It seems the fediverse is continuing and growing again. Line go up is probably good!
https://fediverse.observer/stats&months=50
Total users are huge now.
There are many websites out there that pull data from the fediverse. So take that with a grain of salt. But anecdotally I am seeing a small rise in people using the various platforms as each get more mature and servers somewhat stabilize.
I would argue that the Internet with all its glorious diversity (including e.g. both kids and the olds) is far better today, yet still the Intolerance Paradox is real.
When no means "push forward harder" that will simply never be okay. People will find ways to avoid it, e.g. by leaving the Threadiverse entirely, which already offers next to no OC so what then do we offer to someone? A hexbear tankie screaming "death to the Western World", apparently (note the extremist "death to", not the calmer "fall of", let's say capitalism, but violent "death", plus the refusal to limit the target to an economic system and instead leaving open the ambiguity of whether that includes every single person living in a nation that practices it).
I don't blame Redditors for noping right out of that...
And fortunately some progress has been made, just not quite enough if someone can be randomly assigned to go to hilariouschaos or hexbear, rather than sent to an instance that is more in line with the recipient's preferences.
which is why being able to block entire instances is necessary... because some of them overwhelmingly populated by mentally ill nutcases who feel entitled to harass everyone who doesn't believe their insanity.
and who think any tepid disagreement with them, is akin to physical violence against their person.
100 agreed, except that Lemmy's "instance block" is so horribly misnamed as to arguably represent disinformation.
What "blocked" users can't do to reach you:
What the so-called "blocked" users can do:
i.e., "blocked" users have (far) more rights to speak to you than you have to not be spoken to. This is incel shit. I know that Lemmy was created when its devs were banned on Reddit, but at some point it would be nice if Lemmy were to grow up beyond those beginnings, and make something real that could last. Instead, most people nope right out, never come back, and bad-mouth us all here to anyone who will listen... and we can't really (successfully) argue against that bc they are correct: this place is toxic as hell, unless you expend considerable time & attention blocking each and every user account that engages in such behaviors.
Which I suppose is our own fault, those of us who did not quite realize the extent of the truth of what "become ungovernable" meant (in fairness, many of us joined Kbin rather than Lemmy, at least at first). And they (e.g. hexbear and hilariouschaos) do deserve a place to talk amongst themselves - that's not the part that I object to. I just wish, personally, that it would be opt-in, or at least have a viable means of opting-out.
But I guess we all still do have that choice: we can remain on Lemmy, or we can leave (e.g. switch to PieFed, its fork PyLova, or Mbin). Though for many, who want more content than the entire Threadiverse offers, even if that choice becomes less and less easy over time, they will remain on Reddit.
Which given the graphs shown in the webpage mentioned by OP, I believe is what is happening. People come here, check us out, then leave. The effect of the Intolerance Paradox is very very real.