 13 years redditor here. And since I came to Lemmy in June, I posted over 1k posts because I love this platform and want it to grow. Fuck reddit.
Agreed. First they killed RedditGifts, then AMAs, then the up vote/down vote debacle, and when they took away my ability to use Relay is when I left. Screw them.
I'm yet to encounter the majority of issues I hear Lemmings griping about. Everyone has been pretty civil toward me. Every time my inbox blows up I feel dread, only to open it and find zero confrontation or vitriol. I'm not running into any racists, sexists, bigots, etc., and I certainly haven't noticed a decline in content (I browse Top ~6 Hours).
I realize my personal experience doesn't equate to these problems not existing, but I do get the strong impression that people are exaggerating greatly.
I've been active for a month and in my opinion too many users have radicalised and extremist mindsets, but other than that it's alright.
Going back to reddit would mean to install that unbearable app they have and having to deal with incompetent admins, so I will stay here for some time.
I can see why it's off-putting for a lot of people though.
Exactly my experience as well. Sure, I don't have infinite scroll, but I also don't feel like an algorithm is trying to make me angry. When I get responses, they're typically thoughtful or on topic.
infinite scroll
Depends on the client you are using.
For phone or tablets try using the Voyager native app.
For browser try m.lemmy.world which is just the web version of Voyager.
There are other clients like old.lemmy.world for that “authentic” feel.
honestly it's replaced reddit for me in a good way, because it has just enough new content that I can check it before bed every day and scroll for a bit, but not enough to where I spend entire lunch breaks on it. sometimes I go days without even checking it. if anything it's made my relationship with my browser / phone healthier than reddit.
Exactly. Lemmy is an anti-doomscrolling platform and that's very healthy and amazing.
I somehow replaced reddit with instagram reels and youtube shorts.
I just discovered Lemmy, and I'm so happy about it. Instagram replaced Reddit for me these last five months, and I can really feel how detrimental it is for me. It's like an ADHD-machine. No community, no discussion, just this as quick and loud phase as possible vibe. You look through one recipe video and you get recipes for several days. People dancing and dancing with huge smiles and these creepy eyes. Honestly it's all so dystopian.
So keeping on with Instagram is not an option, going back to reddit is not an option - and I was really considering becoming like this person who is never in his phone, really mentally healthy, but wildly uninformed about the world and the general discussion 😅
The feel of this place with the Sync app is just so * chefs kiss *. Feels like what reddit was.
Ah, they got ya by the dopamine balls
Yeah they do. Would you believe me if i said giving up social media is harder than giving up nicotine?
Give yourself some grace, yes corporate social media is addictive and yes it is easy to get lost mindlessly scrolling but the important question to ask is why is your brain so exhausted and stressed that mindlessly scrolling is the only thing you really have the mental energy to do so much of the time?
Western society repeatedly slams through the narrative that social media addiction is the reason people are miserable and it is all a pathetic attempt to distract us from the fact that our lives suck because of actual horrible things like not being able to afford rent, being in endless debt, not being able to afford healthcare and any number of other awful stresses.
If you need to blob out and scroll after getting out of your shitty job that pays shit where you are treated like shit and sitting in shitty traffic on the way home for who knows how long that’s on society for only providing predatory options that abuse you.
For a lot of people the only thing they actually have the energy to do after work every night is mindlessly scroll, it is a grace that people at least have that to turn to even if it is predatory. It is a symptom not the core issue.
100%, all I really want is something I can look at and perhaps sensibly chuckle at when I have a few minutes... Not a pasasitic brain worm that really wants me to pay attention to it.
Smaller communities aren't necessarily a bad thing. Compared to reddit I rarely feel like I'm commenting into the void.
Or into the thunderdome where no matter what you say, someone will fight you for it
Them's fightin' words, pal!
Honestly, good. The Internet was better when people were spread out across many small message board and chat rooms. The golden age of the Internet was when you'd do a search for something and 500 different forms and little websites would pop up.
Now's it's all reddit, "X," and shitty corporate owned nonsense. We turned 2020 Internet into 90's cable TV.
Gonna add a comment to my upvote: I agree with this so fucking much. I look back at the joyous days when I had... fuck if I know how many websites, each dedicated to its own thing, most with its own userbase, so unique and so defined. The only good thing about Reddit for me was gaming communities that, unfortunately, replaced actual forums that once allowed me to engage with passionate people and look for relevant info, even if it's been years since its creation.
It's probably just me being unaware, but gaming communities these days feel dead outside their respective subreddits and some Discord servers - and the latter is an even worse experience because the form factor of an endless IRC-clone that actually seems to save chat history is pretty fucking dumb more than it is convenient. If anyone has any suggestions there, shoot.
Reddit is like that ex the whole lemmy isn't over yet while loudly drunkenly screaming "I'm so over them!".
Advice: focus on yourself and your content.
This isn't a good analogy at all.
If it should be forcibly used, like, reddit is an ex, then fuck no we're not over that ex. They took our home that we built and destroyed it.
me unloading every meme I've ever stolen because it drives engagement
o7
Nah, fuck spez forever. That sentiment should never die. I hope a decade after reddit goes bankrupt, he can't leave his home without getting the phrase screamed at him
We can decide to never go back to our ex and also warn others if it comes up, while still moving on with our lives. However, if we're just bringing it up out of nowhere, we're still hung up on them.
There's hundreds of us! Hundreds!
But hey, apparently that's enough, I haven't been bored on Lemmy yet. And as the enshittification of Reddit continues there might well be some other exodus.
Reddit is for Porn. I got my year-thing and scrolled for 2 million bananas. I’m only subscribed to Porn and have been clicking on 1 or 2 things from MapPorn that got suggested to me while browsing through the ad-infested home feed. Have a guess on what they said was the post I liked more than the "The Gorilla Grip and Twist 5000“ I’ve spent months watching.
Fuck u/spez and fuck Tencent.
You know what? Fuck the enshittification of the internet too.
Yeah, this fuck Spez thing is cool and justified and all, but we all should be really more worried about Tencent 😳
Some of you who are complaining Lemmy are seeing though rose-tinted glasses about what reddit was like back in the day. The majority of the site was never good, and it had always had plenty of embarassing/messed up things on there that you had to sift through, but it's a different, sterile kind of bad now.
Here are a couple of reminders of what reddit was actually like, in no particular order.
This is why I would never admit to using reddit in public, and until recent years, I would imagine most people won't.
So if anyone complains about how the current content on Lemmy is driving people away, remember, Lemmy is positively TAME compared to this supposedly "Golden Era" of reddit.
Reddit Atheists make me wish there was a God
Being on Lemmy make me realise I was addicted to the front page of r*ddit having something new everytime I refreshed
Now I sort by top/6hours - reduced my screen time and see more quality things
It will be sad if peoples leave but if the top stay It is enough
Lemmy is losing users, but Reddit is using losers.
Lurker here. This is my first post. I ain't leaving either.
I saw a discussion the other day that may have been part of it. They were pointing out that many users when first joining lemmy created accounts on multiple instances. Whether they needed to find a community they preferred or do to ddos attacks and other issues causing outages a lot of those accounts have likely become inactive more as time went by. So the numbers may not be decreasing so much as been inflated by individuals coming up as multiple active users early on. I haven't looked into how they are verifying what users are active though, so it could be wrong. If someone knows more please respond.
Or at least, if you visit reddit, don't click on any ads or contribute in a meaningful way. In addition, never directly link to reddit. In a way, all your actions that affect reddit in any way should be to the detriment of reddit. It's like trying to cut down a sequoia with a sharp pebble, but even small livestock shits.
Who clicks ads? I don't think I've ever clicked a single ad on purpose