Per the title, is Lemmy actually growing, or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
I can be very critical of the fediverse, especially where I want it to do better, but I think stagnation isn’t the right word I think ‘maintaining’ fits more. The fediverse isn’t beholden to the grow or die model capitalist projects need and it remains a space that is unique enough to warrant people coming back here, or coming here for certain reasons or content or whatever. I think the model to hope for would be continue maintaining and being ready for when the next group of people get fed up enough to follow through and come here (fediverse in general)
Genuine opinion: Who cares?
Who cares if what we enjoy is changing, at all. It’s kinda like if you go to a bowling alley, to go bowling. Do you show up and decide to bowl if there’s other people bowling or not? I’m gonna go bowling regardless, that’s why I went to the bowling alley.
I moved here during rexit and love it, but Lemmy isn’t popular in my country. That’s the reason I need other communities for local news and why Lemmy is not my everyday comunity.
Same I’d like to see the south African community on here grow
Do you speak Afrikaans? I’m an American who has a weird fascination with the worlds coolest Germanic language.
Don’t expect perpetual growth from the fediverse for one good reason:
It would cost more money.
Lemmy is self hosted and there are people who use their own personal money to host these things and have a certain amount of activity.
Doubling the users would double the cost but it would not double the usefulness for the instance owner.
Ideally growth would come in the form of new instances.
That has its drawbacks too though, federating with many, many instances will eventually cause strain.
I do want more growth via instances, but imo it’s more like a double edge sword than the salvation of a platform.
or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?
well it wouldn’t really play out like that, if Lemmy gets overtaken by a replacement (like Mbin, Piefed, or Sublinks), it would be a transition not a death
a big thing we can look forwards to right now is if Pixelfed gets better support to interact with Lemmy/etc communities/groups then we can get a big boost in userbase, even if they aren’t using the Lemmy software we’ll still be seeing their posts and comments
I wish Mastodon would improve their compatibility with Lemmy too, but they don’t seem interested
The quality of discourse is better since a year a go by a lot. Some home brew drama too.
It feels lived in now. The active users engage more. Growth for social media comes in burst anyways.
Reddit needs to do something bad again. Tiktok enjoyer is not the target audience for apub protocol based social media.
Growth for growth/s sake means very little. Steady use is way more important and Lemmy has that.
Lemmy doesn’t need to “take off” or compete with Reddit to succeed. Growth for the sake of growth holds little inherent value. Unlike commercial platforms reliant on VC funding to survive, Lemmy thrives on sustainability. What really matters is that there are enough developers to maintain the platform, people to host the server, and users to create content. With these elements in place, Lemmy can continue indefinitely without the need for explosive growth.
In fact, rapid growth could do more harm than good. A sudden influx of users often brings toxic behaviors, especially those migrating from platforms like Reddit. When new users trickle in slowly, they adapt to the existing norms and culture of the community. But when a horde arrives, they risk overwhelming and reshaping the community in ways that trample over its core values. A slow, steady stream of users allows for organic integration, preserving the essence of what makes Lemmy pleasant.
Unlike commercial platforms, open-source projects don’t rely on profit motives to survive. They’re driven by people who directly benefit from their work and are passionate about their vision. When disagreements arise, projects can be forked, allowing different groups to take them in new directions. Even if a project is abandoned, it can be revived by a new team as long as there’s a dedicated community. This flexibility and resilience make open source inherently more sustainable than commercial platforms, which can vanish overnight if funding dries up.
The Fediverse, and Lemmy within it, only needs a large enough user base to remain self-sustaining. I’d argue that it’s already well past that threshold. There’s no rush to grow rapidly. Steady progress ensures the community retains its identity and values, while the open-source nature of the platform guarantees its longevity. Lemmy isn’t just another platform; it’s a sustainable, adaptable ecosystem built to endure. I’m willing to bet that Lemmy will still be around long after Reddit crumbles to dust.
It’s rare i see something you post and agree with you, but here i am today
The intelligence of the commentary here certainly isn’t
So from what I’ve seen on Lemmy over the last year is that the quantity of posts and variety of topics feels like it’s going up. I certainly enjoy engaging on here.
Will it stagnate? I’m not sure. It might be that the monthly user levels stabilise but thats not the same as stagnate. If people are engaged and enjoying their time then it has value.
My feeling is that Lemmy will slowly grow over time. I don’t see it becoming a huge platform like Reddit anytime soon. Its feasible but it feels like for now it will remain niche.
But I also dont want to it suddenly become huge. I was on reddit for a long time and I saw it evolve from being something small and interesting to a behemoth and enshittification to make money. Small is sometimes better, and small or stable in no way means stagnation.
I agree, it’s improved quite a bit from over a year ago. I hope it doesn’t get too big. I personally like only logging in once every two days and being able to see everything important. Less content makes it much less addictive than reddit was.
What we really need is for people to put up topic focused sites and promote them as their own thing, not jusy “lemmy”. So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in, but who aren’t into things like Reddit.
The fediverse is perfect for places like that. Places where you can focus on your primary interest, but also look over the fence. But all anyone wants to do is put up general interest sites and whine about there being more than one “gaming” forum.
So many specific interests still have very active forums dedicated to them, populated by the kind of people who want to ask queations aboht and discuss the things they have interest or expertise in
I hope these types of sites eventually switch off of software like phpBB and move to software like Lemmy/Mbin
Maybe someone should make a database migration tool so posts/comments/users can be retained
It seems to be on a healthy state, there are some communities that I would like to have more content. But that’s also on me to share and contribute to the communities I would like to see.
Being a bystander on reddit for so long it’s a bit difficult to change that mindset, but I’m trying to share a bit more
Me too! Sometimes I forget that I can participate in the discussion and even post cool stuff I’m doing. After all, that’s the whole point of this kind of community.
I feel like the content is becoming more robust and the userbase is keeping up. I think it’s going to be super necessary pretty soon down the road.
Does it have to?
I would say yes, because as is the real niche communities dont have the size for larger discussions.
Mainstream communities e.g. about global news already have a decent size. And in many ways it doesn’t make much of a qualitative difference if there are 500 or 10.000 predictable comments. But many smaller communities are still mostly propped up by a few power users providing the majority of content which is not ideal for many reasons.
Maybe a bit would be nice, but I don’t want it to grow as big as Reddit got.
I mean it always will grow a little bit over time
I moved to Lemmy during the reddut exodus itsjustt become better overtime I don’t miss reddit at all. Also lots of fellow Linux and free software nerds over here and I like that.
Heck yeah!
According to fedidb.org, Lemmy has plateaued at around 43k active users over the past year.
If you ask me, though, it doesn’t matter. The Lemmy ecosystem is active and healthy.
I was about to agree with you and then add that people like me who more lurk and upvote may count as inactive because we don’t comment or post much. I just noticed that the chart only shows up to November of last year. I suspect several new people such as myself have finally found Lemmy given all that is going on and we’ll see that in the charts in a couple months.
I believe that the newest Lemmy versions count up/down voting as ‘active’
I’m pretty sure that votes count towards the MAU.
I am also more of a lurker, but try to comment occasionally to get into the statistics. (Done for this week!)
Lurkers unite!
At the back of the community.
Where we watch and only occasionally post the odd comment… When we feel like it. Maybe tomorrow.
Wow… there wasn’t more posters during the election, people just posted more?
