this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Six months after the initial reddit surge (graphs) (lemmy.ca)
submitted 10 months ago by troyunrau@lemmy.ca to c/main@lemmy.ca
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Hi folks, out of pure curiosity, I was poking some graphs.

It's been about half a year since the big API protest, so I was curious to see what Lemmy's crtitical mass looks like, what the staying power is, etc. Screenshots taken from https://the-federation.info/platform/73 on 2024-01-09. I'm posting screenshots because they're a snapshot in time, and because that stats server is very slow.

Because I'm posting on lemmy.ca, I'll post quite a few related to this instance, but it's probably more widely applicable and you can get graphs from your instance too. I'll also post some lemmy.world and lemmy.ml graphs, since they make interesting points of comparison -- biggest server, and original server.

First, lemmy-wide total users count, where this is a rolling one month window. If a user was online within the month, they count here.

First observation -- there's some jagged edges in the graph due to things popping in and out of the federation. So it's probably more useful to look at single servers. Lemmy.world came online pretty much coincidentally with the API protest and had open registration, so it makes a good data point. You can see the surge of users, then the plateau of the people who stuck around:

Lemmy.ml below has a similar curve, plus some sort of data artefact.

As does lemmy.ca, below:

I suspect the data artifact is related to the transition from 0.18 to 0.19 and something changed in the way active users was counted in between. Lemmy.world is still running 0.18.5.

Notes: The difference between the peak and the plateau is higher on lemmy.world and lemmy.ml -- I suspect this is because they were more popular places to sign up during the protest. Whereas lemmy.ca has retained more users, as a percentage. Still, the total number of active users on each server is quite low.

In the same order (total, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemmy.ca), total posts. The slope of this line represents post rate. Steeper line is better. Flat line means dead instance.

And comments. I wish there was a comments to posts ratio, which would be some indication of engagement levels. But you can sort of work it out.

Anyway, looks like post rate has decreased slightly since the initial bump, but are still looking good. But the comment rate hasn't flattened as much. So the users that were retained seem to be more engaged than the users from the initial bump. I think this is a good thing for the health of lemmy. Likewise, the growth in supported apps, improvements to the software (Scaled sort in 0.19 is night-and-day better than anything prior!), and others will allow lemmy to not only survive, but be ready for whatever influx happens next.

I want to send a special shout out to all the admins, particularly on my home instance of lemmy.ca, and the coders who keep improving things. Thanks for giving us all a home!

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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 53 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I give bonus points to anyone who did this to look at the slopes of the graph to look for inflection and change in slope... https://xkcd.com/2701/

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 11 points 10 months ago

This is great. LOL. I use the tilt method to read the tiny print on medicine bottles. they oftwn use a typface with a tiny aspect ratio and squeezed so tight together is is difficult to read. Since the letters are tall, you can tilt the bottle down and see the words with a more natural aspect ratio

[–] Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Khan Academy has a helpful guide.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The better choice is to plot the derivative. In the comments thread in the cross-posted version of this article (on lemmy.world), someone did that. Linking cross posts sucks (one of the worst things about Lemmy) -- here's a link to the user and their comment history which should help you find their graphs too: /u/skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl

[–] Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 months ago

Oh that’s just starting to learn slope, not change in slope. I’m giving a guide, not the solution. ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I suspect the data artifact is related to the transition from 0.18 to 0.19 and something changed in the way active users was counted in between. Lemmy.world is still running 0.18.5.

Yep. Pre-0.19, only posts and comments were counted as activity. 0.19 now includes voters.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah, that answers that question entirely. And is probably a good change.

For point of comparison, reddit subs count a user as active if they scrolled past any post from that sub, regardless of whether or not they interacted with anything.

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well that’s just artificially inflating numbers then.

[–] ericisshort@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

That all depends on your meaning of “active.” With most sites, just visiting while logged in would qualify the user as active, but it varies. I think viewing Lemmy content without giving feedback (votes) should still be considered activity.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

Advertisers care about eyeballs, not posts.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Btw, Lemmy.world is still on 0.18.5, which may be one reason you aren't seeing the data artifact on it, if that is due to having switched to 0.19.

Just speaking from personal experience, one reason we may not be seeing new users is the LARGE number of technical hurdles. e.g. I was on Kbin for most of the last few months but last week finally gave up on it when I could not ever visit the server (though that was only the last straw in a long line of many issues). I did a bunch of research and found that Discuss.Online was highly recommended, plus located at least in my hemisphere, though just today gave up on it too b/c none of my comments for the last two days are showing up on other servers - especially lemmy.world, but also some such as midwest.social that were running the same version of Lemmy (0.19.1). (I checked: yes they are all federated, no I am not blocked or appear in any of the affected modlogs, etc.) i.e., "% uptime" is not the only metric that matters.:-P

That said, I'm never going back to Reddit, and never did join Twitter/X - I will give up on social media entirely prior to wallowing in that filth. Technology issues aside, the people on Lemmy are worth talking to, period.

[–] roadrunner_ex@lemmy.ca 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

the people on Lemmy are worth talking to, period

no u

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, U

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

That’s how I look when my bidet starts up.

[–] roadrunner_ex@lemmy.ca 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Because the "Reddit API changes" are a big epoch in Lemmy's history (and these graphs show it), I'm really curious to see if/when there will be another mass exodus or another "big Lemmy/federation moment".

I'm putting a small amount of money on "Lemmy gets mentioned in a viral news article" ;)

[–] machinin@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

With Digg to Reddit, there were four or five waves that contributed to Reddit's growth. I imagine it will be similar.

[–] Sabata11792@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

The reddit porn ban after IPO will be a big boost. Those damn advertisers calling the shots again...

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, now that Reddit has full control over their UX, they’re absolutely going to release something that causes a shit storm again. They just don’t have the leadership or product folks that are good enough to make the UX delightful.

They’re already starting to do UX things that are pretty terrible, but nothing seems to have hit a nerve like the API charges did.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

I don't understand why their mobile application doesn't have shortcut buttons for common markdowns like italic or bold font. I shouldn't have to look it up on a browser. I never had that issue with third party applications.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yep. IPO is coming, and Reddit admin have plenty of time to make more dumb decisions in time to try to squeeze more valuation out of it. As things happen people will migrate a bit at a time with the occasional media shoutout. Idk whether a huge user explosion part two will happen, but we shall see.

Following that I expect things won't change much over there for a few months or even a couple years but the desire for "year-over-year profit" is going to take hold and screw that entire platform from top to bottom.

On the other hand, yes Lemmy still has issues (a lot on the moderation side), and various server admins have their disagreements and contrivances, but I am optimistic that Lemmy will continue to improve on the whole.

Just keep welcoming new non-troll/spammer users with kindness, compassion and open arms, and at the core that will be all we need to maintain a healthy social network.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As long as we're not mentioned alongside that hacker, 4chan... ;)

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Still wondering who he is…

[–] lefty7283@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

I feel like at some point they’ll kill off old.reddit

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago

This is a great breakdown.

I am glad to see that the outcome is higher engagement vis a vis comments; I would also acknowledge generally how high level and quality the discussions are on the federation overall.

I kind of hope there are manageable streams of users coming in, because I really like it here in its current iteration. I don't really worry about new content so much as cool people to talk to, and honestly most of the people here are worth engaging with.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I imagine a lot more of those users would’ve stuck around d after that peak, but DDOS attacks and scaling challenges made many major instances super unusable for many hours during the day. A lot of folks bailed because Lemmy just wasn’t working.

Also, many of the 3rd party clients were pretty incomplete. So it was web app or bust, unless you were downloading beta builds outside of the various app stores.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah, it's a lot better now on so many fronts.

With regard to uptime and scaling (and I say this fully ironically knowing that I cross posted this to lemmy.world): the smaller instances really weathered it better. lemmy.ca had zero issues with downtime, but has like 3% of the user count compared to lemmy.world so it isn't really fair to compare the server loads. But from a user perspective, a better experience can sometimes be had on smaller instances when the big instances grind to a halt. If we do get hit with a million reddit users looking for homes, we'll face this again. Sending users to smaller instances to distribute the load will be important during any future surge until server capacity can be added to the larger instances.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A lot of interest communities also just didn't make it over, so people were faced with abandoning those entirely, or having feet in each pond. And if you're keeping a Reddit tab open for those, it's going to end up back at more general subreddits, too.

The simple fact of the matter is that many people, even if they wanted to leave Reddit, Inc, weren't actually prepared to leave Reddit. And so after the dust and excitement settled here, they just went back.

This is a normal adoption pattern for these things, though.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That too. Some of the ones I liked tried to do discord, and eventually caved and went back.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I saw a few try Discord. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for posting this, interesting to see!

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

Thanks boss :)

[–] Suoko@feddit.it 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You should add kbin to it, it's a kind of cousin

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

Kbin is tiny by comparison. You can check their numbers here: https://the-federation.info/platform/184

[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 10 months ago

Nice job!

[–] droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think more than raw numbers, what lemmy needs is a diversity of users.

Right now it's somewhat dominated by tech enthusiasts and leftists, which is fine but I think we need more average joes to be more reflective of the whole population and to have more diverse and interesting communities.

[–] Silvay34@lemmy.ca -1 points 9 months ago

More users