I’ve been one of the people saying “we don’t need more users. we need quality over quantity” and i was wrong.
the way it’s going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph


I’m just going to restart my point for clarity.
Any barriers to bringing on users into the fediverse at any level is destructive to the future survival of the fediverse. This is specifically an issue that came up during any of the waves of migration we see from the bad place.
At various times there have been bans, both temp and outright, for all kinds of reasons, for both agreeable and disagreeable reasons, but regardless the impact is destructive to the fediverse.
Social networks thrive on users and through scaling aquire different properties. It’s more about the math of what it takes to keep a stable network and there is no getting around that. The “come one come all” approach things like the bad place use allows them to capture that kind of growth and without it, it’s just not possible to have the kind of detailed and varied and populated network you would get otherwise.
There have been specific moderation choices that have significantly curtailed and hurt the growth of the fediverse on all sides. Defederation is a huge one. Overly dogmatic moderation is another.
Like I agree that I don’t want tankies content or their spam, but realistically the “tankie”-verse versus the rest-of-us-verse has crippled the projects growth.