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 do not think people understand. Lemmy is not going to become a forum guzzling behemoth like Reddit. Nothing will. The userbase will expand over time, as people on Reddit start getting fed up, and at some point there will be a combination of aggressive censorship (if IPO goes through) and privacy intrusive authentication. Many hobbyists do not like it, and are only quiet because they can make unidentifiable accounts, even if it requires official Reddit apps or websites to access.
People do not even understand how platforms work. Lemmy has become a non-mainstream, sane platform with federation that is not a shithole like any other previous alt-right failed Reddit clones. There is plenty activity for what are initial days, as users figure out the signup part and the cultural differences between Lemmy and Big Tech social media like Reddit. As a long term Reddit user, Reddit has been becoming shittier by the day, and is largely used due to decades of valuable posts and comments, and niche hobby communities. Ones that exclusively use frontpage are worthless audience and overlap hugely with Tiktok and Instagram users.