Ah the twice yearly post asking if Lemmy is dying.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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I recently re-joined Lemmy, so I am not sure how it changed, but I am mostly a Mastodon user and I noticed that people were flooding it in large quantities when something stupid happened on Twitter (again), and then leaving it after a short while to go back to Twitter or quitting social media altogether. I would suspect that people either started going back to Reddit, or decided to get a mental health break from the internet as a whole (which wouldn't surprise me, the internet is pretty depressing lately).
Also re:lemmy/piefed - there are quite a few people who are very loud and vocal about things, and a lot of the opinions here lean to the left a lot. Not that it is a bad thing, but some folk appear to have got fed up of this and as a result have migrated elsewhere. I like it here, but it can be far from helpful at times
I'm in the UK and I am seeing a decline across virtually everything tinternet related. Years of rising rpices, job security worries and just a shift in attitudes has made people far more wary and less time to post, interact etc. plus the modern fragmented web doesn't help
I rarely post but comment a fair amount. To me, it’s only been recent, but I’ve noticed a decline, too.
When I run out of stuff to see on Lemmy, I touch grass. Simple as.
I feel way more in control of my online experience when endless scrolling isn't possible.
This might seem like a clever way to say "sour grapes" to me. Saying that "little content is good because it avoids endless scrolling" is as weird as saying "living in the desert is good because it helps me control my diet".
To address the point: activity seems very much slowed down, and we have two years since the Reddit "exodus" and very little progress to show. We are yet to convert any significant significant community, most people just accepted the status quo and you can bet that the few active people around here still rely on Reddit to find content and repost here.
Aside from this meta-discussion about Lemmy and the Fediverse, there is basically no native group or community emerging.
I’m doing my part! Just joined a couple days ago. Thought I could stick with Reddit but it got too far to the right for me. They crossed a line I can’t ignore, but I like the format, so I’m here. I knew Reddit was going to be winding down soon so I didn’t put as much effort in. I’d like to start a couple communities here, whereas I wouldn’t have tried over there. I just hope the toxic people who run the communities there don’t see what I’m doing and try to invade. I mean we could use the numbers but not the toxicity — though I feel that that comes with any influx of new users.
Welcome! While you are still looking around, you may want to check out PieFed as well & e.g. https://piefed.zip/ . It offers tons of features that Lemmy lacks, like categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable, flairs (both user and post), polls, combining together all cross-posts across all communities, etc. Check it out and prepare to just fall in love with it!:-)
Even better, while Lemmy is written in the Rust language and adds features at the timescale of multiple years (not joking here) whereas PieFed is written in Python and adds new stuff literally weekly. So the gap in feature sets, instead of ever closing, will only continue to widen over time.
Although if you are going to stay with Lemmy, you would be hard pressed to find a better one than what you are on now. Fortunately, you may not have to choose, if it opens up a PieFed instance by the same people (discussion).
So let me see if I understand you correctly. The "one I'm on now" you refer to in the third paragraph, meaning dbzer0, is an instance of Lemmy (along with others) that are federated (loosely united) together in the same feed.
You're on piefed.social, so you're federated with dbzer0 and the other Lemmy feeds. So it's not like you're on a whole other federated social network like Bluesky (which is more like Twitter whereas Lemmy is more like Reddit). But it has different programming, so you can access more/different features from your end than I can on mine, but we still have access to the same communities?
Still kinda struggling to understand how fediverse stuff works.
Exactly like that.
Thanks! I went and followed the discussion link the other guy posted. I saw one concern — the handling of voting. But someone/some people are going behind a lot of those comments and saying they fixed it based on user feedback. So that's good. I also feel I understand the two (Lemmy and Piefed) and their relationship a bit more.
If it sounds like I'm a bit eager to learn, it's because I like to help others, but to do that I have to understand things first.
Thank you! Subscribed to both and found a few things to sub to in the second one.
Well, welcome aboard! It's pretty good here. Fewer bots, fewer trolls, more civil conversation. I hope it works for you.
Thank you! I’m mostly treating it like “Reddit but for left leaning people” and enjoying learning the differences.
Yeah, it is that. I'm way left leaning, but I actually wish Lemmy was more of a cross section. I'm not sorry to see the total assholes on the far right not here (or not very vocal), but I don't prefer an echo chamber.
It's summer, a few active posters are busy with either kids or time off
!fedigrow@lemmy.zip has a weekly thread for active posters, it used to be more active in June
It's fine, people will probably come back in September
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https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
Total posts by month appears fairly linear.
Thank you, I had been looking for actual data and couldn't find it. You're right, does not seem to be declining.
I wonder if there an increasing percentage of bot posts, since I have prolific bot accounts blocked.
I wonder what's up with that number of servers decline.
I wonder what’s up with that number of servers decline.
Consolidation? Which is fine to that extent.
I'd wager many experimented with hosting a younger Lemmy, and hosts who couldn't sustain it got shaken out over time.
I wouldn't assume the rise in posts/comments is all bots, either. I don't have anyone blocked, and it doesn't feel overrun to me.
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Total Lemmy Active Users by Month
There's a big spike during summer time. On reddit it was known as summer reddit. Basically all of the kids are out of school and have nothing better to do but shitpost online. Now they're going back to school. It could be the lack of different users you're noticing. Not sure why it dipped in July though, should have dipped in August.
Wasn't July 1st when lemm.ee shut down?
Ah, good point. Forgot about that. That's probably it.
The slight dip so far this month could be the beginning of the end of the summer Lemmy. Schools just started this week near me, and green is 30 day users so it should take 30 days for that to fully drop.
Fediverse Observer says Piefed MAU were 352 in May, 1068 in June and 1615 in July. So thats a rise of ~1300 people in two months.
Yeah, agreed. Between lemm.ee closing leading to people moving over to Piefed in droves and Summer Lemmy coming to an end I don't see anything concerning in the data I think.
Also keep an eye on: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats A couple thousand people (and several communities) moved there after lemm.ee died, but we interact with lemmy.
As for why it subjectively seems to be declining... maybe you know what you're gonna see in New, and so you engage less with posts? Maybe it's time to be more of a poster!
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I would call that flat, not linear. Linear implies a non exponential increase. This looks flat.
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I honestly think that the whole internet is in decline.
I was just thinking everything seems to either be in decline, stagnation, or regression.
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Hardly bothers me. I’ll be scrolling for maybe 2 minutes and reach yesterdays posts, get caught up. It’s nice to be on social media where you aren’t constantly scrolling.
Same. I feel like Lemmy is really a lot like early Reddit (pre 2012) and the sizes of the communities are perfect. You can actually contribute to a discussion instead of drowning in 20k inane joke posts.
Some niches remain underpopulated but I feel like this will eventually rectify itself as the more critical and thoughtful people move away from vapid platforms like Reddit, FB or IG. We'll continue to welcome them with open arms.
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Your instance, lemmy.ca has blocked or defederated from a significantly high number of other servers. So that's the reason
You may want to check the list of instances defederated by your PieFed instance out then as it may by much longer that on lemmy.ca...
I'm on the official PieFed instance and I am totally fine with their current defederation policy, because so far I haven't corresponded with any trolls since the beginning of my account creation.
Quality over quantity:-D
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