There are simply a lot fewer people on Lemmy. That's to be expected.
I will say that the quality of conversation tends to be a bit higher on Lemmy. YMMV though.
I feel a lot less of the hive-mind effect on Lemmy versus Reddit. Not sure why that is.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Asklemmy
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Lemmy is shrinking significantly since the boom of the reddit appocalypse. It's a problem a lot of people here like to ignore or pretend it's not a problem.
reddit has better bread and circuses
That's all Lemmy has is meme and shit posting, and even those are getting slower.
leftist politics and open source technology are lemmy's strengths; if you don't like either, then you're going to miss out on the best that lemmy has to offer.
Really!?!? Could you please elaborate?
There used to be semi regular Posts tracking posts and monthly active users. You might be able to find them. Over the past couple years, there's been a consistent flat to negative trend in activity, the general consensus to this wasn't concern, some were even happy.
Wellβ¦duh! Reddit had a massive head start plus theyβve sold their soul to the money guys to ensure that they remain a staple part of the normie diet.
Furthermore, Reddit is a home for propaganda that gets artificially inflated by bots and state actors, thus leading to insane upvote counts.
Here, we have a refined palate. We donβt have 1000 posts of slop, we have 100 posts of open source trans autism. Once you train your taste buds to be accustomed to nutritious content again, you wonβt be able to stomach the slop anymore.
Itβs an adjustment, but itβs worth it, and in the end, I feel like this place has been better for my mental health.
Welcome to Lemmy. We greet you with open arms.
We donβt have 1000 posts of slop, we have 100 posts of open source trans autism. Once you train your taste buds to be accustomed to nutritious content again, you wonβt be able to stomach the slop anymore.
rotflmao
also: very true, i'm ashamed at the amount of slop i used to ingest.
What about Star Trek though. Or is that covered by Trans Autism.
star trek is Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism; so there's a lot of overlap. lol
Came for the open source trans autism, stayed for theβ¦well I stayed for the open source trans autism too, but you get my point.
It's the trans autism for me. Can't get anything quite like it on reddit...
I do miss some of the niche subreddits, and the free, often OC, highly cultivated porn. Unfortunately, the real quality porn largely disappeared during covid due to everyone having to monetize their hobbies just to survive.
Welcome. I too disagreed with the wrong people on Reddit and can no longer participate there.
Yeah presently Lemmy is not Reddit-scale. But, it also is not Reddit-moderated, or Reddit-algorithmed. I find I can sign into Lemmy, do a bit of scrolling and commentary to scratch my itch, and get on with my day. No dynamic selection designed to retain my engagement through emotional manipulation, a far lower population of malicious bots and actors, and generally more thoughtful discussion.
Quality beats quantity. Federated social breaks the toxic monoculture. Distributed media like this is able to support a broader diversity of people. In the end, this is the future.
This is a pretty comprehensive take on the difference in vibe
Lemmy is a lot less artificially self reinforcing
You can help change that!
I posted a cool meme a while back, and would appreciate the upvote: https://lemmy.ml/post/46803836
This isn't Reddit, don't go around begging for upvotes
Anybody got that shocked pikachu lying around. I think OP needs some
So, I got site-wide banned from reddit a while ago due to using the word βpurgeβ on a post
So, you're leaving out the details as to why you really got banned. It's not because of the word itself, you used it in a context you knowingly placed it in.
We don't need millions of users to thrive as a community.
The userbase is different, plus you're on Lemmy.world, which is defederated from active communist instances like Hexbear.net.
I'm new to this whole "federation" thing. When I joined Lemmy I just followed a guide where it said it made no difference which instance I made my account in. Is that not true?
It's only true in that you can interact with other federated instances on any federated account, but not all instances are federated with every instance. I can see Hexbear.net just fine from here, as can I see Lemmygrad.ml, but you will never see them from Lemmy.world accounts.
There's also the fact that many instances vary in how they run things, what their local sort is like, etc.
Ngl, that sounds needlessly complicated. Anyway, thank you for your answer.
its not, really. and its something you get used to and come to appreciate.
the city analogy is a great one - every town has its own flavor. many towns build roads (federation) between them so all inhabitants can easily travel to each other... as a city.
some towns self-isolate or are isolated from other towns (defederated) for all sorts of reasons and, if you want to see what they have to offer, you can set up a house directly in that town or another town with a road to (federated with) that town. it really does allow some very cool places to thrive - like the internet was before it was purchased.
lemmy{dot}.world chooses to keep things pretty... bland? thats their right, but there is quite a bit of quality spiciness out there if you have a house in a well connected (widely federated) town or decide to set up a few additional houses in some of the more exotic towns.
does anyone have a federation graph up and running right now? should be easy-ish based on instance published federation lists.
No worries! It makes it more complicated to start, but it also has its strengths.
It makes no difference in your ability to access some amount of content, basically.
The "Fediverse" is like a collection of cities, most of them pretty small. "Federation" refers to the roads between them. When an instance federates with another, the users of each instance are allowed to view and comment on each other's posts.
There are a few toxic circle-jerk communities no one federates with, like Truth Social, and there are a few gooey growths of bot-filled cancer, like Meta's Threads, and there are nice instances like lemmy.ml or hexbear where it's possible to have educational conversations.
(my vague grasp of federation, semantics may be wrong)
Reddit is boosted by thousands of bots, and has a significantly larger userbase.
And even though there is higher quantity of discussion, the quality might vary heavily.
Reddit has a dramatically larger userbase.
Also significantly more bots masquerading as people
Sure, their bots on their own likely dwarf us as well, but even taking them out reddit is dramatically bigger than us.
Lemmy MAUs is in the thousands.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances (35k active users)
It's funny everyone is suddenly getting banned.
I was on Reddit for at least 10 years. Made a new account, kept arguing against racists
Got banned for racism, obviously by the Nazis. Never got banned in the last 2 decades. And pretty sure none of the racists got banned
But it's no surprise lemmy isn't as big. That's not a bad thing. Reddit is overrun by the same lobbyists and people who have ruined Facebook and made it no longer fun
Yes, there are way fewer people here than in Reddit
fewer people, drastically fewer bots