Me as well. I only remember this because around July 1st there was a post about it, which lead to a wave of "doing my part by posting my daily comment to count as an active user"-comments.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That was probably my post :)

[–] sulunia@lemmy.eco.br 12 points 1 year ago

wow, I lurk so much more than I post stuff.. one would think they would track this

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think this is the biggest factor. Most people only lurk. How many people signed up and only lurk?

[–] TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

At least 2.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

So true. This is straight from Lemmy’s documentation:

An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame. For site counts, only local users are counted. For community counts, federated users are included.

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

[–] Mereo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In this case, I have a theory. I remember a month ago people were posting a lot on Reddit and the !reddit@lemmy.ml community was extremely active. It was like group therapy for refugees. But now the new reality is setting in and people are actually having real and meaningful conversations, which means more lurkers.

So it doesn't mean that active users are down per se, it's just that it's stabilised because people are mostly over Reddit.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, and also keep in mind that many who were lurkers on Reddit and came over here maybe made one or two comments immediately saying something like "Happy to be on Lemmy!" and then went back to lurking here and haven't commented since. They would have counted as monthly active users for July, but not August.

[–] quitethekiwi 1 points 1 year ago

I wonder if lurkers were counted in reddits active user data