Some small instances are seeing sudden increases in numbers of registered users (4k to 5k new users) but not an equivalent growth in activity, my guess is someone is creating accounts on instances without captcha enabled for account registration. Most of the top 10 fastest growing instances shown here fit that criteria.

[–] maegul@hachyderm.io 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Odo Interesting. Lemmy is somewhat strict in its definition of "active user". You must post to be "active", so all lurkers aren't counted.

I'm not even sure commenting counts toward being "active", though I'd guess it does.

So user growth without growth in "active users", especially on smaller servers, is plausible.

[–] Odo@startrek.website 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I guess that's possible. The instances I mentioned look like this:

https://fedidb.org/network/instance/parapheum.com

2 posts, 1 comment overall.

It had 10 users two days ago and 4.6k today, not a single one of them seems to have posted or commented.