Ask Lemmy

It's been going up and up in my experience

I'm not sure I've seen this take expressed here before... but here I go. I think the thing I appreciate about Lemmy is that it isn't absurdly active. Before my switch to Lemmy (from Reddit ofc), I was compulsively checking Reddit for new content every 20 minutes, even taking priority over hyperfixations of mine. I like that there isn't new content every 20 minutes. It's like checking your fridge every 20 minutes for new food, and Reddit just keeps feeding you until you're upset. This place feels like it "restocks" every day so that I don't feel the need to check it obsessively. It's improved my relationship with social media entirely. My only issue is the amount of bait, not just in the form of trolls but people riling themselves and others up with politics. I get it, I'm extremely far left too, but god if I come here in hopes of being less anxious I always see something that feels designed to make me angry. It's less than Reddit but we could all work on considering if engaging is worth it. Learn to appreciate boredom and understimulation and it will change your life, especially those of you like me with an anxiety disorder.

sorry for the tangent, tl;dr less content actually makes me less anxious and more comfortable and we should learn to appreciate the boredom that comes with that

Honestly, lemmy isn't that welcoming. Read through comments and you'll notice most of them are kinda snarky and rude. Look at no stupid questions (idk the name of "subreddits") you ask a serious questions and almost none of them are on topic just people giving you shit for asking. If you have tech problems it's "install linux,degoogle,stay away from that brand" for someone new reading through them they'll probably leave because of the toxic community.

A part of me feels like the .ml instance is working on behalf of meta and reddit to drive people away.

Obviously that isn't what is happening, but when one of the largest instances' user bases is turning every post into Palestine debates and allowing coordinated harassment against anybody who disagrees with them, clearly people are going to leave.

I think it comes in bursts. You get all the content followed by an afternoon of doom refreshing with nothing new.

The problem with Lemmy and with reddit too. Is that conversations Die off or stale too quickly. Reason being most engagement happens with older more upvoted comments. And newer contributions don't benefit from the same exposure. Which doesn't give much incentives for people to comment. Which in return deplets the platform of its userbase. Lemmy apps should ship with viewing newer comments by default to combat this. And Lemmy users should also change this setting in their apps.

I've noticed a downward trend, not necessarily "dropped off suddenly". One of the most notable signs I've seen is from the new comments sort.

When I'm interested in seeing what's actually active and where the action is at, one of the things I will do is click to sort by "New Comments" and change my view to Comments. Typically I go to that page, see if any of the headlines or comments catch my attention, then go read or reply.

In the past couple of months, I'm seeing more and more new comments on that first page of results that are 5+ minutes old. When I get to the bottom of the page and click to refresh the results, there are times now when I don't even get a full new set of comments because there haven't been enough new ones to bump the prior comments off the first page.

That didn't used to happen much at all, it was rare enough that it really sticks out when it does happen. Typically, the comments on that first page would be anywhere from seconds to maybe 2 or 3 minutes old and every time I hit refresh (I wasn't spamming the button), I'd have a completely new set of comments to peruse (other than a bug in older versions of Lemmy that would cause some comments to get stuck at the top of that page even when they were significantly older than anything else).

My overall interpretation of this is that it appears there's less commenting, at least during the times of day that I tend to be most active on here. Of course that's not the only possibility. But like OP, I'm noticing a lot fewer posts in those top 6, top 12 filters with lots of comments than I used to see. So, those types of observations do have me thinking things are on a bit of a down trend. It could be a seasonal thing, perhaps a temporary lull.