https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats

I don’t even use Pixelfed, but its growth is kind of interesting to me:

The ebb lasted a lot longer than I was rooting for. But now it seems to have caught a recent uptick. Still slight in terms of its maximum peak, but respectable: 47K Monthly Active Users. (about the same as the total number of MAUs on Lemmy!)

Furthermore, it’s also reflected in the half-year Active Users, meaning it’s not just people who signed in a couple months ago who are now checking back in – looks like brand-new active participants.

Any idea what caused this? Another “migrate” campaign? Did Instagram do something stupid again? Or is it just a data glitch?

  • jgrim@discuss.onlineEnglish
    23·
    3 months ago

    I hosted social.photo, which was a Pixelfed instance.

    I had an uptick in users when I started to consider shutting down the site. It was the reason, ultimately, I decided to shut down as soon as possible. The software is awful, and I don’t want to deal with the issues multiplied by growth.

    I decided to announce a shutdown by posting and hoping people see it because you can’t make an announcement to users on Pixelfed out of the box. I know there is an admin interface for it, but it doesn’t work.

    Afterward, many of my new users told me they came from other instances that shut down.

    This trend could be a blip as users create new accounts to migrate as they did before from their previous accounts. I know there is a user interface for this, but it doesn’t work.

    Or it could be the terrible spam filter that blocks real users and allows bots. So, real users aren’t there to report bots. This is compounded by an uptick in new hype instances. These are sometimes poorly moderated instances full of bots awaiting returning interest from their owners to get cleaned up or closed.

    Or it’s real!

      • jgrim@discuss.onlineEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        Hey, sorry. I’ve been dealing with some ongoing personal stuff.

        There are no clear release versions in the repository; all work is done in the mainline branch, called “dev”. Therefore, you are not guaranteed to always use the same code as someone else on the same “version,” which makes debugging issues difficult. I had to build my own Docker containers when I first started hosting it because the ones provided didn’t work as expected. I’ve not tried them since. So, depending on your deployment process, this may not be an issue.

        New releases are often buggy and break existing functionality. Feature releases are slow and seem unnecessary when core features are incomplete or not working. The developer is distracted by other projects.

        There aren’t any ways to communicate and create a community unless you force everyone to follow a specific account from the start of your instance. Funding is challenging and becomes expensive due to image storage and bandwidth usage.

        I have other projects I contribute to; otherwise, I’d contribute to improve or fork Pixelfed. I want to reimplement many of the existing features.

    • jim3692@discuss.onlineEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      I am so sorry to hear that. I run the Margit profile in your instance, but I wasn’t aware of your plans to shut it down.

      • jgrim@discuss.onlineEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, it’s not been easy to moderate, update, & use. If enough people are interested, I’m open to keeping it running as a closed instance. The biggest issue is that there isn’t an out-of-the-box way for me to message all the local accounts to discuss this.

          • jgrim@discuss.onlineEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            I saw this 2 months ago. But my ADHD, Depression, & Anxiety have all been in full swing as of late because of many gifts of lemons from life. I wanted you to know that. I laughed then and still do now, when I’m finally responding after seeing the notification for two months.