I’m working on a way to tell, but man, I’m bad at actually finishing projects.

Okay, logging off to work on it.

I ran a BBS back in the day with like 200ish? users. Engagement was way more valuable than growth. More people makes things harder, not easier. More engagement from less people is easier to manage, and leads to better communities.

Lemmy feels the same.

Lemmy is for discourse. I’d rather see the healthy and interesting back and forth of an OP and commenter than 5K up votes.

I moved here during rexit and love it, but Lemmy isn’t popular in my country. That’s the reason I need other communities for local news and why Lemmy is not my everyday comunity.

Don’t expect perpetual growth from the fediverse for one good reason:

It would cost more money.

Lemmy is self hosted and there are people who use their own personal money to host these things and have a certain amount of activity.

Doubling the users would double the cost but it would not double the usefulness for the instance owner.

Growth for growth/s sake means very little. Steady use is way more important and Lemmy has that.

The intelligence of the commentary here certainly isn’t

It seems to be on a healthy state, there are some communities that I would like to have more content. But that’s also on me to share and contribute to the communities I would like to see.

Being a bystander on reddit for so long it’s a bit difficult to change that mindset, but I’m trying to share a bit more

According to fedidb.org, Lemmy has plateaued at around 43k active users over the past year.

If you ask me, though, it doesn’t matter. The Lemmy ecosystem is active and healthy.

I moved to Lemmy during the reddut exodus itsjustt become better overtime I don’t miss reddit at all. Also lots of fellow Linux and free software nerds over here and I like that.

I feel like the content is becoming more robust and the userbase is keeping up. I think it’s going to be super necessary pretty soon down the road.

or will it stagnate and fade into obscurity like many other similar discussion boards?

well it wouldn’t really play out like that, if Lemmy gets overtaken by a replacement (like Mbin, Piefed, or Sublinks), it would be a transition not a death

a big thing we can look forwards to right now is if Pixelfed gets better support to interact with Lemmy/etc communities/groups then we can get a big boost in userbase, even if they aren’t using the Lemmy software we’ll still be seeing their posts and comments

I wish Mastodon would improve their compatibility with Lemmy too, but they don’t seem interested

Lack of growth does not mean death. That’s a capitalistic mindset. It’s entirely possible for a community to be sustainable based on the people it has and have no need to grow. Lemmy’s not trying to sell a product; there’s no need for it to grow. People can join if they want to, and people can leave if they want to.

In terms of actual future prospects, Lemmy seems fairly large to me, and regardless of whether its userbase is growing or shrinking, it would have to shrink by quite a lot to become “dead”. Especially as Reddit continues to enshittify, I imagine its userbase will only grow. Hard to find social medias of this nature otherwise; almost all other social media is based around following people, not communities, and also obviously most social media is much more commercialised, less anonymous, much less text-friendly, etc, so link aggregator/Reddit style social medias fill in a niche people want and people who want a social media in this niche will gravitate towards the one they see as the best social media for whatever reason. Maybe Reddit because it’s the biggest, maybe Lemmy because Reddit is shit and Lemmy is federated and open-source, maybe their niche alternative because they’re part of a specific niche community that uses different software, who knows.

IRC is still around. Usenet is still around.

There’s no Google management team or Zuckerberg to pull the plug.

Lemmy can keep going indefinitely.

From the perspective of someone who has been on Lemmy for a few years now, I’ll say that the amount of content here has become large enough for me to use Lemmy as a “daily driver” account. I don’t miss out on important news or updates by using Lemmy instead of Reddit…in fact it often feels quite the opposite

Lemmy doesn’t need to “take off” or compete with Reddit to succeed. Growth for the sake of growth holds little inherent value. Unlike commercial platforms reliant on VC funding to survive, Lemmy thrives on sustainability. What really matters is that there are enough developers to maintain the platform, people to host the server, and users to create content. With these elements in place, Lemmy can continue indefinitely without the need for explosive growth.

In fact, rapid growth could do more harm than good. A sudden influx of users often brings toxic behaviors, especially those migrating from platforms like Reddit. When new users trickle in slowly, they adapt to the existing norms and culture of the community. But when a horde arrives, they risk overwhelming and reshaping the community in ways that trample over its core values. A slow, steady stream of users allows for organic integration, preserving the essence of what makes Lemmy pleasant.

Unlike commercial platforms, open-source projects don’t rely on profit motives to survive. They’re driven by people who directly benefit from their work and are passionate about their vision. When disagreements arise, projects can be forked, allowing different groups to take them in new directions. Even if a project is abandoned, it can be revived by a new team as long as there’s a dedicated community. This flexibility and resilience make open source inherently more sustainable than commercial platforms, which can vanish overnight if funding dries up.

The Fediverse, and Lemmy within it, only needs a large enough user base to remain self-sustaining. I’d argue that it’s already well past that threshold. There’s no rush to grow rapidly. Steady progress ensures the community retains its identity and values, while the open-source nature of the platform guarantees its longevity. Lemmy isn’t just another platform; it’s a sustainable, adaptable ecosystem built to endure. I’m willing to bet that Lemmy will still be around long after Reddit crumbles to dust.