Now where have I heard this before…

You’re welcome :)

I’m also curious about the country distribution on lemmy.

I’m a developer for an iOS Lemmy client. The distribution of our downloads by territory is as follows (sample size >18k):

• 50.2% US
• 9.9% Germany
• 5.8% UK
• 5.2% Canada
• 3.5% Australia
• 25.4% other

Biases:

• It only counts users who are using that specific app, which:
  • Is only available on iOS, so Android users aren’t counted. This could have a significant effect on the results because iOS has a much higher market share in the US than, say, Germany.
  • Could be ranked differently in App Store search results in different regions.
  • Only supported English, until very recently. Users who prefer a different language may have chosen an app that supports their language.
• It includes users who downloaded the app but later stopped using Lemmy, which isn’t ideal.

Back in 2023 lemmy.ca did a survey of their users, which you may find interesting.

The change was merged in Dec 2023 (see here). The Reddit Exodus was in summer 2023.

Worth noting is that what counts as an “active user” has changed between now and then. During the Reddit API exodus, an “active user” was a user who had posted or commented in the past month. Now, it includes users who have voted. If the 54k MAU record was set using the first algorithm, it is likely that the MAU using the new algorithm (which includes voting) would have been much higher.