• danisth@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hexbear.net is a community that’s been running on a forked version of Lemmy for a few years now and has ~25k users. Over the weekend they switched over to running core Lemmy, and will be federating in the coming weeks. I believe this is a big part of the jump in users since they would count even though there’s no actual federation yet.

      • megane-kun@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It’s the bit about Hexbear switching over from a fork to mainstream Lemmy (sorry, but that’s how I understood what you said) made things click for me.

        I’ve always assumed that even if Hexbear were not federated, its users should have been counted as Lemmy users, but Hexbear using a fork, and thus, not being counted makes sense.

        Thanks!

    • PriorProject@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This is an image-post and not a link to the real page, but the active user count follows a more normal curve. This jump in registered users isn’t organic. If it’s not bot accounts, it’s some weird reporting error. Also note… The lemmy.world registered user count didn’t jump all that much… so if it’s bot accounts they’re either not registering there or have already been purged.

      Hexbear did just federate, and that does bring in like 25k users, but not 100k. But maybe that’s being multi-counted somehow.

    • dune-@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It isn’t. Though us early adopters are important to the success of this platform, it can’t grow or evolve without at least some form of mass adoption. Luckily, there’ll be a new wave of users starting June 30, when 3rd-party apps stop working. It’ll likely be the final straw for those who are still savoring the time they have left with Reddit.

  • RandomWombat@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    I just joined here on the recommendations of another user on Reddit.
    At least, I think this interface isn’t too much of a shock to the system. Give me time to get used to the whole new world.

    • BiggestBulb@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Welcome over (from kbin, I can see and comment on your comment because kbin and Lemmy are federated with each other and can talk!)

    • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Lots of good federated sites going around. I’m finding kbin pretty good right now, besides the random 502/503 errors you get occasionally. Bound to happen as people flock over

    • SlowNPC@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      r/interestingasfuck and r/shittylifeprotips are both total free-for-alls. Nsfw, spez hate spam, random shitposts… I assume r/pics is still John Oliver. NSFW subs are posting Christian content.

      Reddit is kinda on fire at the moment.

      • RandomWombat@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think r/aww is also going for the John Oliver thirst (and I am absolutely all for it), And r/wellthatsucks is now all about hoovers… and the mods were throwing out awards left, right and centre, that gives people premium access.

      • RomanRoy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Also, ModCoord finally started advertising for alternatives on their latest post. Mentioned Kbin, Lemmy, Squabbles and Tildes.

        Piracy is one that pointed directly to communities on Lemmy, but it is not that huge.

        Haven’t checked others, but I’d imagine some maybe started doing so as well and there’s where the growth comes from. I don’t really think it’s bots, so far.

    • Valdair@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      More news, more protests, porn on /r/all, but this seems pretty high. There have been a few oddly spiky days the last few days, seems like probably bots.

      • atocci@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        There’s no way this isn’t related to the account creation spam exploit that was found recently.

    • bedrooms@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Another factor is gatekeeping at Lemmy, although I haven’t heard any news about that. Major Lemmy instances were very slow at accepting new users since they were manually filtering bots away.

      I’m not suggesting there was indeed some change in gatekeeping like a policy change, new looser Lemmy instances or whatever. It’s just a factor people haven’t mentioned here.

  • Thalyssa@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    I hope they are mostly real people and not some bad actors readying spam bots as the Fediverse is becoming more popular.

  • Sens@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    It’s mostly spam users unfortunately, someone posted a script and guide that allowed auto generation of users on any instance that didn’t have captcha enabled. Since then user counts have started shooting up.

    https://lemmy.cat/post/6401

    Captcha is now enabled on some instances but the issue will be continuing on other instances that haven’t heard the message yet.

    Best we use active users as the main metric to measure growth now.