The graphs show, BTW, that between April 2025 and and December 2025 the number of Lemmy users who have been active in the past month has moved from 54 000 to 35 000 and that the number of PieFed users who have been active in the past month has moved from 400 to 1700. (And for Mbin: 900 to 700).
Let’s make sure the combined number of these three will be at least 60 000 next year this time!
Yeah, I had to figure out how to find the originals of those two diagrams to see the y-axis. But the numbers are what I got hovering the mouse cursor over tge original diagrams, rounded to the two (different… Oops.) accuracies you see there.
That will never happen, and if you want to find out why, listen to the complaints that people make over on r/RedditAlternatives.
Chief among them are (1) tankie devs, (2) too political, and (3) too toxic. To see what they mean, try Google search (what a typical mainstream normie would use) for the word “Lemmy”, which nowadays takes you to Lemmy.world but for the longest time went to Lemmy ml. Which by default to a user without a login shows Local posts rather than Global.
Now imagine what that looks like just before an election in a Western nation… and you can entirely understand why members of Western capitalist, democratic nations, do not feel welcomed in a space that constantly jokes about murdering or at least cheering on the mass deaths of people that fit exactly that description. No I don’t (just) mean billionaires - I mean anyone who participates in usual society.
We who use blocklists forget what the experience looks like to an outside, traditional mainstream user.
Lemmy will continue to shrink, and the user base mostly seems either outright pleased or at least resigned to that fact. If you are not, then good luck being a part of the change that you want to see - which you already are, just by having chosen a PieFed (rather than Lemmy) instance!:-)
Edit: to add one more point, it is the Paradox of Intolerance, or another name for it is the Nazi bar effect. Imagine asking your Jewish friends to join you in the corner of a known Nazi bar where you hand out. Yes you can walk past all the actual, literal Nazis and enjoy your little corner apart from them… but do not be so surprised if your friends refuse to join you there?
I think the nazi bar argument holds only partially for Lemmy. But yes, I do largely agree that especially lemmy.ml really does a stellar job tarnishing the image of this section of Fediverse.
Mostly the context here is that it is something that people report as their reason for giving up on the Threadiverse. In that sense, it even being true or not is irrelevant in that it is a problem that substantially hinders growth either way.
That said, I do sadly think it is true. I often block communities where this happens but whenever I take a peek at them anyway I see daily calls for actual murder even in like meme communities. Separately from the utility of such actions, it becomes wearisome to always have to read or be forced to block the vast majority of the Threadiverse in order to avoid such. Case in point: 🌽 (an effort to fight against all the doom and gloom USA politics posting).
Edit: but here is a test that you can do. Imagine you are a mainstream normie user, scroll through All or better yet just go straight to !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net and reply to a comment there something to the effect that things were slightly better under Biden’s presidency than under Trump. When I said something the tiniest bit positive (something like at least he lowered gas prices and that was something), I got replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, long after I stopped responding. And then I did the same thing in a community on lemmygrad.ml. After which I nearly gave up on Lemmy entirely, because it simply wasn’t fun (or worthwhile to me).
Now arguably that is not so much my fault, nor theirs either as that is the purpose of that community and they should be free to do as they please? The issue there - setting aside for a moment the most major considerations of an echo chamber effect where edgelords are encouraged to spill their vitriol rather than speak in a more measured capacity - seems to me to be a mismatch between the usual expectations of someone new coming over from the likes of Reddit, Threads/Facebook, etc. Getting dunked on when you never had an opportunity to read the community sidebar text (Lemmy won’t show it, if you arrive at the post via All, plus many apps seem to go to some lengths to actively hide it behind like 5 clicks in various sub-menus) is not a pleasant experience, and when you see that >90% of posts on Lemmy, if they are not Linux or anime or furry, are related to politics especially USA politics, then I can well understand why someone new does not want to dig through all that trash just to find something worthwhile to read.
Face it: setting aside a superior protocol, what actual content do we have here, that would entice someone to come her from Reddit? We are toxic, and the tools are not easy to use. (… YET! Though PieFed is changing all of that, e.g. the introductory wizard for new users, yay!) Which is why defederating from places like Hexbear is something I strongly support, thereby making it opt-in rather than forcing people to try to find a way to make it opt-out (which on Lemmy is impossible - there is no true instance block, only a horribly misnamed community muting option, which blocks only the tiniest portion of the content from an instance, i.e. it does not in fact block it at all.)
The graphs show, BTW, that between April 2025 and and December 2025 the number of Lemmy users who have been active in the past month has moved from 54 000 to 35 000 and that the number of PieFed users who have been active in the past month has moved from 400 to 1700. (And for Mbin: 900 to 700).
Let’s make sure the combined number of these three will be at least 60 000 next year this time!
I was gonna say, without any Y-axes, these graphs mean nothing
Yeah, I had to figure out how to find the originals of those two diagrams to see the y-axis. But the numbers are what I got hovering the mouse cursor over tge original diagrams, rounded to the two (different… Oops.) accuracies you see there.
That will never happen, and if you want to find out why, listen to the complaints that people make over on r/RedditAlternatives.
Chief among them are (1) tankie devs, (2) too political, and (3) too toxic. To see what they mean, try Google search (what a typical mainstream normie would use) for the word “Lemmy”, which nowadays takes you to Lemmy.world but for the longest time went to Lemmy ml. Which by default to a user without a login shows Local posts rather than Global.
Now imagine what that looks like just before an election in a Western nation… and you can entirely understand why members of Western capitalist, democratic nations, do not feel welcomed in a space that constantly jokes about murdering or at least cheering on the mass deaths of people that fit exactly that description. No I don’t (just) mean billionaires - I mean anyone who participates in usual society.
We who use blocklists forget what the experience looks like to an outside, traditional mainstream user.
Lemmy will continue to shrink, and the user base mostly seems either outright pleased or at least resigned to that fact. If you are not, then good luck being a part of the change that you want to see - which you already are, just by having chosen a PieFed (rather than Lemmy) instance!:-)
Edit: to add one more point, it is the Paradox of Intolerance, or another name for it is the Nazi bar effect. Imagine asking your Jewish friends to join you in the corner of a known Nazi bar where you hand out. Yes you can walk past all the actual, literal Nazis and enjoy your little corner apart from them… but do not be so surprised if your friends refuse to join you there?
I think the nazi bar argument holds only partially for Lemmy. But yes, I do largely agree that especially lemmy.ml really does a stellar job tarnishing the image of this section of Fediverse.
Mostly the context here is that it is something that people report as their reason for giving up on the Threadiverse. In that sense, it even being true or not is irrelevant in that it is a problem that substantially hinders growth either way.
That said, I do sadly think it is true. I often block communities where this happens but whenever I take a peek at them anyway I see daily calls for actual murder even in like meme communities. Separately from the utility of such actions, it becomes wearisome to always have to read or be forced to block the vast majority of the Threadiverse in order to avoid such. Case in point: 🌽 (an effort to fight against all the doom and gloom USA politics posting).
Edit: but here is a test that you can do. Imagine you are a mainstream normie user, scroll through All or better yet just go straight to !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net and reply to a comment there something to the effect that things were slightly better under Biden’s presidency than under Trump. When I said something the tiniest bit positive (something like at least he lowered gas prices and that was something), I got replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, long after I stopped responding. And then I did the same thing in a community on lemmygrad.ml. After which I nearly gave up on Lemmy entirely, because it simply wasn’t fun (or worthwhile to me).
Now arguably that is not so much my fault, nor theirs either as that is the purpose of that community and they should be free to do as they please? The issue there - setting aside for a moment the most major considerations of an echo chamber effect where edgelords are encouraged to spill their vitriol rather than speak in a more measured capacity - seems to me to be a mismatch between the usual expectations of someone new coming over from the likes of Reddit, Threads/Facebook, etc. Getting dunked on when you never had an opportunity to read the community sidebar text (Lemmy won’t show it, if you arrive at the post via All, plus many apps seem to go to some lengths to actively hide it behind like 5 clicks in various sub-menus) is not a pleasant experience, and when you see that >90% of posts on Lemmy, if they are not Linux or anime or furry, are related to politics especially USA politics, then I can well understand why someone new does not want to dig through all that trash just to find something worthwhile to read.
Face it: setting aside a superior protocol, what actual content do we have here, that would entice someone to come her from Reddit? We are toxic, and the tools are not easy to use. (… YET! Though PieFed is changing all of that, e.g. the introductory wizard for new users, yay!) Which is why defederating from places like Hexbear is something I strongly support, thereby making it opt-in rather than forcing people to try to find a way to make it opt-out (which on Lemmy is impossible - there is no true instance block, only a horribly misnamed community muting option, which blocks only the tiniest portion of the content from an instance, i.e. it does not in fact block it at all.)
Liberal still not understanding JDPON memes is funny AF
Tldr