You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
- The official Pixelfed app just has a nicer looking UI
- There’s not really a competing app for people leaving Insta like there is Bluesky vs Mastodon
- Pixelfed’s content is mostly visual so it’s easily digestible to casual users and you don’t have to scroll past dry Fedi arguments
- Better discover features so users don’t have to do a bunch of legwork to find who to follow
Just my guesses though, but like any social media it really depends on if big creators will switch and if users stick with it over time
Pixelfed’s monthly userbase has gone from 15k to almost 300k in the past month. Absolutely massive for the fediverse.
I’ll probably try it out eventuallyTM
The tide lifts all the boats… there is also a noticeable uptick in Lemmy registrations, at least here on our instance.
I think I’ve also seen new communities being created too
My script may or may not have picked up the data correctly. I thought I had it working but during writing down the data I noticed that the new 196 blahaj community wasn’t showing up in communities from this month and was categorised as 2023.06. After tinkering with the script a bit and rerunning the script it’s now correctly categorised as from this month but who knows if there are any other errors. And due to writing this down manually I could have made some mistakes myself too. :p

New communities by month:
2025.01 - 313
2024.12 - 267
2024.11 - 311
2024.10 - 264
2024.09 - 249
2024.08 - 321
2024.07 - 344
2024.06 - 411
2024.05 - 449
2024.04 - 484
2024.03 - 704
2024.02 - 500
2024.01 - 422New communities this month by instance: (potential typos) (I just pasted it into the lemmy ui only to realise it doesn’t have a monofont ;-; (Edit: it seems to actually get rid of additional spaces anyway.))
lemmy.world - sixty-nice
lemm.ee - 27
lemmynsfw.com - 23
lemmy.org - 21
lemmy.blahaj.zone - 18
lemmy.dbzer0.com - 12
sh.itjust.works - 10
realbitcoin.cash - 9
lemmy.ml - 8
lemmy.sdf.org - 6
lemmy.zip - 6
discuss.tchncs.de - 5
literature.cafe - 5
ani.social - 4
feddit.org - 4
jlai.lu - 4
lemmy.ca - 4
lemmy.lqx.net - 4
redlemmy.com - 4
slrpnk.net - 4
sopuli.xyz - 4
discuss.online - 3
lemmy.today - 3
dubvee.org - 2
feddit.it - 2
feddit.uk - 2
lemmy.cafe - 2
lemmy.spronkus.xyz - 2
lemmyusa.com - 2
szmer.info - 2
zerobytes.monster - 2
discuss.jacen.moe - 1
fasheng.ing - 1
feddit.dk - 1
feddit.nl - 1
g00n.cloud - 1
hackertalks.com - 1
hexbear.net - 1
info.prou.be - 1
lemmings.world - 1
lemmy.amxl.com - 1
lemmy.chrisco.me - 1
lemmy.eco.br - 1
lemmy.studio - 1
lemmy.wtf - 1
lemmygrad.ml - 1
lemuria.es - 1
mander.xyz - 1
midwest.social - 1
monero.town - 1
pawb.social - 1
ponder.cat - 1
programming.dev - 1
r.nf - 1
real.lemmy.fan - 1
reddthat.com - 1
thelemmy.club - 1
ttrpg.network - 1
vegantheoryclub.org - 1
walledgarden.xyz - 1
0xdd.org.ru - 1Top 15 most popular (subscribers) new communities created this month: (excluding nsfw ofc)
!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone - 1.77k
!keeptrack@lemmy.world - 544
!actually_infuriating@lemmy.world - 346
!sideoftheroad@lemmy.today - 265
!youtubeclassics@sh.itjust.works - 229
!Football@lemm.ee - 193
!quityourbullshit@lemmy.world - 184
!growthefediverse@slrpnk.net - 183
!webrevival@lemm.ee - 151
!shitprop@quokk.au - 124
!Autism@lemmy.dbzer0.com - 123
!19684@lemmy.blahaj.zone - 121
!latin@lemm.ee - 119
!lesbians@lemmy.blahaj.zone - 118
!buyeuropean@feddit.uk - 112
Lemmy is full of bad news, hate and toxicity while pixelfed is full of artists and people sharing cool pictures and their passion. Visiting my pixelfed account from 2023 a few days ago set such a contrast with what I see on lemmy that I started using it regularly. It really felt weird to visit such a wholesome place after using lemmy for a long time. Now I use pixelfed to balance out the bad stuff from lemmy for maintaining my mental health and to appreciate the art which is not common on lemmy.
I hear you. I’m getting tired of the massive amount of posts about trump and elon and politics. I don’t see almost any new content about other stuff.
Same problem with Mastodon tbh








