this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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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.
Memmy on iOS is promising. Some bugs, but I see the intention (Apollo refugee).
It’s good and has a lot of features. But it’s being developed for both android and iOS and therefore does not feel completely at home for iPhone. For example the frosted glass effect is missing. Mlem is a native iOS app and will be soon released on the App Store. I prefer to use that app, even if it is not at feature parity with Memmy yet.
Yeah, I’m waiting to see where we end up with Mlem before 100% committing to Memmy, but so far the latter feels more to my heart as a long time Apollo user.
Still, I have both installed, and alternate between the two to see new TestFlight updates and whatnot.
I’ve very much grown to love Memmy, but I think they are both already up there, getting awesome, so whichever one chooses, it’s probably going to feel good. Choice is always a treat to have!
Memmy is an iOS only app though. It would like pretty out of place on android as it is right now imo. And personally I find the design to be a little more clean than Mlem right now.
Yes, I checked just now and you are right. I was sure they were using universal tools to build the app, because it does not feel iOS native. That’s weird and does not explain why it doesn’t fully follow the iOS design guidelines.
It’s made in React/Expo.. fancy JavaScript. The devs will release for Android eventually.
Only in development a few months and lots of updates.
I'm using and recommending Memmy on iOS, this is quite reminiscent of Apollo imo.
It needs to have a much easier way to rapidly suggest a good instance to make an account on without trying to explain all the details of Federation to new users. Just one click and done. They can learn about Federation afterwards.
Maybe it can suggest an app and other "getting started" stuff through a system message of some kind, like how Reddit delivers notices via it's /u/Reddit bot.
Definitely there should be an updated list of apps as the first recommended app (Jerboa) is like... Pre-alpha. Constant authentication issues for the one day I used it, plus other usability issues galore.
I only found any mention of Connect for Lemmy on Lemmy itself and it's a far superior app, used it ever since.
On the web UI, something I'd like to see is the various front ends people are making to be folded either into a user setting where you can select from a list or provided as different end points like
old.redditor, as lemmy.world has done, m.lemmy.world, or as lemmings.world with old.lemmings.world.There's wefwef/voyager, alexandrite.app (for desktop, using it right now, see [email protected] ), the standard, and I'm sure a few others that many would be happy to use right now. And it would be awesome if you could just use which ever you like whenever. Also a wonderful demonstration of what FOSS can bring to the table.
Well, arguable the way the fediverse grows and survives is through options, freedom and flexibility. Defaults matter, of course, but you can't make everyone happy all the time.
have you tried liftoff?
Liftoff in my opinion is the nest so far. But for some reason after updating UI for my phone it started crashing all the time so I cant use it. Using wefwef.app now.
hmmm that's unfortunate. But yeah, Liftoff has provided me with the most pleasing and stable experience so far. (Even if some of the features present in other clients and especially in the webapps are missing. Like showing the downvotes for example or the handling of multiple accounts and timelines in a weird way as well as liking too much to leemy.world...)
I'm in Android and Voyager feels good. I was an Apollo user though I guess.
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.
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.
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.
You've just reminded me I have an account there.
Here's a secret, online analytics are never that accurate. They're a huge mess pretty much everywhere. If you want to get real insights from analytics the best thing to do is compare things relatively, like with a/b testing.
My transition from Digg to reddit was a 3 year process.
I made a reddit account immediately. Barely used it for a year while I basically still begrudgingly used Digg and also used other sites like stumbleupon and Tumblr.
Year 2 was a pretty even mix.
Year 3 I made a reddit account Id end up using for like 10 years, daily. stopped Digg, and others, held onto Tumblr for porn til pornpocalypse.
Yeah, people shouldn't be pitting things against one another, it's not us against them (reddit). It's us FOR us. Let's go make lemmy better together, to hell with reddit.
That the initial wave of migration is subsiding is very clear, we can see it in the growth rate of lemmy.world as an example. After the initial boom around July 1st there was about a week of daily growth by 3-4k new accounts. Since then, the growth has declined and now hovers around 1k.
This is a crucial moment in time for Lemmy I think. It will be interesting to see whether that big chunk of initial migration is enough to achieve if not critical mass then enough momentum to get the snowball rolling.
We can't expect another huge Reddit blunder sending folks this way (though killing old.reddit isn't inconceivable), so we have to rely on naturally attracting and keeping users around now by adequately varied content and active enough communities. That requires a lot of active users and I wonder if we attracted enough to get there.
Honestly, I'm just waiting for sync for lemmy and boost for lemmy to release. Those two can actually get the snowball rolling as they were the most popular of the third party clients. (and also because I freaking loved boost 😍)
Very rational to curb the expectations, but I tend to think that people who would be dismayed by numbers (I.e activity) dropping, weren’t going to settle either way long term, which is of course fine and very valid too.
The steam a lot of communities have picked up won’t likely completely fade anymore though, here’s to hoping so at least.
Oh I'm not talking about a collapse or anything like that at all. Many are happy spending time here, even those that also spend time over on Reddit for some things too and the effect of this migration won't just disappear.
But these things come in waves, and so far have been trending upward, at least that's what has been seen over on mastodon.