We've kinda been hibernating since July 2023, with the userbase rapidly declining from that peak and then remaining nearly constant for the entirety of 2024. Honestly it's quite impressive that we held such a steady monthly user count for the past year.
But now with all the publicity around the fediverse, we are beginning to pick up some organic momentum again. We've grown by about 2k active users in January (~5% growth). Keep that up for a few more months and it will start to become noticeable with more activity, which should hopefully start a positive feedback loop.
Regarding finding and subscribing to communities on other instances, I'm pretty sure this tool addresses that problem fairly effectively.
You may want to add your instance to that.
I agree with you, but I feel that you're glossing over the bigger point. In my view, you're right about the way most social media users behave, but that behavior is also bound to slowly change as people get a better grip on how it is effecting them in a negative way. We as a society are learning the hard way about how toxic social media can be.
Most people are dumb and they don't have time to consider whether something is better or worse, especially something as new as social media. But when they start to notice other people (like us!) doing something differently and having a better experience, they eventually catch on and change their behavior.
It's like how it took a long time for people to stop smoking cigarettes, but once the tide turned it happened within a couple generations. Or wearing seat belts, or any other new, cool technology/product that people eventually started to understand better and adapt to after a few generations. Social media is like that, and we are simply the early adopters of a more humane and healthy form of social media. It takes a long time, but people will eventually start to understand how corporate social media is an unhealthy and exploitative habit, and this decentralized, community driven model is a much better experience.