I don’t think that’s accurate. I something funny is going on with kbin that is causing fedidb to see one instance as two separate instances. So this number is about 50k too high.

Also, if I may be a little realistically pessimistic, for those hoping for continued growth. These things tend to happen in waves with deflations in between. It seems the Reddit wave has come to an end, and some drop in numbers might happen over the next few weeks or months. It’s natural, and I wouldn’t be dismayed by it at all. Events like the migration cause curiosity in some people who don’t settle. It’s fine.

Who knows what will happen going forward, Reddit it seems is still doing it’s bullshit it seems. But if you like it here, there’s plenty to focus on here to make this place happen. And we don’t need to worry too much about whether Reddit a dying or who’s winning.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

with deflations in between

Worth noting that Hexbear(currently makes up 25% of all posts on lemmy) only saw a deflation in the initial weeks after launch. It then stabilised and didn't deflate at all over the course of 3 entire years of operating, it happily ticked along with new users coming in at the same rate as user churn. If other communities establish themselves and actually foster a real community that wants to maintain the space there will be an initial deflation but then people will just stick around visiting daily.

A culture of simply permanently moving here should be something people work to establish.

[–] Historical_General@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

You've just reminded me I have an account there.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

with deflations in between

A culture of simply permanently moving here should be something people work to establish.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. Hadn't thought about the amount of posting done on hexbear. Do you know why they kinda defederated and are now re-federating?

Otherwise, another factor is the effect of the wider fediverse. Interconnectivity between lemmy and masto is not great, but I'm seeing more attempts at it and interest in it from both sides, which is cool. And people are likely to create accounts from either side too, which for lemmy/kbin means that millions of people are slowly learning about them with an already vested interest in fediverse platforms succeeding.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Interesting. Hadn’t thought about the amount of posting done on hexbear. Do you know why they kinda defederated and are now re-federating?

It was caused by technical differences in goals. At the time Hexbear came over things were built in a rush because /r/chapotraphouse had just been banned and there was very limited time to rescue some of the userbase who had migrated to a discord as a lifeboat.

Lemmy at the time was early development, and was absolutely not capable of sustaining the MASSIVE amount of activity that thousands of CTH users would create.

So Hexbear forked and developed solutions to handle the high load they needed while Lemmy at the time was pursuing other priorities - federation wasn't a thing and they had to achieve federation by a certain deadline to get some of the funding grants they were getting.

This difference in priorities led to the situation, and then Hexbear coming back took a very large amount of time because it was not trivial to migrate without massive issues. On top of that it was handled by dozens of different people throwing in help for free. Burnout and motivation play significant factors there. They will be federating with a limited list soon, I believe the intention is not to federate with anywhere that hasn't blocked meta though which makes me unsure about whether they will federate here because of the soft stance this instance took.