Also even that number of Lemmy users is an artifact of people leaving instances and creating new accounts across the Fediverse. I have 3 accounts myself that I check usually once a month, bc messages sent to my old one(s) won’t follow me so it’s the only way to make sure that someone trying to reach me can do so. And I had one on Kbin.social as well so there are now 4 OpenStars (3 looking to be active on a monthly basis) - and all of them are me!:-)

The better stat to use then is not Total Accounts but rather Monthly Active Users. In this, Lemmy has been steadily declining. We are now at <41.9k, after we held steady for awhile earlier this year at 45k. The peak after the Rexodus was ~52k - see https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/, the number of instances has gone way down, the number of accounts per instance gone up, it looks like people are abandoning single-user instances in favor of the larger multi-user ones. But Lemmy.World used to hold ~80% of all Lemmy users while now it is closer to like 37% iirc, so overall we are becoming more centralized on average, but also stabilizing into a few established instances, and decentralization at the peak is also happening as well - especially after yesterday’s announcement that will drive even more people, and entire communities, away from Lemmy.World further.

Overall engagement is up though - so more posts and comments from fewer people, those of us who remain here have become more active.