It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping.
Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.
Curious to see at which number we’ll stabilize.
Next peak will probably happen after either major features release (e.g. exhaustive mod tools allowing reluctant communities to move from Reddit) or the next Reddit fuck up (e.g. removing old.reddit)
Stats on each server: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
I think Lemmy is going through some growing pains right now. Many of the integral members of the platform, the developers and admins, are overwhelmed with work, because the platform is still in an early stage of development and it’s not as functional as it could be.
Additionally, the original servers are clashing with the new servers as they attempt to find common ground. A month or two ago, things were much more chill because people were just starting to explore. But now people have strong feelings about other instances and those feelings need to be hashed out. I am confident that we have enough reasonable people on all sides to reach a pragmatic compromise.
I feel the vast majority of interactions I’ve had with people on Lemmy have been positive. I hope that Lemmy can be a space that transcends the toxicity of the discourse on other social media platforms. But it will probably take some time to achieve that goal.