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Rant - it's always frustrating to see people considering 38k monthly active users as "no users"
(piefedimages.s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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I don't need anything to overtake Reddit. We don't need one platform to rule them all. I like our small corner of the internet. I like it to grow slow and organically. And it's already decentralized.
I like it too, but it would be nice to have more than one active poster on topics as general as
This is what they mean when they say no active users. Effectively, there are no active users. (And yes, the problem would be solved with more active users but for anyone who makes the plunge, they come to a fairly barren alternative.)
You open !asklemmy@lemmy.world and find random threads by all types of people, on all types of topics
https://piefed.zip/c/asklemmy/p/707393/my-gf-gave-me-one-afternoon-to-fix-this-what-do-i-do#post_replies
Absolutely, there are some communities that have some users.
But in anything, even not so niche, its a ghost town. Half of Canada just watched baseball playoffs and even in the final round, the game threads had maybe 3 people.
I don't think denying the reality of a new user's experience is helpful. It's a frustrating and solveable reality (much like our economic problems) but approaching them clear eyes seems the best approach.
You're talking to someone who's active on !football@sopuli.xyz , the most popular game on the planet, and where nobody really discussed the Euro final, one of the most prestigious tournaments worldwide.
Everybody is aware that there are topics where we miss people. I say it several times in this thread were people say they are happy with our current population.
I'm not, which is why the community we're in exists, its sole purpose is to get more people here.
All of that being said, it's still an unfair assessment to say that there are no users. It's frustrating, and that's why I posted it here.
To each their own! I think, especially to someone on reddit, we effectively count as no active users. I don't expect people to be literal especially when they are talking about the user experience. (Heck, myspace still has millions of visitors but in common conversation, almost everyone would call it dead.)
If we want more people, we should think about how others view us, and instead of being angry that they aren't being literal, maybe we can think how to play to our strengths.
I dunno, rants like this just feel like we're being angry at people for a completely reasonable take on the fediverse.
Post got removed by Reddit: https://rl.huuu.biz/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j0xkqa/lemmy_as_an_alternative_to_reddit_using/
The original text: https://www.reddit.com/r/BoycottUnitedStates/comments/1jrcrh6/lemmy_as_an_nonus_alternative_to_red_dit_using/
We've are thinking on how to promote the platform and do it every week.
https://piefed.zip/c/fedibridge/p/654415/piefed-50k-mau-network-for-gaming-discussions-communities-guide#post_replies
A post like that gets 13 comments. People aren't interested in this stuff. It's tedious, it's boring, they don't care.
But when you post about the frustration of the process, you get 107 comments.
We've done the work, but nobody cares.
Ha, very fair. For what it's worth, I imagine a good chunk of the comments are because, well, for me at least this got caught up in the "hot" sorting, which then snowballs things.
Conflict etc generates clicks and engagement, even on alt social media!
Appreciate you trying to do the work! For my part, my hackles go a little on edge whenever I see what feels like another fediverse user blaming the normies for not hanging out for our community despite being rich in Star Trek/linux/bizzare memes and (sometimes extreme) Leftie politics.
That's probably what happened.
Next time I'll just rant in the Matrix Fedibridge room.
To be fair, I'm the main sustaining poster of television@piefed.social and I hate superhero stuff.
Superhero movie kids aren't on Reddit, they're on Instagram or Tiktok
I agree, however we are currently shrinking not growing
Just FYI, lots of instances are implementing anti scraper/ai tools so the numbers are going to look wacky depending on the tracker.
Where can you monitor it?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
you can also count Mbin and PieFed, but they aren't as big
https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
https://mbin.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
Comments have been rising but users decreasing, could this be that people have settled to one account or that bots have made more comments?
Also the wave of speculative users and tourists who were only ever going to just check it out has died down while the actually invested users have settled more in.
It's not about how many people are here, it's about how engaged those who stay are.
True, I think as long as the comments are not from bots it’s looking fine. And I haven’t noticed anything like that here.
I have no doubt there is some small level of bot and other bad actor infiltration here on Lemmy too, but the big difference is there's no incentive for any sort of authority to quietly endorse said bad actors. To me the difference is that while the reddit community hates bots, Reddit loves bots. We are the community here, for the most part, so the dichotomy doesn't exist.
We still need more people here, we cannot support niche communities and as such lose that wreath of knowledge that made Reddit good.
It would be nice to know the ratio of users/bots in X, Reddit, Facebook, ... and the Fediverse. I'm pretty sure we would be surprised.
All forums can be used to influence general opinion. If there were more users here I’m sure there would be more pressure trying to get past the current safeguards. What do you think about the bot situation here?
I've seen some LLM bots here... its getting weirder...
Someone mentioned nodeBB in the Reddit thread: https://nodebb.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
The numbers seem odd, @1@activitypub.space do you think they are accurate?
most of that seems to come from https://nodebb.fediverse.observer/community.sketchucation.com
Thank you, that would make sense. Not sure if any of their communities federate with any other Threadiverse instance