We’ve been hovering around 40k MAU in the threadi for 2 good years now.

We did have 40-45K for a long time yes, but it's been falling recently, and just prior to the Fediverse Observer dying it reported that we finally dipped below 30K. We've been declining for a very long time - from 65K to 45K, holding steady at 40-45K, now at <30K and falling. Even if you include the 6-7K PieFed, that's ~35K which is very significantly (~10-25%) below the 40-45K numbers.

And if you search Reddit for what people are saying about us here, it's extremely clear why that is. e.g.:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/MorpheApp/comments/1wdbscs/we_should_switch_to_something_else/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/oldreddit/comments/1vvylak/thoughts_on_lemmy/

We here, who have the early adopter mindset, are willing to put in the time and effort to learn how and what to block. But e.g. the most popular 3rd-party app Voyager does not - by default - show the instance name of each user account, so a new joiner won’t be able to easily distinguish when e.g. someone from the tankie triad is trolling them vs. someone attempting to converse in good faith. Wish and hope as we might - without putting in any actual efforts to change anything mind you - we simply cannot get away from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance principle.

We are a tankie / troll bar, and the vast majority of mainstream non-technical normal folks tell other people that they very much do not enjoy visiting here as a result.

I tried switching to Lemmy a long time ago, but that place is toxic and full of weird people.

There are big pockets of radical tankie communities on Lemmy that like trolling and being toxic

There are a lot more reasons than this but having spent the last 3 years on the fediverse alternatives, and just seen the shit that happens over there, I feel very confident in saying it will not ever serve as a serious Reddit alternative. It will serve as something, but not Reddit

Lemmy is shit. So is reddit but Lemmy is shittier

Any conversation about fleeing Reddit enshittification is DOA when Lemmy is mentioned - not because people have not heard of us, nor bc it is too complicated to make an account, but bc many of them have already been here, reportedly remaining for several years, and finally went back, giving up any hope that things would ever improve here.

Our reputation precedes us.