From my own experience with Lemmy, I can absolutely see why it’s declining.

Lemmy is packed full of miserable people constantly calling for violence. 90% of the feed is packed full of US politics, it doesn’t matter how many filters I use I still see that greasy orange cunt’s face every time I open Lemmy.

The amount of hostility towards outsiders just getting into Lemmy is astounding, and I’ve absolutely seen the whole “quality over quantity” crap that only drives people away from the platform. The IT tech snobbery is also incredibly offputting to people who aren’t tech enthusiests.

In short, Lemmy has a toxic shithead problem that a platform this small can’t afford if it wants to survive long term.

Reddit refugee here. I’ve been banned three times in 2 weeks for erroneous applications of nebula’s policies. They appear to be going through a self-destructive phase. All you need to be is a viable alternative to a dumpster fire and deliver a clear valuable alternative.

Well, good news - I’m brand new and decided I’m not resubbing to Relay so I’m effectively off Reddit since the official mobile app is garbage.

Web banners are the way to go

For me I deleted my account a month ago after 2 years of lemmy. I forgot about this account and jerboa install, the only community sub is this one haha.

I figure I’ll just say why I left, this place became a depressing shit hole.

The communities aren’t niche enough because it’s not big enough, so it’s just a shit experience. I’m just going to look to old school forums again. Phpbb you must still be out there…

I figure I’ll still keep this account in case I need to use it for something useful. One never knows when they’ll get lost on the seas and need some directions.

The culture wars have reached the fediverse, and it’s making me less happy to be here. I don’t want to hang out in places where people use slurs and insults, even if they’re not aimed at me. I’m seeing more casual misogyny/misandry, more casual use of the r**** slur, more perfectionist gatekeeping, more assumptions, and just less good-faith comments in general.

I’d advertise, but I’m starting to look for an alternative to lemmy.

…I am drifting away from Lemmy myself.

Political communities are echo chambers like Reddit, in a different color. Discussing tech or helping others is better, but still feels like talking in circles.

Wholesome subs like /c/SuperBowl are sublime, but I mostly lurk there.

Information hygiene is awful. Big subs upvote tabloids and Tweets to the sky, as long as they align with their beliefs. I just saw a discussion on a not-obviously AI generated photo with the community sentiment of “misinformation? Who cares. It’s a pro-lefty meme, so spread it.”

Anyway, all this scrolling and impulse commenting eats time. I get the same feeling of shouting into a black hole that I get on corporate social media.

Much of this is my fault, though.

I have several niches I intend to make original posts for, but never do.

It’s somewhere in the giant pile of my IRL executive dysfunction :’(

It seems strange that these two curves so closely match eachother in shape.

When 6month active users drop that means 6 months ago a user stopped using the platform.
When monthly active users drop that means a month ago a user stopped using the platform.
So this would suggest that there is a correlation between user attrition 6 months ago and last month.

Wait till Reddit fucks up again, there will be an influx of users.

I think part of the issue is new users not understanding or feeling comfortable with the fediverse (myself included a while ago). Even after searching for a bit and looking it up I can barely get how it works, but there’s really no guide with the common terms anywhere, how to get started, the difference between platforms and what they have in common etc. The benefits are the first thing you hear about, but they seem more like jargon terms than actually anything functional.

Reddit has better accessibility and user retainment, alongside with a library of old posts that are good for searching some niche stuff up.

For example, if I were to get a friend into lemmy, I’m not really sure how I can explain it to them, or where to start other than the copy paste “decentralized” “federated” stuff. It doesn’t really answer stuff like who moderates it, develops it, owns it, or what’s the difference between lemmy, piefed mbin, how do they interact with each other.
I believe that an introductory “oficial” post on the front of each platform in layman’s terms would be great to get new users to stay.

I’m feeling very burnt out. Lemmy is kinda an endless stream of political doom and gloom. For context, I’m in the US and already stressed out by our political situation. But I don’t come here to see more doom and gloom. It’s getting to the point where I think I need to get off for my mental health.

Then there are all the people who if you don’t agree exactly with their opinion they downvote you to hell. You have left leaning politics but not my flavor of left? Downvote! You hate enshitification and big tech privacy practices, but you use a single piece of software that isn’t FOSS? Downvote!

It’s so exhausting. I absolutely hate Reddit but I miss going on there and just laughing at how someone’s TV is too high. I miss laughing at how some restaurant serves food of shovels instead of plates.

And that’s not even getting into the lack of content. That part I understand requires users like myself to be as active as possible. But it’s hard being active when I feel so burnt out from the other stuff here.

Tbh, idk if these issues are specific to Lemmy or just the internet as a whole. I can only speak to the slice of the internet I find myself in. But I just wanna see people that are excited about things: photography, 3d printing, weird keyboards, etc. And that exists here, but it’s drowned out by all the doom and gloom.

My two cents is that more users oughta establish new communities when they find the absence of one. Even if they don’t have the time to devote for moderating it, as people join the responsibilities can be allocated among the early adopters. Especially those with strong political and moral backgrounds (to mitigate abuses of power like those infamously cultivated over at Reddit).

While (I think) I totally understand what you are saying here…

… Yeah I’m honestly fine with lemmy just being more or less a tiny cluster of neo forums.

I like the cozy.

At the same time… from I guess a less selfish perspective… yeah, this is the exact time an alternative to Reddit and other corpo social media needs to be popularized.

But, somewhat alleviating myself from that… I don’t really know anybody that I could ‘word of mouth’ spread lemmy to, that I haven’t already.

And I’m too crippled to put stickers on really anything outside my own apartment, lol.

Hot take: the biggest issue is actually ever entering a community and seeing zero comments. Most reddit addiction stems from wanting to read comments, so I think people should add a comment to something if they’re upvoting and they see that the thread has zero comments.

Nothing eliminates enthusiasm like seeing 0 comments on every post in a community, especially if that community is driven by bots.

Every person that keeps saying it’s good that there is no one here sounds like scrooge in my head going,
“Good, all to decrease the surplus population”