I’m genuinely interested in people thoughts about the Fediverse because here in the UK it has massively stalled in 2025, like a lot of things. I am seeing way less posts from UK people and way less interaction and general use in fact. Most seem to have stopped social media use to be fair, and I know a lot of that is to do with my age (old fart here, 56 laps round sun and counting) but the numbers game look poor from my point of view. Do we think the Fediverse has a future now after useage appears to be going downwards? Is it a UK thing? (well I know the UK is weird but hey)

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Also British, trying (somewhat failing) to avoid more of the political stuff and that seems to be most of the national specific stuff that gets posted.

  • J52@lemmy.nz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    21 hours ago

    Kiwi here, originally European so I get content in two languages and from people with some interests in similar. Good percentage of local and international stuff generally keeps me happy. (Not too concerned/glad about overall numbers - there’s no continuous growth on a finite planet)

  • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.comOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 day ago

    I have enjoyed this discussion but some of my UK peers have added that the fediverse in general (like most social media to be fair) when it is new seems to “american” for them. Bluesky suffers from this criticism as well. This puts a lot of UK users off. Heck even threads is described by many as too us focused right now (see the I’m in the UK is anybody else posts on threads)

  • Flax@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    I think because Emperor has vanished, might be a factor

  • mintiefresh@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    104
    ·
    3 days ago

    I do generally wish there was more content. So I’ve decided to start actively participating rather than lurking more recently.

  • misk@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Fediverse does everything I require out of social media. Functionality of threadiverse is mostly there and getting better (Piefed will probably replace Lemmy as the go-to eventually), apps are better. Mastodon / microblogging was always good enough for communicating with real people, it’s when you’re an influencer you run into limitations but who cares about that. Maybe there aren’t that many people that are into this and that’s okay because we’re not a corporation that needs to report quarterly growth forever.

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      (Piefed will probably replace Lemmy as the go-to eventually)

      I think rather we’ll see more software popping up and diversifying the ecosystem. Then you can pick whichever you prefer. Which is the whole point of the fediverse. I’m currently working on my own implementation. Might take a long while before any alpha version as I’m super busy but I try to do at least a bit of work on it every day.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    According to my observations, the Fediverse grows whenever people look for alternative. People do that whenever their comfort is disturbed by material changes. E.g. Reddit gated app APIs, people’s apps started shutting down, protest ensued, it failed, people looked for an alternative, many joined Lemmy as the obvious one. That created one of the largest spikes in active usage. There were others following that. There are network effects keeping people where they are unless there’s a significant force pushing them to overcome that. And so I think the Fediverse would grow the same way it’s grown so far. By being here for people whenever they can’t say or read something the way they were previously able to, as corporations enshittify to profit maximize. You even see them doing that themselves, with Bluesky for example, where they built an alternative that pretends to be federated in order to capture refugees. But Bluesky is inevitably going to get fucked too and since it’s federated in pretense only, there isn’t another instance to take over. I think the process is similar to Linux adoption. It was always there, chugging along for people looking for alternatives. It hasn’t stopped growing. It hasn’t exploded but we’re not complaining about where we are, are we.

  • Trinsec@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    3 days ago

    Didn’t the UK recently have a controversial online safety act or something? And didn’t many servers defederate UK servers as result?

    • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 days ago

      UK and EU are way ahead the US (for example) on online safety - Meta is despised over here by government and they owe billions in fines they just tie it all up in legal complaints that last years

  • Rimu@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    But usage is not going downwards. Check these stats out: https://fediverse.observer/stats

    MAU has been steady at 1.1 million since this time last year.

    Within the fediverse there are some platforms that are losing ground and some that are growing.

  • DeceasedPassenger@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    2 days ago

    I browse lemmy exclusively, as a result of distaste for corporatization. Personally I have no reason to leave and I doubt I will anytime soon. I don’t have any particular niches that I’m a part of, so the only thing that would cause me to leave is if the feed dried up. I usually open lemmy in the morning and scroll All - top 12h. I get an hour or so of scrolling before I reach posts with sub-10 votes. And that’s all I really need. I’ll be here until I can’t do that anymore.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    2 days ago

    I definitely get burnt out on it faster when half my front page is meta posts. I don’t have time to curate, I just want to see content that isn’t about itself.

  • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    3 days ago

    As a general comment, I suggest everyone interested in making the Fediverse grow to join those two communities

    Nobody likes to shout into the void. The second one helps finding people to help you grow your communities.

  • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    2 days ago

    Just from a quick look at https://fediverse.observer/, it looks like the Fediverse is mostly steady at 1-1.25 million monthly users (give or take) over the past two years with a slight decreasing trend. I think there are some reasons for this that are not entirely in our control.

    There seems to be a global sentiment of disconnecting from social media and the internet in general. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if ever platform is seeing a decaying user base. Anecdotally, among the people I see in real life, there is a general sense of exhaustion with online spaces. Whether it’s from corporate-own, enshittified platforms to even places on the Fediverse, the people with whom I interact tend to find the entire thing hollow. They’ve trimmed down to one or two platforms (if that). In fact, I’ve even started to get that way. In the past, if someone were wrong and arguing against a point I made, I’d engage, especially if it’s in something that I have expertise. Now, why bother? There’s no use arguing; people have little interest in admitting fault or engaging in good faith (again anecdotally). That said, I’ll concede that the Fediverse is a bit better on that front, but not by much.

    Then there’s the alternative nature of the Fediverse. It’s been rehashed over and over about how “difficult” it is to get on and use. It’s not actually that hard, but the barrier to entry is an extra step. That small extra step frightens people away from even joining. The only time that barrier gets broken is when a “legacy” social media platform does something anti-user. Then there is a refugee wave that comes in and goes out leading to a modest durable increase in users. Recently, there just hasn’t been a major controversy on a major platform that leads people here.

    Now, my final thought on this is to ask: Is a small and steady-ish population (despite modest decay) actually bad? In my view, I don’t think it is. Being smaller and with a smallish barrier to entry means that we exclude a sizable number of the low-effort population. So, there’s less (no zero) slop here. Plus, discussions, when had in good faith, can be much deeper and less filled with stupid low-effort jokes. Overall, I’m not too concerned with the number of people on the Fediverse. Growth isn’t necessarily the best thing. Even so, with the way most mainstream platforms are going, it’s inevitable that they will do something stupid that drives more people to the Fediverse at least for a time.

    TL;DR: The monthly population is mostly steady with a modest decay. Most social media is likely seeing similar trends. I don’t think the smaller userbase is that bad of a thing.