r/selfhosted is still rising, WTF? Come to Lemmy!!!

Stop obsessing about Reddit and create a content on Lemmy instead. People will come once they see there's enough activity here.
- I’d prefer if we stopped bringing up Reddit altogether. We no longer use the platform, we should be happy with what we have here instead of constantly peeping into the neighbor’s garden.
  
  Yah but that seems to be what lemmy is turning out to be and I don't see it being sustainable.
- Exactly. Chill out. It's not a competition.
  Just hang out and enjoy the community.
- This is the third ng. Fuck reddit. Just post and it's all G
- The OP has double the posts you do?
  
  It's still a correct statement
- It's not an obsession! Simply if all the good poster/commenter that are there would come here, this place would be better!
  
  I am not a good boi?
  
  Be the change you want to see.
  You thought they were the leaders. They're the followers, staying near the crowd.
  Building communities is hard and takes time.

My favorite r/selfhosted comment.
- Same with r/antiwork they closed briefly and when Reddit sneezed their way, they opened the sub instantly. Talking about hypocrisy.
  
  There's a lot of subs like these which I don't want to name. Basically, subs with anti-corpo principles but refuses to leave corpo Reddit. I'm happy for the subs who are still dark even until now (and even more reason to be now that Reddit is deleting older DMs and removing awards/coins).
  
  Well, imho, at least half of r/antiwork posts were escapist fiction of how one should have replied to their manager.
  
  I guess moving to lemmy was too much work.
- Ahahaha, top message!!!
- Everyone there probably decided not to self-host because they can't hide it behind their VPN lol

If you look at the charts you linked, you can see the users activity (post per day and comments per day) is falling sharply since last month. Subscribers count mean nothing if a big proportion of the active posters leave.
- Makes sense, the people who have both the tech knowledge and conviction on the advantages of selfhosting, were probably the most active posters.
  
  The new subscribers are probably bots.
- Post per day seams steady at about 30/40, comment per day seams to have dropped from 3/400 to 250/300, I would have expected a great fall.
  
  If you compare post per days from before the strike, it definitely falls. It's no longer an upward trajectory despite subscribers growth.
- It's interesting how Lemmy shows active users before subscribing. Even reddit shows "readers" (people currently online), but people hyperfocus on subscribers (which can be dead accounts).

The change will come once people start searching for stuff on Google and they get results which link back to lemmy. For that to happen we need people asking for help/feedback and getting their answers here.
- The most useful comment in this entire thread, the search results are a bit of a mess currently and that's a huge stumbling block.
  I tried a simple search query with lemmy and the way results come back is not good
  it's going to take a long time for that to change but just as a casual user I doubt I'd click anything past the first few reddit links.
  
  The fact we're on the first screen of results is progress! 🎉
  
  You can't do site:website.com due to all the different instances
- I'm happy to help provide answers on my fields of interests but they are pretty much dead on Lemmy for now, it's a chicken and egg thing.
  It doesn't help that because we don't really have good algorithms, my feed is dominated by generalist topics, memes, news and tech stuff. So even if I subscribe to smaller communities, if I don't intentionally go visit them they're never in my feed.
  We need to better surface posts from smaller communities by having a weighted algorithm so that your feed is a mix of big and small communities.
  
  This was actually mentioned in an issue on the github. I can't quite remember whether it was turned down or just inactive. I totally agree. If we're going to compete with big social medias then we also need some kind of algorithms. Opt-in/out of course.
  
  Isn't Hot supposed to work like that? When it's not broken, of course.
  I feel like some simple algorithm like the ones used in dithering may be used to mix up the feed.
- Google's algorithm might actively down-rank Lemmy sites though, as the messages appear duplicated on multiple sites, which is usually a sign of SEO blog spam.
  Probably needs a change on Google's side to better recognize federated websites. Not impossible that they will do this, lets see.
  
  As of v0.18.2, Lemmy marks the "original URL" as the canonical URL so search engines know which page is the "real" one. Shouldn't that help?
- Hmm does Lemmy need search engine optimization? I have no idea how seo works these days :/
- correct and also back linking on our blogs/medium posts/etc..

Well firstly, why do you care about being banned if you're leaving Reddit?
Come to terms with Reddit not dying overnight. Lemmy isn't going to vanish if people don't move over straight away. Reddit will eventually succumb to the 1000s of tiny self-inflicted cuts. Post content that isn't on Reddit and people will have a motivation to stay here.
- Make Lemmy the place to be when reddit kills the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. Yeah we're small, but we're something crazy like almost 10x the size we were before the 3rd party app shitshow.
  We aim to be the place where people can migrate to next time reddit causes a freakout, like killing old reddit

If you link to Lemmy on Reddit, the admins sometimes delete the comment.
- Lol I used a script to overwrite my 13 years of fairly active redditing with a join-lemmy.org link
  
  I've read that Reddit was recovering them all. Are yours still gone?
- Hahaah some mods in r/greece are doing exactly than too
  
  Admins or mods? Two very different groups.

You would think, of all the communities that would be comfortable with migration, it would be the folks from /r/selfhosted!
Fellow user from there, btw, nice to see we've got a decent pool of people on this board instead.
- Totally agree. Thought the same when the reddit shitstorm happened.
- Well that's probably a reason why this community is so strong compared to other nieche communities

allowed to talk about Lemmy on Reddit
if /r/lemmy is any proof; A) its ok to talk about lemmy on reddit and B) /u/spez has some validity in his point about users would be back not just because of the '48hr' thing.
That said, yes a loud enough minority can create change and that discussion does need to happen where the users are for the network effect to kick off.
- Some mods are deleting comments/posts promoting lemmy. I made a post in my fav sub about the community in lemmy and the mods deleted it.
  
  Same, the big 3 communities I host here I made very open posts, not pleading or encouraging people to move even, just "hey, we exist over here if you are curious". All immediately removed, the mods were having none of that
  
  I had at least three comments talking about Lemmy removed too. For all I know it was many more than that because I didn't get any notice or explanation.
  My take is that they're censoring without even informing people because the fediverse is a real threat to them.

Subscriber numbers mean little. Take a look at the trend for the posts per day and comments per day graphs. They're far more accurate indicators of the level of engagement actual users are having with reddit.
I've just checked for 10 of the subs I used to subscribe to, 2 of which have over 30m subscribers - all of them have the same downward trend in terms of posts and comments. I'm not saying reddit is in trouble but less new content is being created and that which is is being talked about less, eventually that will take a toll.
- Neat, where are you pulling these graphs?
  
  Check the link in OP's post.

Ever since the api shit happend, and mods left their subs unmoderated, I feel like there are more bot accounts/posts on Reddit than ever.
- That's also because a lot of mods used the API to detect bots and other malicious users. These tools were removed so even if the mods didn't leave, they are now significantly less effective.

I agree with all the comments so far but would like to add my own thoughts. Users are not important. Personally I moved to lemmy because the quality of discussion on reddit dropped so much.
This has been my trajectory:
avid reddit user and content creator there (not sure if the right term) 2016 - 2018
lurker from 2018 to 2023
completely dropped reddit and moved to lemmy
My hope is that we can have the same kind of content and discussion in pre 2020 reddit
- yeah the comment per day graph is not doing too hot. Subscriber count may be rising but comment count is constantly in the valley.

I'm one of them! I didn't even know about r/selfhosted when I was on Reddit but I found this place when I joined kbin. I've been thinking on-and-off over the last year about self hosting so subscribed. I still occasionally look at Reddit in view-only mode though (largely for legacy content) so I also subscribed to r/selfhosted over there too last time I checked it.
It's not subscriber numbers that matter though, it's active users and quality new posts - people who go to the sub regularly, upvote, comment, and create content that causes other people in turn to look at the sub. I'm still a subscriber to a tonne of Reddit subs that I used to post and comment regularly on, and now don't. If every active Reddit user became a passive user then Reddit would grind to a halt overnight, regardless of how many users they notionally have.

So....I own a .com domain that's really, really good as far as being lemmy-related (it has lemmy in the name).
Not exactly a s self-hosted question, and I'm an old geek so I can arrange hosting and set things up myself when I have time, but anyone have a guess as to my traffic costs if I decide to turn it into a federated lemmy instance and open it up to the public? Just looking for thoughts and opinions.
- I wouldn't worry about it too much. The per-user traffic costs appear to be low enough that it seems likely you'd be able to sustain the instance on donations, even with a low percentage of altruistic users.
  You could also try asking @Ruud.
- Only one way to find out. ;) You can always limit signups if you get overwhelmed. Get yourself one of those DMCA protection licenses too, they're very cheap afaik.
  
  Could you expand on the DMCA protection you mentioned?

I like it here on Lemmy as there are quality talks from people and not too much circlejerking same concepts around. I actually like going trough here.

The fediverse keeps sabotaging itself with instances defederating left and right, that way it'll never become an alternative regular user would want to join.
- Defederation isn't sabotage. It's a feature for healthy communities. Anyone that is interested in discussions on either defederated community, will create an account for both.
  
  Anyone that is interested in discussions on either defederated community, will create an account for both.
  And that is the reason why reddit is still growing. If you are required to make multiple accounts just to engage with the communities you want to engage with, Lemmy is no better than separate forums. And those all got overshadowed by reddit for a reason.
  
  Honestly, for anyone not particularly tech literate it's a bit confusing. It's got Lemmy in the name. It's the same UI. Most are going to wonder why they're suddenly logged out or why they need another account. It's not intuitive if it's not something you're particularly used to.

Do what you can to make this the place you want to be.

More subscribers.. check More comment.. maybe check Quality content.. nah
I use RSS to get r/selfhosted post and I can guarantee that most posts are amateurs asking questions.

It surprises me too on some level because it does seem very obvious.
I've also learned on multiple occasions over the years that I value different things and I value them much more strongly than a large swath of the selfhosting community. That may speak to whether or not people selfhost for ideological, practical, or other reasons that I am unaware of but, at the end of the day, I find myself disappointed that the version of the selfhosting community that I imagined and thought I was on the same page with is simply not the selfhosting community that exists.
- What does the self-hosting community value, then?

this chart (from your link) shows that the change has stifled the activity a bit. maybe a 10-20% drop in new posts per day. which is not insignificant. so maybe subscribers are rising, but the number of posts has dropped and plateaued (so far).
But i dont think it will ever go away, it was also my go-to place for a long time. Hopefully more of the posters and commenters head here!

Well… I hosted nothing myself, but now I host my own Lemmy instance :o)

What do you mean? I'm here!
- 😁

Why would you care about getting banned from Reddit?
- Because Lemmy has about 0.something % of the users that Reddit has and I still find useful some subreddit.

The issue is I'm keen on following the self-hosting / server specific content but generally I've got nothing exciting to add. I can offer upvotes and kbin boosts 🚀

You got it all wrong, everyone is on Threads ................ Nah, I just subscribed to learn about starting some self hosting. I'm running a local media server, which was easy, but want to branch out to photo backup from my various phones/accounts. Getting nervous that Google will just close my account one day for no reason. Anyway, don't fret, the community doesn't need to be 💯 today, it'll get there.
I personally believe reddit will live on, that's just the way its going to be. I dropped off, but my account is still there.

it is good.
the scum stays in the puddle of mud. just like ppl still being on fb or twitter...they create nothing new. and so is r/selfhosted ...they will repeat their stacks over and over again. it's like asking people for advice on music...on myspace in 2023.
- Oh come on, that's not true and you know it. There's still good people there (in r/selfhosted) posting good stuff.
  Edit: specified that I'm talking about r/selfhosted and not MySpace.
  
  because the drain has just started maybe?
  oooor, imagine this: they are just nice and yet create nothin new?
  when was the last good music recommendation you found on myspace? maybe there are still good music things on but nobody gives a fuck and those still using myspace,fb or r/selfhostes are just pathetic and keep riding a dead horse.

Soon.