Editing to let people know that I will be blocking anyone who feels the need to tell me why this graph is inaccurate. I truly don’t care, but feel free to chime in with your useless take and land a spot on my block list! 🙂

  • @[email protected]
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    3392 days ago

    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.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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      1616 hours ago

      Normalized graph for you:

      Not a vertical line, at all. For sure cool, but very exaggerated with a dishonest graph.

        • aasatru
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          462 days ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            252 days ago

            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.

            • aasatru
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              522 days ago

              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.

                • aasatru
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                  82 days ago

                  Yeah, I know I shouldn’t bother. I am just annoyed by the misconception that all graphs should always start in 0 on the Y axis, as if it was some law of nature. Shouldn’t allow myself to get dragged in further. :)

              • @[email protected]
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                2 days ago

                I am here since before the Reddit backout and I am on Mastodon since 2018. Lemmy was at 15k MAU, went up to over 125k and now is 1/3 of that. Mastodon had 1M 575k something before Elon, hit up close to 2M 1.5M and now is sitting around 800k. (edit: I was looking at the overall charts and used wrong figures. Corrected now.)

                Sure, if your reference point is waaaay before the spikes then what we have now seem “a lot”. However, my point is that these spikes are far from being indicative of mass adoption.

                • @[email protected]
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                  132 days ago

                  Lemmy was at 15k MAU, went up to over 125k and now is 1/3 of that.

                  So it increased by 200%

                  • @[email protected]
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                    22 days ago

                    Oh, wow, very impressive! Did you have to use a calculator to get to this challenging result?

                    Communick’s revenue grew 1800% in 2024, compared to 2023. Do you think that makes it successful in any way?

                • xapr [he/him]
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                  22 days ago

                  Mastodon had 1M something before Elon, hit up close to 2M and now is sitting around 800k.

                  This stat is really surprising. Do you by any chance have a link where I can see this data?

            • xapr [he/him]
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              222 days ago

              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.

              • @[email protected]
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                22 days ago

                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.

                • Fedo ¶
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                  32 days ago

                  @[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

                  • @[email protected]
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                    62 days ago

                    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, shouldn´t we change the effort from “leave Instagram and come to PixelFed” to “Leave Instagram and quit all social media”?

    • @[email protected]
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      262 days ago

      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

    • @[email protected]OP
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      172 days ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        282 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 day ago

          Wait what? The whole point of exponential growth is that all it’s derivatives/integrals are also exponential.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          82 days ago

          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.

          • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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            16 hours ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              116 hours ago

              The primary reason I am getting hostile is because there is a chorus of dumbasses who think they’re being clever by pointing out that graphs look different when you view them on different time scales. No shit Sherlock. It doesn’t negate the fact that this is probably the most significant increase in users the app has ever seen, which is really all my post is saying. On the graph, the line is vertical. Even zooming out 4 months, it’s still vertical. Maybe zooming out further will make it less vertical, but that is beside the point. It’s still growing fast. Even on your graph you can see the shift. Getting called a liar and having people try to minimize a significant trend is not something I will just let slide off my back. Keep arguing all you want, you’re wasting your time.

              • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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                14 hours ago

                Ah, so you don’t actually understand why you’re being called out. It isn’t the timescale that “the dumbasses” are calling you out on. It’s the Y-axis.

                If you cut off the bottom, you can make any graph look vertical. Still, it’s not insignificant and it’s definitely a turn which is cool, but this is why people are upset at your post title.

              • @[email protected]
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                15 hours ago

                The problem is less about the chart and the fact that you are taking a jump from a very short interval and trying to pass it off as something completely unprecedented.

                Getting called a liar and having people try to minimize a significant trend

                “Lies, damn lies and statistics” is not about calling you a liar, but how people can selectively use different data points to present information that supports their thesis or confirms their biases. I wasn’t calling you a liar, I am just disagreeing with you about this being “significant”.

                If this growth rate holds for the next two weeks, then I’ll gladly change my tune and start talking about a trend. But so emphatically making projections out of one or two data points is a fool’s errand.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              223 hours ago

              Sorry for getting annoyed when people needlessly correct others to make themselves seem smart.

              • @[email protected]
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                421 hours ago

                Eh… It’s important to not spread misinformation and correct it when you see it.

                It’s also important to just be ok with being wrong and get on with your life. No emotion needed.

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  120 hours ago

                  I am very willing to admit when I’m wrong. However, the original post is not misinformation. The line on the graph is nearly vertical. That is objectively true. Even going back 120 days, the last few days are clearly vertical, and a sharp jump in users from previous time periods.

                  People just like to correct people to make themselves feel smart, and I have very little patience for that sort of thing. If someone makes a legitimate correction or proves to me that I am wrong, I am happy to be corrected, but needless and inaccurate corrections are just irritating.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    318 hours ago

                    If you’re happy to be corrected, then let me please help.

                    Exponential growth is dependent on the original size, and is usually a multiple of that size. 10 going to 20 then going to 40 then going to 80 is exponential growth.

                    10 going to 20 then to 30 then to 40 is linear growth. The increments are not related to it’s original size.

                    Going from 290k to 320k is barely a 10% increase. The way the graph is clipped LOOKS like an exponential line, but that’s because it’s clipped. If we showed the full data, 0 to 320k, it would not at all look exponential.

                    And even if we drop the mathematical meaning and go with the colloquial meaning, when people say exponential they usually mean doubling. So 290k to 580k.

                    People are calling you out because you exaggerated too hard. You called 10% growth exponential. That’s just wrong on the face of it.

                    Now I will wait and see if you lied to me about being happy to be proven wrong.

          • M137
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            2 days ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              72 days ago

              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.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              42 days ago

              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.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              52 days ago

              They seem to be serious. The more concerning thing is that people are agreeing with them. I guess common sense is not so common.

              • Blaze (he/him)
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                42 days ago

                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

                • @[email protected]
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                  82 days ago

                  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

      • aasatru
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        142 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          42 days ago

          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.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 days ago

        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.