Can't give precise numbers, but at least that I can notice, despite greatly filtering what I check, there's enough stuff to make running out of stuff to check rather unlikely. Besides, as I started using RSS feeds a lot recently, mainly for federated platforms (not just Lemmy ones), and the reader I use can hide posts marked as read, it's being a struggle to lower the number of posts to read in comparison to the sum of posts automatically pulled during the set up of each link.
Fediverse
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
Remember when forums would be super active with, like, 500 users?
"Millions of users" is a vanity stat. The critical mass needed to keep a discussion group alive is actually quite small -- assuming you're interested in, you know, discussing things. So, how active "Lemmy" is is entirely dependent on which topics you're interested in.
There is a point where a forum is too active and you need to either split it or implement weird and complex rules so things don't get too large.
Hasn't Lemmy sort of already accomplished that both with federated servers and communities?
Active enough 🤷♂️
The real answer: https://lemmy.ca/post/35073012
“Do you know about our lord and savior, Linux? Let me tell you about it…”
Well actually we use Arch btw...
Also, technically...
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
So active that I always recognize the 100 or so usernames that are everywhere
To be fair, that happens on Reddit as well.
You're one of us too!
These sort of comments always make me wonder who recognises my nick. A ranking of 'user-recognition' would be fun. Though obviously impractical.
We all know what that list would look like: https://feddit.org/post/3602869
TLDR version:
About 0.04 million monthly active users
Just say 40,000. Which is a pathetic number, but perfectly fine for the type of niche communities budding up here and there across all the domains connected together here.
40k users is huge. Remember, lemmy is not profit driven. We don't need to grow at all costs, we can grow naturally and sustainably.
....I kinda like it right now. Some communities of less than a 1000 have much more human responses. It nice. And not just from one server.
There are huge subreddits that are basically dead or just filled with spam. The ratio of active/passive users on Lemmy must be much much larger. A Lemmy community with 100 active members almost feels like a subreddit with 10 000 members.
A Lemmy community with 100 active members is more likely to be 100 active humans than a subreddit with 10,000 members is, based on the last time I went to Reddit: it was so, so clear that everything was either ChatGPT, or a repost of shit even I had already seen, or was just otherwise obviously not an authentic human sharing something interesting.
So yeah, not entirely surprising.
40000 is enough to be a functioning social media. most fediverse softwares don't have that much. Sure, it is not enough to have discussions over non mainstream stuff, but there are still enough people for a variety of topics.
I would have, but they asked in millions and I was being cheeky.
I don't find it pathetic, I'm quite happy with it. Sure, I'd be happy to get more but in no rush.
All I know is that i can mindlessly scroll for about 2 hours before I start hitting the NSFW content, at which point refreshing the feed sifts the new stuff to the top and is still good for another hour or so
I run into a lot of the same names, but I think that's fine (if not preferable)
The stats are irrelevant, imo. What matters is how useful lemmy is both to average users and specialty users.
Right now, the more niche the hobby/interest is, the less useful lemmy is unless it fits into the handful of subjects that lemmites grok.
That being said, for general use, lemmy is great. Plenty of memes, plenty discussion about subjects of general interest, and plenty of posts for casual scrolling on the john. In that regard, it's better than bigger forums because you don't have to scroll through a dozen fake posts to find things that interested a fellow human.
I can usually, on bad days when I'm not very mobile, spend an hour or so on lemmy before I get back to where I had previously left off. That's about the sweet spot, imo.
I'm practically a fixture on Lemmy, and I view everything sorted by newest comments so I see only new posts and posts actively being participated in through replies and I'd say it's only slightly less active than Reddit appearance wise. Surely there is less things being posted over all, but I can just refresh the page every few seconds and get entirely new posts almost every single time, barring a few hours in the middle of the week.
I know that someone has a statistic site for Lemmy that could actually show you exactly what you wanna know, but I haven't saved the URL and don't know it off the top of my head.
Can confirm that sorting by new comments makes it appear a lot more active. There's a reason why old forums' only sorting method was thread bumping.
Reddit is very quiet lately, probably due to school breaks
The dips I see on Lemmy are probably from people actually working. I at least have a job where nobody cares if I use my phone because I can still work while fucking around on it, so long as it's not in the dining room where customers can see me.
I'm an active user who post and comment regularly, and I would say that the experience is very similar to Reddit. Except for less adds and smaller numbers on the main/all page. The experience is probably very different if you're mainly a passive consumer of content.
Though I've never been active in "large" subreddits and I tend to block them from my feed. So guess I don't know what I'm missing.
The main deficiency is niche and hobby communities, they're mostly empty or missing on Lemmy.
Not sure, but compared to about a year ago, it seems more active.
It feels most active the month after June 12, 2023. Then it kinda got quieter
The active user base is trending slightly downward as a few instances have shut down recently but the amount of registered users is steadily increasing so those trends will reverse as the largest barrier to entry is just knowing about Lemmy and creating an account.
Users: 467k
MAU: 42k
Posts: 10.8m
This active
I am seeing slow and steady growth in the areas I follow.