this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Lies, damn lies, and graphs that don't have the Y-axis starting at 0.
10% growth in a day is nice, but far from a revolution. Let's see this trend going for a month.
Monthly active users increased by 43% between 13 and 14 January: https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
https://xkcd.com/605/
I don't think anyone here is arguing that the entire world will be using pixelfed by the end of the year, and that its usage will expand to other galaxies by the end of the decade.
It's a comment about the current growth curve, and it is both accurate and interesting.
Lemmy had the same jump in numbers during the Reddit Exodus. Mastodon had a huge boost when Elon bought Twitter.
Every spike has been a followed by a slide back to baseline in less than a couple of months. After you've seen it happen so many times, it is no longer interesting.
The fact that you believe these platforms were the same before and after these events makes it sound like you were not, in fact, there to see it happen. In my experience, it permanently changed both platforms, transforming them from weird niche sites to genuine alternatives.
That said, what you find interesting or not is not any of my business.
I don't think that either Mastodon or Lemmy slid back anywhere near as far as back to baseline? Sure, usage went down, perhaps even significantly compared to the peaks, but I think that both retained a lot more users than they had before their respective spikes. I'm an example of someone who came into Mastodon with the Twitter exodus and into Lemmy with the Reddit exodus, and I've stayed for both.
I don't mean that the numbers went exactly back where they were. I mean that every spike was followed by a steady decline.
Compare it with Bluesky now, or compare it with Reddit during Digg's meltdown. Their growth curves will look like an S-curve, not this series of discrete jumps followed by 40-60% loss.
@[email protected] tbh we shouldn't expect the adoption curve of any Fediverse software to be somewhat similar to the ones of centralised social networks, since Fediverse completely misses the commercial aspect that encourage key users to stay in the platform easing communities to stick to it as well. My guess is that without the action of commercial dynamics, the situation wouldn't be so different from the jumps-and-losses moments we're used to
ok, that's a fair point. But then this whole talk about "going vertical" and "exponential growth" is useless, and the only thing that we could (perhaps) try to take out of these mass migration events is to ask ourselves "would we able to reduce churn in the Fediverse without compromising on any principles?"
In other worlds, does this mean that the only reason that the Fediverse is small is because it is not as addictive as the other social networks? Does this mean that leaving Instagram and coming to PixelFed is the same as quitting unhealthy ultraprocessed foods and realizing that when you switch to a healthy diet you simply don't eat as much at all?
And if any of this is true, shouldnยดt we change the effort from "leave Instagram and come to PixelFed" to "Leave Instagram and quit all social media"?
Got it, thanks.
Cool. You... don't have to engage in discussions that bore you. Why waste your time?
the head dev Dan Sup mentioned the number of active users jumping from 6k to 30k. we'll see how it holds, but there is strength in numbers, people only stay if other people see what they post there. i have good hopes and really want to ditch instagram
Normalized graph for you:
Not a vertical line, at all. For sure cool, but very exaggerated with a dishonest graph.
The y axis starting zero does not change the fact that it's exponentially growing right now. Filter that link posted below for 120 days and it is still a nearly straight vertical line of growth.
It's not exponentially growing. At best, the growth rate has exponentially increased. These are VERY different things.
It was exponentially growing, the platform would come screeching to a halt and crash.
Jesus fucking Christ, you people are miserably pedantic. Nothing about my original post is wrong, so please kindly shut the fuck up with your "well achtually" takes.
Ah, the classic response to being proven wrong on the Internet. Have a hissy fit like a 5-year-old and call everyone pedantic etc. You were objectively wrong but there's no problem with that, everyone is wrong about stuff all the time, the difference is how you handle that. You either act like a mentally grown person and just go "oh, damn, I didn't know that, thanks for correcting me" or act like you've done. No one is out to say that pixelfed isn't growing, but you're misrepresenting facts and then being a fucking child about being told so.
Actually, pedantry is correcting people for things that didn't actually need correcting because everyone understood the meaning from the context, so there isn't any reason for him to thank you because you didn't actually do anything of value.
Username checks out.
I'm not calling everyone pedantic. I'm calling you and the other guy who chimed in with pedantic takes pedantic. You can claim you're right all you want, but nothing about the title of the post "Pixelfed user count has gone vertical" is inaccurate. Whether it's the user count or the user growth rate that is exponential is irrelevant. Nothing about my post is misrepresenting the fact that on the graph, the number of users is going nearly straight up, exactly as the title describes. Feel free to keep trying to correct me, but I know I'm right because I have eyes and can identify basic shapes. I am very willing to admit when I am wrong, but this is not one of those cases.
I'm not sure if people are pedantic or sarcastic at this point
They seem to be serious. The more concerning thing is that people are agreeing with them. I guess common sense is not so common.
I got the same criticism about a similar graph a while ago. Numbers are on the left, people can clearly see how big of a change the graph shows, and I have no way to present the graph differently as it's straight from the website, but people still want to argue about it
Tbf graphics like that are commonly used to be deceitful, because people don't actually check the numbers on the left.
But in this case I think it probably doesn't matter lol
And then tell you're throwing a tantrum when you get annoyed by it.
You're the one that made a false claim with a biased graph...it's okay to be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. No need to be so hostile about it. You could even edit your OP and add in the graph I threw together that normalizes the data. It's still a significant bump in users, which is cool.
You seem sensitive and very angry about it.
The only thing worse than misrepresentation of statistics is completely misguided criticism of statistical representation.
While we're at it, the X axis doesn't start at zero either.
It's the perfect combo of karma farming and "well, achtually" to make your blood boil. Good thing karma isn't a thing on here from what I can tell.
There's no karma on Lemmy
Wake me up in 2 months when 80% of new users churned.
I've never been on IG but I'm strongly considering a pFed account. Am I churn or am I miniscule net-new?
And yeah, it's a hope that the rumoured meta toxicity is somehow magically not on pFed. I wanna see my nephew's designs and art but not the influencerati junk I fear is on the captive platform.