Hi folks!
Over the past few months, we have started seeing a significant amount of new user sign-ups. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of our new members, and to share some useful resources and info about lemm.ee.
First, some stats
Here is a bar chart of daily new users (this is only counting users which have been approved by our admins):
As you can see from the chart, for most of 2024, we were accepting roughly around 10-20 new users every day. Then, from the start of this year, the daily numbers have been constantly growing. Yesterday, we approved a massive 609 new users on lemm.ee.
The increase in sign-ups is significant enough that I have been taking several steps to improve our monitoring & anti-bot measures, but so far, it seems the vast majority of the new users are completely legitimate real humans! (Thank you all for not being bots 😅)
About lemm.ee
This Lemmy instance is turning 2 years old very soon. It was initially created around the time of the Reddit API changes, when existing Lemmy servers were getting overloaded with new users - lemm.ee was intended to help spread the load. We’re now the second largest Lemmy server when it comes to monthly active users.
Our core philosophy for this instance has always been to treat it as a generic gateway to the Lemmy network. I want to provide our users a stable and reliable home for their Lemmy account, so that they can have easy access to all of their communities, regardless of what instance the community is actually hosted on.
We run on some decently beefy hardware, and our setup is fairly customized in several ways in order to ensure a smooth experience for our users (most of the time, this has worked out quite well!). Our servers are currently hosted in Finland.
Our infrastructure has been funded by the community almost from the start through GitHub sponsorships and Ko-Fi donations. I am sure I speak on behalf all of our users when I say that I am extremely grateful to all supporters - you are really responsible for the continued existence of this instance!
Lemmy itself is open source software, and while it has improved massively during the time I have been using it, it definitely still has some rough edges. Please be patient when using Lemmy, and remember that it is being built collaboratively by humans (not corporations), without any intent of ever turning it into a business.
Useful resources
- If you’re confused about anything, feel free to check out our F.A.Q.
- We have an instance policy for administration, moderation, and federation - feel free to check it out if you want to understand how admins and mods are expected to act on lemm.ee
- For staying up to date with instance news, feel free to subscribe to !meta@lemm.ee
- If you ever can’t reach lemm.ee, please check our status page at https://status.lemm.ee/ - I communicate updates on that page when dealing with any unplanned problems.
- You can always find these resources (and some more useful info) in the sidebar of our front page (https://lemm.ee/)!
Don’t forget to participate!
Communities on Lemmy only work if people actively use them. Even upvoting/downvoting based on quality of content is a great start, but I would really like to encourage you all to comment and even write posts, because that’s really the best way to build communities.
If you have any questions or thoughts about lemm.ee or Lemmy in general, feel free to post a comment below this post, and myself or one of our veteran users will definitely respond.
I hope you enjoy your time on lemm.ee, and I wish you all a great week!
I’m a sponsor and I’m not saying this to get thanked or something, I just want to say that I kick in $2 a month. It’s not a ton but if I can help keep this place running then I’m happy to toss a coin to my admin 🙂
Thank you very much for the support!
Our infrastructure costs are currently quite stable at around 200€ per month, and considering that the instance is right now quite decently supporting nearly 6000 monthly active users, you could say that you are indeed relatively contributing a ton - you are effectively covering server costs for 60 people!
The fact that it’s a monthly amount is particularly great, because with recurring income, we will get advanced warning if there is danger of funds starting to run low.
Monthly amount is the way to go! I chip in a whole fiver over at feddit.org each month, because that’s easily worth it. You get what you pay for, after all.
I’m using the Voyager app. Do I donate through the website? I want to cover some costs too.
You can donate in the GitHub sponsorship link in the main post: https://github.com/sponsors/sunaurus
Hey! Any idea on why this wave is happening? Also, how does it compare to the initial Reddit “refugee” wave?
Reddit heard we have a fediverse chick.
!! lol
I have her. What’s all this we stuff. Getting sick of everyone hitting on her.
As for why, it’s probably due to the censorship screws getting tighter at Reddit. Luigi is a bad word. Eating the rich is verboten. Just 2 examples. Interacting/upvoting such content is now also an offense even if you didn’t write it yourself.
For many, it’s their stop to get off the train. Mine was the API boogaloo.
We had a few really huge days in 2023, but other than those, it seems like the growth so far in March is definitely outpacing our initial wave of new users in 2023.
a big driving force is r/BuyFromEU with 150k active subs and r/BuyCanadian with 300k
They’re trying to move away from US products, including tech.
Also the Luigi censorship as mentioned.
Now is a good time to comment something like this on those subs to help guide people.
Try out the European-Hosted Reddit alternative, Lemmy
It also has a Mobile-AppI use it alongside Reddit, and I’m enjoying it more and more, slowly switching over
I saw a r/YSK (You Should Know) post about Lemmy today and was curious and had some time . I’m intrigued.
I carry here as a year and a half (before I was in another instance that closed) and I can say that the increase in traffic, participation, comments, vows etc. For a couple of months it is remarkable.
I don’t know if it’s for Trump pushing Europeans and Candadia outside their products, for Reddit turning its platform into shit full of bots and unpopular standards or a combination of both, but I think that the network and community is doing really good (we even have a community of conservatives, half a year ago something like that would be unthinkable)
Congratulations - feddit.uk has also see an order of magnitude growth in sign-ups, just from a lower base. This is definitely Rexxit 2.0.
Why the sudden rise? Actually bonkers
Reddit started banning people for upvoting a certain way.
Alright? Didn’t they remove fuck spez stuff as well?
Some people are currently looking for European and more private alternatives to traditional social medias. Hopefully more will follow.
Redditors are feeling the rise of corporate sponsored censorship and are looking for alternatives.
boycott of American products and support for a European increased independence movement
Welcome! I’m pretty new as well, and came from Reddit when Spez first started to censor for Trump. I had a 13 year account. I deleted that shit, and do not regret it.
I had 5 different reddit accounts, deleted them all a week ago. Of course I forgot to have a look at the saved comments, but well… old news are old anyway. I’m just blown away by lemmy, so much better ux, sadly way less content. But those numbers indicate that this is about to change, too :-)
Yes, this platform is way better in every way. Do what I do and add as much good content as you can. It helps! Welcome :)
I deleted my (main) account, remembered my saved posts, but realised I would never do anything with it anyway.
I exported before the API cutoff, wrote a crawler in a drunken all-nighter to delete my posts and overwrite my comments, and have only lurked a small handful of specific subs since
Only recently got to using Lemmy at any scale though. It still isn’t quite the fix old reddit used to be, but seeing threads like this gives me a bit of hope that maybe the Internet is healing a bit
At some point I should finally get to deleting the various accounts…
That’s awesome! I don’t know what sparked more people to come over though. Would be great if someone can fill me in since I’m so out of the loop.
Also, PSA to all new users on Desktop: Try Alexandrite - a gorgeous front-end for Lemmy https://alexandrite.app/lemm.ee/
My boost for reddit suddenly stopped working last week, so I figured I may as well see what all this is about. Happened to coincide with what seems to be an increase in reddit’s content moderation where even peoples’ votes are being policed.
Pretty much exact same situation as me
Been here since the reddit API changes two years ago, and until this post didn’t realize I had joined a brand new instance. Lemm.ee is the only instance Ive used and I love it.
I’ve never seen drama about or by this instance, it’s just a place to get your Lemmy, no judgement or gatekeeping like on some others. Welcome all!
Great post !
I gotta say. Lemmy is really coming along. I’ve been here since the whole 3rd party API stuff and tired of seeing the same crappy content here. I know there’s the whole, “be what you want to see” theory but the truth is I have never really posted new content on Reddit either. I’ve always been a lurker and commenter.
Anyway I just wanted to say that content seems to be a lot better recently.
Try sorting by “hot” instead of “active”. It unearths a lot of fresh content
Hey, thanks a lot for taking care of the server and stuff : ) Looking forward to meet this nice community.
Welcome!!!
Thank you lemm.ee admins and welcome new folks! Newcomers, you picked the best instance by the way.
Yay! My first post 😃 Thank you 🙏
It is interesting to learn what drives behavioural change (individually and group wise). The ‘I am really done with this 💩’ makes us move and look out for better alternatives.
Reddit has been absolutely toxic over the past month or so. Looking forward to a change of pace!
Hello from lemmy.dbzer0.com
👀
wonder what the new signup stats on my instance is…
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com What the stats be, captain?