There seems to be a January effect of sorts, being the highest peak of both years. Is journalism more interesting in January, are people bored in winter after Christmas, is it random, or is something else going on? Could be interesting to know. I'd love to see whether this happens again in 2026.

My interpretation of usage trends is that the novelty is wearing off, and the people left using these sites are largely just using them normally. Less and less content is meta-discussions about being here and not being elsewhere. Of course some users leave as the novelty wears off, but enough seem to have stayed that I'm pretty optimistic it won't go back to being a dusty corner reserved for only the biggest open source fanatics.

Oh, and here's the graph of comments over time, as only the first picture federated to where I'm reading from:

@rimu@piefed.social - I'm assuming this is a known bug :)