Exactly. Users who are involved in extremely niche communities will probably not find a place on Lemmy/Kbin yet. In 2008, reddit was the same. The politics subreddit only had 50,000 subscribers.

It's all about momentum. The more users we have, the more engagement in niche communities, the more it'll attract and retain users.

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And loads of people hear the buzz, try it out and leave when they grow bored. I think the reason for the downward spike not being worse is that the threshold to take part in Lemmy communities is higher than many social media sites, and invested time registering makes people more likely to stay.

[–] romkube@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just to chime in, please correct me if I’m wrong, but Lemmy only counts activity as someone who’s posting or commenting (citation needed), so as more people go back to their old ways of lurking, activity will drop as browsing isn’t counted as activity

[–] Redecco@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Us lurkers are still here (hopefully) but it's easy to go back to the ways of scrolling without engaging

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That is true.

[–] Selkie210@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago

That's correct on the active users, as more people go back to lurking it will show less users but good chance they just don't post much now

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

Why I'm encouraging anyone who will listen to participate in their fledgling niche communities here. Even if it's just a little bit.

One can simply lurk on the niche subreddits. Growing fediverse communities need active participation.