this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Fediverse

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Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.

The data

I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:

query {  
  monthlystats {  
    date_checked  
    softwarename  
    total_posts  
    total_users  
    total_comments  
  }  
}  

Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:

jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'  

(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)

Then did a good old' chart

What to think of it

I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice

top 50 comments
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[–] RumorsOfLove@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

Facebook bad. This is not a satirical post, Facebook is really bad. It is getting people so unbased

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 126 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (33 children)

Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.

Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:

If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net

The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

I’m only here for the political posts. I’d visit more often if there were more people/posts.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 43 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I agree with everything that you've said. I would also add:

Find your nearest non-political non-tech hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see

Because if we're going to cast the same net reddit does, people with a more varied set of interests need to come here. Can't be all linux, politics, and news. We're going to need people who like baking. We're going to need sports fans. We're going to need music.

I could type new communities we need to be active all day. Humans are surprisingly a diverse set of creatures. You have one set of interests, I have another. Different set of interests. And both are totally valid.

The thing people here don't seem to grasp is that OTHER interests and OTHER people using the fediverse isn't a bad thing. If a bunch of boomers come here, and make their own communities to talk about Taylor Swift, and whatever else they talk about on facebook. That's good that it would be here! Not bad!

They could talk about gardening, and model trains, and whatever else. It wouldn't appeal to you, and thats ok.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

We had the same thought. Right before I saw your reply, I added some hobby communities to my comment as examples.

This place is so flooded with politics and raging over the news that I'm about to choose a random hobby community that's active and pick up said hobby just to be able to have something besides Star Trek and Linux to talk about here lol.

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[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago (3 children)

We're going to need sports fans.

This. We are in huge lack of sports discussion here on lemmy. I'm looking at other places for sports content because it's just not here. I miss live threads.

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[–] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 22 points 6 days ago (3 children)

What we REALLY need is more posts about Linux.

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[–] Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’m kinda bummed more people from Reddit didn’t come here after the exodus. But I guess it’s a Catch-22 thing cause that could’ve been all kinds of good or all kinds of bad so who knows so he’s starting off fresh and slow. It’s kind of the best way to go maybe

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[–] maxy@piefed.social 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Yes. I'm here for the long tail, the niche communities. And what do I see? Not enough photos of houseplants! Come on, you must have some too. And to add to the list, !books@lemmy.world looks nice.

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[–] MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip 12 points 4 days ago

Needing more users is fine. Sure, we could always use more friends (or enemies, I guess)

But, ultimately, just having people come here first and then whatever hellhole corpo-media second is at least a step in the right direction. I feel like user activity increasing is a good sign that there's a lot of people out there investing time in the fediverse instead of the corporate hell-loop social media.

[–] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago
[–] Greenbeard@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 days ago

I think more isers would be good, though I like how the fediverse is right now. It's small, but it has enough content to have me coming back, but not so much that I'll spend the entire day browsing.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 46 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Yes.

Do we want Reddit amounts of users? No.

But there's a lot of growth between here and there.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

100% agreed. A Reddit clone with Reddit amounts of users will end up almost as bad as Reddit. The thing that makes Reddit worse in that situation is that they are a public company.

This platform would have to evolve a lot before it can deal with so many users. There has to be some significant innovation and improvement in moderation and administration, or more users would inevitably lead to endemic misinformation and power tripping and all of that shit you see on Reddit.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I mean the intent here is for moderating capacity and tools to increase with user increases. Reddit grew but grew before its own moderator capacity allowed for it. Now I would argue its overall activity levels are inflated by AI, trolls and spammers. I'm on Piefed and in terms of the discussion about growth, I think about new instance admin tools can mitigate and prevent bad behaviour, trolling, AI and spamming from (usually) new accounts that otherwise would cement themselves on as regular spammers and trolls.

It's one thing to grow, but you need to grow the ability to deal with the problems that can derive from that.

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[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 6 days ago (8 children)

Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed

[–] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 16 points 6 days ago (2 children)

For that we need a LOT more users. It's kind of a chicken and egg situation.

Hopefully we can capitalise on the next Rexit.

In the past lots of people moved over but left because of the terrible UX. I think PieFed has solved most of the UX issues.

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[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 18 points 5 days ago

We need active users, not just users that post something once then disappear. The MAU is more important than the user count.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I do feel we need more users, but not just users. It’s “niche” users we need. There’s a lot of techies on the threadiverse (Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin), but not enough people who care about other stuff.

So communities outside that, struggle to thrive.

[–] rglullis 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

But we are not going to get "niche" users if we don't get large numbers of users. Niche interests will only come up here when the population is so large that even the long tail ends up with critical masses.

Those defending "quality over quantity" miss this exact point.

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[–] cron@feddit.org 31 points 6 days ago (7 children)

One thing that annoys me about each statistic about posts is that I don't know how many of these posts are actually interesting and engaged with.

For example, there is a specific instance that just mirrors reddit content and has barely any engagement. The bot posts mulitple posts per hour, mostly without any comments or upvotes.

It seems rather irrelevant to compare these posts to actually interesting posts with a nice discussion and a couple of upvotes.

My suggestion would be to count and plot the number of posts that have at least a few interactions.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Let's keep it just under critical mass for Eternal September to not happen.

[–] knexcar@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (4 children)

That was over 30 years ago, longer than I’ve been alive. I just want niche communities to subscribe to (Cities: Skylines, model trains, Madison WI) instead of the constant barrage of generic politics, Linux obsession, and low effort memes.

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[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago (8 children)
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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (7 children)

I dont think more users is very important. Its not going to make Lemmy change from mostly memes anyway.

The mentality of the largest Lemmy instances is still to moderate away opinions they dont agree with, so this place is never going to be good for any discussions where people disagree strongly.

Most users downvote what they dont agree with. Its a circle jerk echo chamber where we all agree or get downvoted.

But we can all enjoy memes together. :) Its kind of nice. Lemmy is chill and easy. Even kid friendly.

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[–] rako@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The stats with all softwares

We can see a globally slowly downward trend, probably not good but I'm definitely not equipped to analyze that

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[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Maybe its a question of organization. Perhaps we shouldn't have generic instances just instances around topics. That way niches can form without being too fractured and if said topic goes away it does not take several other coms with it.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 21 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I’d rather see better discovery tools and better community/account migration tools. Id be worried about topic-specific instances potentially backfiring by concentrating too much influence for a given set of subjects on the “preferred” instances

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[–] Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago

This defeats the purpose of the platform being distributed. For example if all political threads are on one instance it would be a ripe target for the authoritarian regimes popping up right now. I know there are dominant instances, but at least if one drops, people can migrate.

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[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

The post the other day about lemmy needing more users and engagement gave a little nudge to me commenting more. I guess same thing happened with many users and you can see the spike in the graph.

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

reddit used to be an internet place you looked at in class or uni when you had a break. I dont know how people get introd to it, but appealing to high schoolers is what reddit did. I made my reddit account when I was like 17, and lurked before that

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