Lemmy.world has grown by about 66.6% since reddit's API shutdown
3 years ago by MicroWave to c/fediverse
Lemmy.world grew from about 51k users when third-party reddit apps started to shut down to about 84.8k users at the time of this post.
Definitely felt some growing pains in the past few days, but it's great to see the platform more active now that things have become more stable.
So, welcome reddit expats!
Agreed! The only way to make sure that we can hit "critical mass" (the point in which content is relatively the same as on Reddit), is to continue what we did over there, and more. Most of us were lurkers on Reddit (me included). We now have to generate the content that most bots, mods, and superuser did for us. This allows us to get the links and content that we enjoyed reading and interacting with on Reddit.
🔫 Always have been
Do you wanna be?
We are all content on this blessed day!
IDK, do you have something interesting to share?
i had mine up for about a week, been running lcs for quite a few days, and both actively use other spaces (like this one) and post a lot in the ones on my instance. currently i'm sitting at 4.5 GB for pictrs (not a typo, that's what the picture server is called), 2.3 GB for the postgres database, and 5.4 GB for docker. total disk usage is about 14 GB for now, i expect it to grow in the future but idk yet how fast it will be. people are reporting about 100 MB a day since the reddit migration, and tbh that might check out.
if you're hosting it on your own nas you're probably gonna be fine space-wise. i'd just recommend to layer a vpn and/or a cache in-between -- i don't know exactly how to do this, i went straight for the cloud route, but i have seen people in !selfhosted@lemmy.world doing that, and the lemmy admin matrix chat is nice too.
just fyi, your instance does have to be reachable on a domain if you want federation to work. also, keep everything you can on the defaults and only change things one by one, the error messages are not very helpful. i spent like a day trying to debug why lemmy wasn't starting up at first, turns out i just had an instance name longer than 20 characters.
I've had my own instance running on a puny 1VCPU/1G RAM instance at Vultr since the beginning of June and the resource usage has been negligible. Drive space is the largest resource it's consumed, it's at about 12GB of drive space consumed in a month.
I wish more of the apps let you enter a custom server URL which would encourage this aspect of the fediverse. I currently use connect for lemmy, its great but only has 3 static server options.
wefwef has this feature!
you absolutely can in connect, just tap the text field and enter in the domain
You can add custom instances on Liftoff (!liftoff@lemmy.world). It has .world, .ml, and beehaw as the defaults but you can add instances manually as well. I'm using it right now and added lemm.ee
Thunder allows this and has good performance. It's on the IzzyOnDroid f-droid repo but hasn't hit playstore yet.
You can check out this page that keeps an updated list of "recommended" instances based on their performance and various other stats. Take a peek and see if their rules sound like something you want to be part of.
I'm posting from my secondary account on lemm.ee , which is a another nice general purpose server that's very responsive performance wise.
Someone shared this instance map yesterday. It's not a complete map of instances as far as I can tell, but perhaps it can help you find a smaller one closer to you.
This, but also an instance with a good ping, close to your house.
Or even better: install the libredirect extension to do this automatically, not just for reddit.
Yeah trying to keep Reddit activity to a minimum myself. Not missing it tbh, other than troubleshooting posts through the years lol
I was using Bacon Reader for Android for the last 10 years. For me it was the only way of using Reddit. I'm now checking Lemmy. I hope we can build a vibrant community here. I'm not coming back to Reddit.
RiF being killed was the last straw for me and Reddit.
They just don't care so long as they are making money. I was doxxed twice last year thanks to two different user on a fandom I moderated. They didn't care that I was openly DOXed, pretty much them saying that it wasn't their problem.
They just don't care about people, just how much trouble they will get in and how much money is to be made.
So this whole "only money matters" ideal is a symptom of a larger issue that is going to get worse.
FYI, you can patch RiF with Revanced to use your own OAuth token. I did it, and it works, but I'm not actually using it anymore/haven't been to reddit for a while.
I just did it as more of a "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" thing than anything else.
I deleted RiF and removed all shorcuts and icons that lead to reddit
I'm going with a mixture of cold turkey and "out of sight, out of mind"
Thankfully lemmy helps.
Similar for me but, Apollo. Reddit was only tolerable because of Apollo, and now that it’s gone, I am too. wefwef is quite close to it though. Im enjoying it so far.
Wefwef is amazing, how can someone make it so quickly while the reddit app sucks?
Wefwef is a labor of the love and passion of its creator. I'm guessing the Reddit app devs are burned out and constantly getting requests like "How can we integrate Blockchain into the app?" and "Is it possible to add ads to the comment section?"
Also a fellow ex-Bacon Reader user, same deal. So far I'm using Connect for Lemmy to try to get a similar feel, what app are you using?
Jerboa is the closest I have tried to the Bacon Reader experience.
Liftup, which is somewhat close to BaconReader too. Couldn't use Jerboa due to it not connecting to lemmy.world at the time I joined.
Tried wefwef too and it's great, but the iOS-adjacent UX is not right for me.
Same. Used AlienBlue for a short while until I got an Android phone. Then moved to Bacon Reader for the following decade.
Reddit is effectively dead to me. Without BR there is simply no way for me to interact with the site, plus I go out of my way to avoid reddit.com in search results.
Maybe it doesn't matter, but I like to think it does for their traffic statistics.
That's the app I used exclusively. Have you found a Lemmy app that is similar? I've tried Jerboa, Connect and Liftoff, but I'm still looking for something comparable to BaconReader.
So what’s happening over at Reddit? I assume all is still well over there. But after ten plus years, I actually haven’t been over there since Apollo died because I’ve just been busy and scrolling here before bed instead of the old Reddit browser.
I assume it’s business as usual and it didn’t implode, but honestly it’s been like three days since I’ve been there and that’s probably one of my longer streaks without casually browsing at some point in the day.
The bean posts are definitely more thoughtful here.
I use wefwef and for me the scrolling is similar to Apollo and scratches the itch. I am struggling, though, with subscribing to communities and curating my feed. But also remembering my Reddit feed took years to curate so trying to be patient. I just find more hoops to jump through here to get to the content I want to view (discounting the bugginess of things because I understand it’s new and they’re sorting it out still).
Bummer there wasn’t a bigger visible hit to Reddit for their shenanigans, but I am glad that more content creators have migrated and more interesting things are also appearing in the feed I have been working on here. It is very green and clunky, but also feels fresh!
Well I tried lemmy a number of years ago and it was a ghost town. I hardly found anything I wanted to read and Reddit had it all. Now I'm back and I've noticed a lot more content. Others might notice too when they come to check it out. From this, I suspect we will see growth.
I have just missed discourse with real humans.
I fuckin love this place
I feel bad for the lemmy.world admins that have to keep up with the software needed and costs accrued to handle the world knocking on their doorstep. I hope advertisers hit them up soon so their bills become easier to pay. While advertising was annoying on reddit, I'm more than willing to put up with it on this instance of lemmy, the admins have earned it.
Unfortunately, the reality is that it may become necessary.
Donations can be a saving grace if enough people donate regularly. But such is dependent on people's willingness, their own financial stability, and how stressed servers are (how much it'll cost to upgrade and/or maintain infrastructure.)
It's great if it's viable. Means there's less outside influence. But that's if.
As far as I'm aware, Wikipedia has been able to maintain it purely off donations. But I'm not sure if Lemmy could.
Maybe? One thing Lemmy does have going for it is that the majority of users seem to be aware how... Fragile? the fediverses can be. There's arguably more passion behind the users and maybe willing to throw support out.
But hard to say.
I hope advertisers
I think this is an unpopular stance here. I'm not certain how else admins keep things running, but my limited time on Lemmy suggests people are hostile to ad-influence on how things run.
Ruud also runs Mastodon.world which has 160k+ users and manages to survive on donations alone. Not sure where the cutoff point is for when that is no longer viable, if there is one. Mastodon.social is huge and takes sponsorships and also gets some grant money I believe. They don't run ads per se though and claim all sponsors accept contracts stating Mastodon is not going to be run in a way that is influenced by sponsors.
Try another instance, as close to your home as possible.
You can browse the map here https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/map
I wouldn't sweat so much picking a close server as long as it has enough users to be around for a while, reasonable rules, and isn't under too much strain. Just by getting off the big servers, you'll have a much faster experience and access to the same content.
I moved from lemmy.world to this one that specializes in my interests, and it's running great.
Good tips! I should have explained a bit more, but by getting a server as close as possible, your ping should theoretically be lower than an instance that's far from you (I know, the internet is not a straight line to the server).
The best way to test this is by pinging the server in a CMD prompt/terminal.
Indeed. If I remember correctly VLemmy is in Ireland, and yet I've gotten consistently fast responses from it except during server upgrades. I think the size of the instance really does matter here.
I tried changing my profile picture on both desktop and mobile and keep getting thrown an error :/
Well at least it’s not something that super important
I can wait
I am one of those users.
Don't even feel the need to go back to reddit. This platform is going to take off.
Truly have no idea if this or other similar projects will succeed long-term, but I do think that any alternative puts much needed pressure on social media companies to stop sucking ass.
Here’s to hoping it keeps growing. Gonna need content other than beans though.
Every platform has their “bean” content. I spent enough time on Reddit to have dealt with the constant “the narwhal bacons at midnight” comments we used to deal with.
Oh I agree, it’s more that lemmy doesn’t really have “big engagement” content yet to spread out amongst the beans. Even text-based posts would do wonders. Mid-profile AMAs or a good asklemmy post going viral and hitting some of the content creators on other sites would really help boost this as a true alternative.
For my part I just hope my niche communities migrate over so the twelve of us that play ToME can geek out about the updates.
I'm about to unsub from lemmyshitposts for a good while. Still sticking around though, this place is home ✌️
Nice growth, looks to be slowing down a little - I wonder how much is related to the poor performance last few days
It will just encourage others to find a home on other instances which is good for the fediverse ecosystem it’s not a bad thing :)
Right now it seems a lot of people sticking around know what they’re signing up for with things in development. I’m all for a robust community of open-source trailblazers who are happy to be here.
Also the bean memes are not helping 🤣
Not to get political but
B E A N S
With care and love we can build a new and better reddit
But dinosaurs are cool. Don't compare Reddit to a dinosaur.
Hell yeah, let's keep it up! :D
I actually don't on't mind the smaller user base on Lemmy at all.
First work day since shutdown, I survived without Reddit, I'm sure I can continue doing so. Lemmy has plenty of potential yet already "good enough" to take Reddit's place.
That's the funniest thing - I'm one of those senile Digg to Reddit people. Digg to Reddit was something I felt and dreaded. Reddit to Lemmy was a relief. There is not as much to click but everything is worth a click.
Seems like they aren’t handling the load well.
There's an inevitable adaptation and learning period for everyone, including smaller instances, but I think we should really be emphasizing the decentralization aspects of the Fediverse. Ruud and others are doing all they can to keep up, but everyone trying to consolidate onto lemmy.world isn't great for anyone and only leads to even greater cost and technical pressures.
Someone suggested that we should use this to find instances nearer to us. I did that and it has been running a lot smoother on my end apart from the occasional loading issues on subs in Lemmy.world.
There's definitely some getting used to for new immigrants like us from Reddit. The nature of Fediverse forces us to give up on the concept of "karma" and be ready to hop from one instance to another at any given time. The good thing is we'll be seeing much fewer karma-farming bots, which I assume would be an even much bigger issue on Reddit now that so many of the genuine users have left. Shitty mods, rampant bots, subs going dark/NSFW. What a shitshow.
Honestly, one of the largest problems with the current instance system is the lack of an ability to either export an account or link accounts between several instances. Once those types of features are added, I think Lemmy will be a lot more tolerable to new users.
Digg.com was a link aggregate site that predated Reddit, and was more attractive to users based solely upon its relatively sleek UI.
After some years of success, Digg made several changes: obfuscation up votes and removing down votes, and a new UI to match the reduced features. As a result the majority of the Digg user base and content creator sphere migrated to Reddit.
This resultant swell in Reddits userbase led to app creators brisging the gaps between reddits relatively brutalistic UI and the experience sought by laymen (i.e. non programmers crowd). As you have seen the decision to alienate third party applications has led to a new backlash against Reddit.
A lot of this sounds familiar.
I just wonder of this is actually going to have a similar effect. Controversial decision but I'm pretty used to seeing companies get away with shitty choices.
Any lemmy.world user who feels comfortable using the lemmy explorer to subscribe to communities via URL should heavily consider moving to a smaller instance and subscribing to everything they want. It'll be a much snappier experience, and will very slightly reduce lag for everyone else.
You can find instances by server location here (just change the software to Lemmy at the top), by user count here, or just look at the official instance list.
That’s great but 66.6%? Time to conspire!
Praise be to the dark lord!
Congrats Lemmy.world!
I originally was using an account at .world but it started to get really slow under the stress of all the new users.
So I've since switched (to lemmy.ca) and it's been really nice. However, when I look at this thread from my .world account I can see a lot more comments. I know there are issues with syncing between instances and so I'd prefer to use .world if/when it is more stable. This way I can avoid the syncing issues mostly.
In any case I'm happy for Lemmy. I have multiple accounts and will use them whenever necessary. I wish there was something that could sync community lists between accounts. It was a bit of a chore to sync my community subscriptions for my accounts.
It is important to distribute newly joining users evenly among different servers to enhance server performance and maintain decentralization
Except for comment lag.
A post I made on lemmy.world has an order of magnitude more upvotes when viewed from Lemmy.world compared to when viewed from another instance. Beyond annoying
I think there’s a short delay. But still that would be on the server hosting the post being overloaded. I’m not 100% familiar with how the protocols work. But when I look at top day from sh.itjust.works vs from Lemmy.world the numbers are the same in my feed. So It must not be a major difference in most posts.
Could also be because of an update not being rolled out to one of the servers. Just a guess.
You may not notice federation lag, where comments don't appear in your instance for some time in comparison to their native or a more populous instance.
Afaik the only way to tell is to pull up the same thread from different origin instances and compare.
Indeed. It makes sense it was laggy during the upscaling, but it's stabilized now and it's great to see how well Lemmy has grown. The other thing I've notes is development is currently proceeding at a frenzied pace, it feels like every few days a new feature is added, either in the main service or in the multitude of apps being developed.
That's great news! Lemmy is a great, if but a little buggy, replacement for Reddit. I'm sure the bugs will be ironed out in due time. I'm enjoying the federated community. The more the merrier!
What happens if lemmy.world or any other instance goes down without notice? Then there'd be a void of communities for a while right, or do other instances keep backups of some sort? Thinking about this now that .world gets tons of attention.
That may be true but I am subscribed to many communities over many instances so I would just post and comment somewhere else. It's not hard to browse the all feed and see where the action currently is.
Spreading out like the fediverse is designed is good. Redundancy and crossposted content is good.
We're seeing the biggest instances struggle with the traffic lately, so I'm just engaging more with different communities whenever they're not accessible.
You should read up on the Federation concept. No, not the Star Trek one. And no, not the government one either.
The API hasn't shut down yet. I don't know wtf they are doing at reddit hq but many of the apps, and nsfw posts, still work completely normally with no changes.
They were also going to block all nsfw content but it's still there.
Also the releases of sync and boost are sure to bring another surge each.
I'm personally liking thunder so much I'm getting back into app development so I can contribute. Getting a flutter environment set up right now.
Thunder is pretty good. It's one of my 3 favorite Lemmy apps (which are currently Connect, Thunder, and wefwef).
Registration should close on .world for a bit, like .ml did, so people can join other smaller instances and spread out. That's the point of decentralization anyways.
That sounds like a good idea.
The nice part about federated software is that there are other instances you can join :D
Try registering on a smaller instance that's more responsive, with a better ping by being closer to your house.
The content here feels much better than other alternatives. Squabbles is stale by the end of the day (smaller userbase) and discuit is painfully quiet. It's not perfect, but the content here actually helps me to tolerate the server growing pains
Squabbles faces another huge uphill battle since it doesn't allow NSFW content.
...And my axe
Lemmy world domination continues - I've noticed in the last few days the world communities on each topic have all surged into first place in subscriber numbers.
Have a look at !newcommunities@lemmy.world . Sort by top if needed and especially this post
Edit: and I also learned about !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca
I used to sub to new subreddit via such subreddits, or in comments of posts that showed me through a discussion. Or sidebar of subreddit on related ones.
I can't recommend lemmyverse enough, it has done a great job organizing every Lemmy community possible into one place.
It's mad, even when it wouldn't load I felt no need to return to Deddit. Keep up the good work all.
Good for our friends on Kbin too! More content is good for everyone :)
Lfg!!!!! Proud to be apart of this new chapter
if you liked apollo check out wefwef
Can't they be accessed without logging in from old.reddit still?
I'm not sure how accurate that part of the stat page is, given we have very little usage data compiled into a short sample size, during a time of high growth.
Most people don't know that the lemmy.world instance was only started on June 1 or June 2 this year, and is only a little more than a month old. A month of crazy growth to become the most popular Lemmy instance that fast, with more growth likely to come.
My appreciation for Lemmy has increased 127% since I joined.
I used Redact to edit out all my Reddit posts and deleted my accounts when Apollo died. Bring on the distributed communities! (Also this is weird and new and I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing, but it's exciting!)
8k user instance owner requires 200$ per month to cover server cost. that should 2000$ per month for lemmy.world..and counting
So it is theoretically possible to keep the boat afloat with less than one dollar per user.
per month, yea i assume so
Do you know if costs scale linearly with user count?
It does not. It in large part scales with the amount of content the local and federated communities. So because many users will subscribe to many of the same communities, more users will add less extra cost aftter a point. This is a bit simplified though as it also scales with users but to a lesser degree from my understanding.
Disclaimer: I'm not hosting myself just to be clear but this is what I have gathered from answers to similar questions as well as my own experience as a software dev.
just a wild a guess. will it should be more dependant on bandwidth and traffic than users. posters on c/cats are more demanding than posters of c/news in terms of ressources and bandwidth. text is lightweight compared to image or gifs.
For sure. Larger userbase also increases likelihood of more and bigger donors, however, so the critical question is whether that revenue increases at a higher or lower rate than server costs.
users just need to be ressource conscious: no wasted bandwidth with 4k pics and we should all fare well. sharing 70kb memes here and there shouldn't hurt thou. but good practice is to use a dedicated media hosting site and use links instead of posting media directly (like imgur or giphy). peertube could help in hosting videos in case people felt like sharing some.
Wow I had no idea it was so high! I gotta get into the hosting business.
These are great news!
@lemmy.world
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
go to feed...
Friendly reminder that lemmy is still being actively developed. There will be many performance improvements in the future, as well as UI and whatnot. Stick around, create content and engage with your communities.
save