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

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 5 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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

Unfortunately the "political shit" and "ragebait" is important.

The Fediverse is what you make of it. If you subscribe to a bunch of communities posting political shit and ragebait, that's what you'll get. That's not a problem with the threadiverse, that's a problem with your curation. One that it sounds like you remedied, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to call it out as a problem.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 10 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

Look at it from a new user's perspective; someone who has not curated their feed or otherwise "made the fediverse what they want" yet. e.g. They land on Lemmy World or another big instance and their default sort is "active". Doing that now in an incognito window, and half the front page is rage, same on the second, and the stuff that's not are some random shitposts and Linux filling in.

Truth be told, looking at that, I probably wouldn't want to sign up. Especially if I didn't know that different instances have different cultures, etc.

Assuming they're a normie (which we desperately fucking need here), I just don't see that they'd want to stick around. Aside from trolls and spammers, the only people we seem to consistently attract here are the "Wah wah I was banned from Reddit" types and, while there's certainly a sizable pool to draw from, I wouldn't exactly consider them the pick of the litter for growing the fediverse.

The point of OPs post is that usage here is declining, and I am simply pointing out that I feel all the rage and politics is not particularly inviting.

Edit: And you know what? I'm just going to fucking say it. There's too many armchair activists here who won't let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you're not angry all the time then you're somehow part of the problem.

[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 1 points 12 hours ago

Rage bait, tiktok/twitter/facebook/Instagram reposts, politics just happen to be what tends to get the most activity across social media. That's what you see when you view social media without an account whether it is lemmy or popular corporate run sites.

Its why filter tools, avoiding all, and sticking to subscriptions has been a thing for a long time prior to the reddit third party hammer.

I don't know any social media that isn't explicitly niche focused that isn't a terrible default experience. And by niche I mean like some old school forum that only talks allows talks of a specific topic like video games.

Broad appeal talk about whatever topic you want is going to be generally trash by default, since so many different topics and communities are sharing the same space.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

We really need better onboarding for new users, maybe ask them about their interests to give them a default set of subscriptions (it would probably just be a tweaked version of the community search page). And default to the subscribed feed, not the All feed

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 5 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Isn't that how Piefed onboarding works?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yes.

I've seen so many discussions like this about what needs to be done. So I did those things.

Very few noticed and I quickly got tired of popping up and saying "oh yeah I fixed that" to everything. Besides it makes me look like a smug asshole.

[–] JayGray91@piefed.social 2 points 14 hours ago

You should be a proud smug asshole (endearing) for fixing the missing capability of Lemmy poisoned the well.

I wouldn't have stuck being in the threadiverse if it wasn't for piefed. It would just be a failed third attempt to join Lemmy since the reddit APIpocalypse.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 2 points 20 hours ago

yea I think so lol

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 8 points 21 hours ago

I love piefeds default :)

And as much as I dont like parts of bluesky, they did the onboarding the correct way.