Honestly a lot of it is probably people getting comfortable lurking again, Lemmy only counts post and comments as active users
Let’s look at some numbers and do some napkin math:
Currently, the top post of Lemmy can usually get a little more than 2K upvotes, which puts Lemmy at about late 2010 to early 2011 reddit level of activity, which is right before reddit hits its explosive growth phase in 2012 with SOPA, Kony, and the Obama AMA. While active user count has been going down, the amount of post and comments have both been steadily going up.
You also have to realize that in more than a decade, there was never a reddit alternative that has EVER hit this level of activity. (unless you count 9gag or the_donald for some reason.)
That is a very astute observation, and I would not worry about the temporary decline for this very reason.
Also, looking at your username… ”can somebody please find Margot Robbie so that I can make sense of all this”
That’s esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie to you!
How can we grow lemmy? I would honestly interact here a lot more if we had an active ML community like reddit or twitter.
But since it is a small community, maybe we can do interactive things more often?
I’m one of the people who has stopped coming here. I’ll keep visiting occasionally but the lack of content and pro-east/anti-west rhetoric is just as irritating as the maga/conspiracy crowds on reddit.
Do you visit here/Reddit for some news alongside other stuff, or more other stuff than news?
If the latter, you can somewhat avoid the rhetoric back & forth by blocking out a lot of the news communities, but then you do run into the general content problem more (especially if you’re also blocking memes).
I’ve been looking for more specific subjects now but generally I just browse active/top/hot all. Reddit is getting really bad…
Yeah… I’ve also never watched star trek, or used Linux, or had Firefox and browsing is all that.
I’ve done all of those but none of them are interests of mine. I like the odd reference but linux is an OS… it doesn’t get more boring than that for me.
lemmy still isnt nearly as good as reddit was by a long shot. niche communities suck, porn sucks, c/all content isnt bad but if you scroll once youll just repeat everything on refresh.
but god damn the reddit app is terrible now and the content sucks there now too it literally feels like its trying to be a tik tok clone.
Quit porn
Lemmy is neither popular nor heavily advertised, so people join at a slow rate
On the other hand, the amount political discussions, Hexbear, and lack of content result in disinterested people leaving Lemmy and joining Reddit
So the user count is decreasing because Reddit refugees are leaving faster than new people are joining
deleted by creator