• rglullis@communick.news
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    1 month ago

    Total user count is a vanity metric. Monthly active users is more relevant and on that we are still way off from the ATH of 2.1 million from 2023.

    Also, with the nature of the Fediverse where one single person can have multiple accounts, even this metric might be bogus.

    • Huschke@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      36
      ·
      1 month ago

      As opposed to other social media platforms like reddit where you can only have one, right? 😜

      • sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        36
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        https://feddit.org/post/3143093

        1. Multi-community simulator
        2. Defederation avoidance, usually paired with accounts on special interest servers you don’t want to risk losing access to.
        3. Porn and non-porn.
        4. Privacy by dividing online activities between multiple accounts to make it difficult to profile you and to maintain some pseudonymity.
        • rhythmisaprancer@moist.catsweat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 month ago

          Maybe to add to this, there may be folks like me who initially joined on things that became problematic or we wanted something “better” and are now on something different, leading to doubles. Not sure if my older accounts (like kbin) would show up but they might.

          • sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 month ago

            I have a few of those. During the reddit exodus when the API changes went live, I had to register on a few servers to finally get a working and stable account. Issues with email or setting up captchas to prevent bots resulted in a few of my accounts not going live until a week+ later on some instances.

      • cabbage@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        In my case, somewhat chronological order:

        1. First Mastodon account, on server that is unmaintained but still running.
        2. Funkwhale
        3. Mastodon with full name for academic use, on relevant server
        4. BookWyrm
        5. Kbin (dead now)
        6. New Mastodon for hobby interests, as the server of my first account is worthless at this point
        7. Piefed
        8. Mbin
        9. My professional website is in the early stages of federating as well. Still work in progress, but I follow myself and it somewhat works

        If a nodebb forum I have an account on decides to federate I might reach double digits.

        Edit: I forgot I also have a Pixelfed account! So double digits already.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 month ago

        It’s not too hard. There are a bunch of different platforms one might experiment with as well as instances. Some will use multiple accounts for different needs or interests. On lemmy, multi accounts are useful for have different feeds, for example. I probably have 7-10. I’ve probably forgotten about a few of them. If you’re curious, it happens.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 month ago

        Some on different services, some with different subscriptions, some on different servers, etc.

    • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 month ago

      I wish I didn’t have to, but federation for technical or political doesn’t work so well so I need an account for Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, and other less popular apps like Akkoma. Though 90% of my activity is on Lemmy.

    • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      21 days ago

      Honestly me too. It took a while to find an instance I liked plus I like having an account on another instance in case this one goes down or gets defederated.

  • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    And Switzerland just closed their instance in part due to what they claim is a declining user base.

    I’ve only seen Mastodon slowly creeping up, not decline.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Is that total users, or active users?

      Total users will never rarely decline.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          I knew I shouldn’t have used the word “never”, although I was thinking that only “deleted” accounts would drop the total count. That’s also a good point.

          But it still seems unlikely that there will be a LOT or cases where the total number drops by a proportionately large number, unless something really bad happens (or there’s some big initiative at some point to remove inactive or not accounts)

          The more important stat - the one that people would be much more likely to be talking about seeing a “decline” in, in cases like this - is “active” users.

          • rglullis@communick.news
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 month ago

            I was thinking more about the frequent cases of Mastodon instances shutting down because the admins got either tired of dealing with moderation or unable to afford the increasing operational costs. Seems like every week we get at least one instance announcing they will close up.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 month ago

    I was told just last month that the fediverse had 60,000ish people. How the fuck did it go from 60k to 12Mil in 1 month???

  • mesamune@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 month ago

    Note, different websites have different total user counts. fedidb kinda goes up and down and I dont understand why.

    But for example fedidb states 7,494,053 total Mastodon users whereas https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount states 15,467,187 accounts Pretty big difference. So there is probably much more accounts than what fedidb has. Or other counts are off by a large factor. Either way, lots of new faces in the fediverse! If anyone knows why theres such as discrepancy, let us know!

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    That’s pretty dang cool, and 12 is my favourite number too :-)

    What’s your favourite number?