I agree that stagnation is a problem, but you’re comparing Lemmy’s growth with that of multi-billion dollar platforms with ridiculous marketing budgets and fully staffed marketing teams. That’s unfair (and unrealistic) because Lemmy is a community project that has to grow on word-of-mouth alone. It will grow much slower and with periods of stagnation because that’s the nature of the beast. And if there’s stagnantion that’s our fault for not shouting loud enough.

Also, you’re taking your negative experience and trying to pin that to user growth. I can see your point but I disagree that moderation is a major factor.

I’ve got my own gripes about Lemmy but moderation is not one of them.

Reddit has a massive problem with overzealous moderation and content being modded simply because one individual mod doesn’t like or disagrees with it. Haven’t noticed any of that on Lemmy.

And I disagree that moderation is preventing Lemmy from achieving critical mass. Its gotten this far with its mod system. It feels way better populated than even a year ago. It will never have the commercial reach Reddit has but I’ve no doubt it will continue to grow.