Is the number of Lemmy users increasing?
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So Piefed sends me a PM when actions have been taken against my account/content?
Honestly I do not know - Notifications on PieFed, along with searching, are both features that are still a bit wonky and behind everything else. Side-note: you will legit want to keep your old Lemmy account, and use it especially for searching for content, and also if you choose piefed.social whenever that goes down for upgrades, which it does far more often than a normal instance (it literally says that btw, it deploys new features sooner than other instances so it is the "test bed" to try them out:-D but if that bothers you then use one of the other ones like piefed.zip, piefed.world, etc.).
So that one may be a bad example for me to use... but on the other hand, Lemmy has been out for YEARS and that feature requested for YEARS, whereas PieFed is still being built and new features are added WEEKLY. So I would expect to see that feature "soon" on PieFed, whereas on Lemmy I would expect to see it "never" (b/c of the authoritarian mindset precluding them even wanting to do it). Just like so many other of the continually growing set of features offered by PieFed.
Not to get too deep into the tankie bashing, but nevertheless it does seem worth pointing out that the philosophies of the Lemmy devs have gotten them into some financial trouble, as people do not want to interact with them, e.g. to first learn the super-difficult (even compared to C++!!) Rust coding language and then try to contribute code. In contrast, pretty much every programmer already knows Python and so a lot of people can - and do - contribute to PieFed.
TLDR: PieFed is so much newer than Lemmy and honestly it is a bit behind in some ways, but even so PieFed is already running circles around Lemmy in not only the pace of development but also the raw set of features already developed.
And if I can add: even Reddit stopped adding features YEARS ago, unless you count things like those Doge coins that generate profit for the company but do not add anything new to the user-base. To see a thread-based forum platform actively adding brand-new features... damn it is so refreshing! (and yes Lemmy does that too, but on the scale of YEARS rather than, again, mere WEEKS)
wrote last edited by [email protected]How is Lemmy's code actually licensed? If it's GPL or somesuch, someone can just fork it and add the missing features. There's some amount of work needed for keeping up to changes in Lemmy's main branch, but it's still reasonably easy work. (Assuming you can code, of course
)EDIT: The licence is this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_License
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Wdym "doesnt complain about wroh syntax"?
Well syntax error may be not the right wording, I am talking about stuff like unused variables, multiple semicolons, multiple declarations of variables, changing type of variables mid-code, dead code after return, return type mismatch etc.
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But it takes more time to develop it. This is why I like Go, which has a quite nice DX and is fast.
If you have a build server that builds every commit you push, you can work on other bugs or features in the meantime without needing more time.
And as soon as you have to search bugs in a big python project, you will use up all the "saved time" pretty fast.
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It's great to see you still posting on the Threadiverse! Okay so you've been doing it for awhile I guess but I've been sick myself so not staying up with things, anyway it's still great to see!!
You may want to think about it from the ground up: a lot of the need for Tesseract was due to things like the strict authoritian stance of the tankie devs - e.g. not providing a means to truly block all users from an instance, or not showing alternative image text, or not embedding video playbacks - forcing you to find creative solutions to that problem (note PieFed does all of those things mentioned, usually not as comprehensively implemented as well as Tesseract does it but at least to some degree, e.g. Peer tube and YouTube videos can embedd but not Loops ones). Maybe now Tesseract would not have to be an entire alternative UI front-end - especially when the development pace of PieFed is so rapid in comparison to Lemmy that would increase your difficulty of keeping up - but instead rather a "theme", combined with changes to the underlying codebase that would affect all of the users of PieFed instead of only some of them? These devs I believe would be much more friendly and receptive to your ideas:-).
Although I am not a developer like you so too far away from the problem to see it anywhere close to clearly like you will, as you get into it, but wanted to throw out that oddball idea from left field in case it helps jar your thinking along creative lines. Remember to do six impossible things before breakfast each day!
But most important of all, if I can add, would be for you to enjoy it!!!
Good points.
I don't have a full plan yet (just the general idea of a plan), but when I start the journey to Piefed, it'll probably be from the ground up or very close to that. I already need to update the codebase from Svelte 4 to Svelte 5 which is a pretty big job due to the fundamental and breaking changes between those two versions.
The components that make up Tesseract (posts, comments, sidebars, everything) are also all heavily tied to Lemmy's type definitions. To support Piefed, I'd have to de-couple the components in the code from Lemmy's type def and add in an abstraction layer (both for future-proofing and to make it possible to support both if I wanted to).
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I do feel itās increasing, and not to mention, I love scrolling through Lemmy more than Reddit these past few days, I noticed.
One thing I've noticed is that on reddit, if I post a comment it'll get either zero votes or a thousand, with next to no correlation between the number and how useful or well thought-out the comment was. On Lemmy it seems a lot more consistent, as though people here are actually paying attention? That and/or The Dreaded Algorithm hits a lot harder on Reddit.
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Have you been keeping a record?
I don't, but I do get the feeling that it is.
Also you can check FediDB.
Another factor is this year's canvas and last year's.
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not really, since the great purges in the spring thats where we had a huge boost, the shadowbans and sitewide ban seemed to have died down for now, although the SB are increasing in the background, we might see another increase if reddit does another major purge. although instances dying ive seen less content overall(especially with ee gone)
One of the main things that drove me away from Reddit was the sense that they're really pushing the buttons to hone it into a pure content creation service for AI bros and advertisers.
That is to say, most subs do not want you just hanging out and chatting to people like they're your friends. You have to generate content, and you have to do it in the approved sub format, and if you don't like it you can fuck off. So, I fucked off.
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In recent weeks, I have posted an absolutely staggering amount of content on Lemmy.
My goal is simply to support the platform. I hate huge corporations.
Now I'm taking a break. I won't post anything or I'll post very little (I still feel a little guilty!! Who will post new content
?)But I need to focus on improving my own life and relax.
However... I'm just curious.
Is the number of Lemmy users actually increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Is that data even available?
Edit: I will still post stuff. I'll just post a lot less!
Lemmy will never really grow beyond what it is now. Even if there was another influx of users, the retention rate is going to be low and the amount of active users is going to be even lower. It will forever remain a niche platform for 3 reasons:
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It's made by and for people on the far left, tech/privacy nerds, and people who have been kicked out of Reddit. Because of this, the actual active users on here tend to fall into of these 3 groups, and they define Lemmy's culture, and this includes the developers. Because of this, much of content on here revolve around niche topics and so there isn't much here to appeal to the mainstream.
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It is fundamentally flawed by design. There are bunch of different communities on different instances about the same topic, and there is no way to consolidate them. Because of this, you have a bunch of dead communities that operate as independent nodes, instead of having centralized communities that are big and active. This issue would've been solved if Lemmy was designed to have each instance be a community in of itself (AskLemmy has its own instance and so does tech, gaming, and so on), but instead we have the current implementation.
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Lemmy has many of the problems that drive people away from Reddit. Sure, Lemmy isn't a greedy corporation, which is nice, but it still has terminally online powermods with little to no accountability, a hostile and negative community, weird/extreme echo chambers that make most people cringe, and so on. If you sign up for Lemmy, you're going to get the same problems but with a worse experience because it's way smaller and has less content, so why would you come to Lemmy instead of making another Reddit account?
I just don't see Lemmy every becoming mainstream or overtaking Reddit. It's already been 6 years since the start of Lemmy's development, and 2 years since the big influx of users from Reddit's API fiasco, and it STILL has to rely on the same dozen or so people spamming the platform to keep it barely active. Lemmy won't collapse, but it also won't be more than what it is now, at least not any time soon.
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<rant>
I work in IT, user support. I've seen so many users still using AOL, Yahoo or ISP email accounts that were created for them automatically; they can't figure out basic things like setting up Gmail with MFA or downloading Outlook for work from the app store. More importantly, they just don't care; their eyes glaze over the moment you mention something like encryption (hacker talk to them) or privacy (you must be hiding something). They cannot tell the difference between Firefox or Chrome (all browsers are Internet Explorer). And these people are college educated doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc without a clue how technology works. I've changed the Chrome or Firefox icon to Internet Explorer on thousands of computers because even after giving them tutorial after tutorial, as soon as I leave the site, they are clicking that damn blue E and loading up MSNBC...
</rant>If a 'professional' can't even find a file in a computer, should we really allow them to be a part of our society? They could be a danger for us all.
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That + I have begun to loathe the average āuserā there + the Admin AI bot decided my comment making commentary on Redditās generally poor culture through very thick ironic language constituted āharassmentā and perma-banned me. My 14 year old account - 2 āoffensesā (one was valid) and itās gone. Iāve appealed but it has been 8 days with no action.
Itās also just āpeopleā parroting the same cold take like itās hot over and over to farm karma. Yes Trump sucks, yes Epstein files need to be released, yes progressive policy, but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys? IRL is miserable enough lmao.
Ban-happy power tripping mods, recycled low-effort content, a generally discouraging attitude toward nuanced takes and critical thinning, and an absurd amount of bots and propaganda has really made me want to migrate. Anyways Iām here now, and I hope to contribute to this platform in a constructive and positive way! I welcome any pointers or advice!
Welcome!
There are good Lemmy apps if you don't have one yet. You can search "for Lemmy" to see most of them (in the Android play store at least). I like Voyager for Lemmy.
but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys?
You might want to block some keywords then, as there's also a lot of American politics on Lemmy. You can filter most of it that way.
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Lemmy will never really grow beyond what it is now. Even if there was another influx of users, the retention rate is going to be low and the amount of active users is going to be even lower. It will forever remain a niche platform for 3 reasons:
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It's made by and for people on the far left, tech/privacy nerds, and people who have been kicked out of Reddit. Because of this, the actual active users on here tend to fall into of these 3 groups, and they define Lemmy's culture, and this includes the developers. Because of this, much of content on here revolve around niche topics and so there isn't much here to appeal to the mainstream.
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It is fundamentally flawed by design. There are bunch of different communities on different instances about the same topic, and there is no way to consolidate them. Because of this, you have a bunch of dead communities that operate as independent nodes, instead of having centralized communities that are big and active. This issue would've been solved if Lemmy was designed to have each instance be a community in of itself (AskLemmy has its own instance and so does tech, gaming, and so on), but instead we have the current implementation.
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Lemmy has many of the problems that drive people away from Reddit. Sure, Lemmy isn't a greedy corporation, which is nice, but it still has terminally online powermods with little to no accountability, a hostile and negative community, weird/extreme echo chambers that make most people cringe, and so on. If you sign up for Lemmy, you're going to get the same problems but with a worse experience because it's way smaller and has less content, so why would you come to Lemmy instead of making another Reddit account?
I just don't see Lemmy every becoming mainstream or overtaking Reddit. It's already been 6 years since the start of Lemmy's development, and 2 years since the big influx of users from Reddit's API fiasco, and it STILL has to rely on the same dozen or so people spamming the platform to keep it barely active. Lemmy won't collapse, but it also won't be more than what it is now, at least not any time soon.
I feel like part of it also is that Lemmy isn't designed for anywhere near the traffic that Reddit gets. For instance, Lemmy maintained Reddit's mod power structure based on mod service length.
Also Lemmy hasn't really done a lot to build spam fighting measures. If the user base grows 10x the current size, I can see spam becoming a bigger problem which could affect usability.
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Lemmy will never really grow beyond what it is now. Even if there was another influx of users, the retention rate is going to be low and the amount of active users is going to be even lower. It will forever remain a niche platform for 3 reasons:
-
It's made by and for people on the far left, tech/privacy nerds, and people who have been kicked out of Reddit. Because of this, the actual active users on here tend to fall into of these 3 groups, and they define Lemmy's culture, and this includes the developers. Because of this, much of content on here revolve around niche topics and so there isn't much here to appeal to the mainstream.
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It is fundamentally flawed by design. There are bunch of different communities on different instances about the same topic, and there is no way to consolidate them. Because of this, you have a bunch of dead communities that operate as independent nodes, instead of having centralized communities that are big and active. This issue would've been solved if Lemmy was designed to have each instance be a community in of itself (AskLemmy has its own instance and so does tech, gaming, and so on), but instead we have the current implementation.
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Lemmy has many of the problems that drive people away from Reddit. Sure, Lemmy isn't a greedy corporation, which is nice, but it still has terminally online powermods with little to no accountability, a hostile and negative community, weird/extreme echo chambers that make most people cringe, and so on. If you sign up for Lemmy, you're going to get the same problems but with a worse experience because it's way smaller and has less content, so why would you come to Lemmy instead of making another Reddit account?
I just don't see Lemmy every becoming mainstream or overtaking Reddit. It's already been 6 years since the start of Lemmy's development, and 2 years since the big influx of users from Reddit's API fiasco, and it STILL has to rely on the same dozen or so people spamming the platform to keep it barely active. Lemmy won't collapse, but it also won't be more than what it is now, at least not any time soon.
About #2: you have any suggestion on how you could achieve that and still be federated?
It seem like you would need a central "oficial" instance that defines who is the "real" AskLemmy, etc...
But yeah, I really want to hear if you have ideas on how achieve this and maintain it as a federation.
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Welcome!
There are good Lemmy apps if you don't have one yet. You can search "for Lemmy" to see most of them (in the Android play store at least). I like Voyager for Lemmy.
but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys?
You might want to block some keywords then, as there's also a lot of American politics on Lemmy. You can filter most of it that way.
Thank you! I stumbled upon Voyager and itās been giving me some major nostalgia for the Apollo Reddit app lol.
Yea filtering may be the way to go. The problem is like to stay in the loop and engage in SOME politics, just everything in moderation. Hate when my feed on Reddit for example, is ENTIRELY Trump-related or politicized news. Itās just a bit draining after a while. I appreciate the heads up! Iām glad that I can already tell the community is a bit better about it here because none of my fellow leftists have commented jumping down my throat saying ātoo badā
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Well, I myself still use Reddit for my hobby since on lemmy thereās like 4 of us FPV pilots.
But generally: spread the word, if thereās a community youād like that doesnāt exist - make it yourself
Yea, it seems for the more niche topics/interests/hobbies, Reddit may still be required.
Itās annoying because Iāve always been a lurker-commenter and donāt really post, but if I want to be the change I wanna see in the world ā Iām going to have to start making posts here
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About #2: you have any suggestion on how you could achieve that and still be federated?
It seem like you would need a central "oficial" instance that defines who is the "real" AskLemmy, etc...
But yeah, I really want to hear if you have ideas on how achieve this and maintain it as a federation.
If I were to redesign Lemmy, I would design it be like Reddit, but without the corporate centralization, so basically each subreddit would be it's own instance, and they can federate or defedarate with other subreddits. I wouldn't design it to where each instance tries to be it's own full fledged Reddit alternative like right now. That's a much cleaner design, but the big issue with it is that hosting the instances is a pain and so most people can't do it.
Therefore, my much more realistic alternative, is to add tags. Each community would have a limited number of relevant tags (could be required to create a community), and users can view and follow these tags. These tags would help streamline all these different communities across Lemmy under one label, which is the result we're trying to achieve. I would also add another tab on the home feed called "tags" where users can view and filter all the posts from the all tags they follow.
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I feel like part of it also is that Lemmy isn't designed for anywhere near the traffic that Reddit gets. For instance, Lemmy maintained Reddit's mod power structure based on mod service length.
Also Lemmy hasn't really done a lot to build spam fighting measures. If the user base grows 10x the current size, I can see spam becoming a bigger problem which could affect usability.
While I agree with you that Lemmy is vulnerable to spam, I don't think it'll a problem any time soon. Even if the userbase grows ten fold, that would still only be around 350k users. That's not enough to attract any major attention. Any spam Lemmy would get would come internally from users feuding with the devs or each other.
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Welcome!
There are good Lemmy apps if you don't have one yet. You can search "for Lemmy" to see most of them (in the Android play store at least). I like Voyager for Lemmy.
but like cmon, can we have SOME days where we can escape and just enjoy the internet guys?
You might want to block some keywords then, as there's also a lot of American politics on Lemmy. You can filter most of it that way.
Holy shit thereās a lot of tankies on here lol
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Holy shit thereās a lot of tankies on here lol
Hey I just saw your conversation over on [email protected]. You'll want to stay well clear of both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net to avoid most of the stupid tanky shit. Most other instances seem pretty cool.
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Hey I just saw your conversation over on [email protected]. You'll want to stay well clear of both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net to avoid most of the stupid tanky shit. Most other instances seem pretty cool.
Lol thank you for the heads up. Iāve already made a new account on lemmy.world and immediately blocked the entire lemmy.ml instance loll. Iāll be adding hexbear now
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If a 'professional' can't even find a file in a computer, should we really allow them to be a part of our society? They could be a danger for us all.
Good question! I say yes, because a functioning society is formed from the combined knowledge, skills, and efforts of it's unique and diverse constituents, each of whom have strengths and weaknesses. However, if one does not have technical aptitude, then they should not be in a position that decides or controls technology - there are plenty of other non-techy jobs they could do, like farming or fishing.
