Your argument is supporting the comment you’re replying to. “Users” is equivalent to “cows” in your example, not “herd”. If you lost 50% of the herd, you’d still have a herd of cows, but you’d have fewer cows, just like there are a lot fewer users in this instance.
Herd is closer to userbase. Lemmy has a userbase; Reddit has a userbase. Lemmy’s userbase has a lot fewer users than Reddit’s.
It’s not, but even if it was, the original comment would be grammatically incorrect.You wouldn’t say “You have a lot less herd”. “Less of a herd” would work, “Your herd is a lot smaller” would work better, but it was written originally as though ‘users’ was a collection of individuals, not a userbase as a singular item.
And there is a lot less users.
Eh, if you go back far enough, there was a time when reddit had fewer users than the fediverse has now.
I was on reddit 10 years ago. Different vibes than old reddit for sure. Still way less users on Lemmy.
“users” is plural and countable so it should be “are” and “fewer”
Context.
Here it’s being used a singular group of things.
Like, a herd of cows is a singular thing made up of lots of individual things.
If you lost 50% of the herd, you wouldn’t say you had fewer herd
You’d say you have less of a herd.
But language is what we make it, it’s why the rules are blurry
Your argument is supporting the comment you’re replying to. “Users” is equivalent to “cows” in your example, not “herd”. If you lost 50% of the herd, you’d still have a herd of cows, but you’d have fewer cows, just like there are a lot fewer users in this instance.
Herd is closer to userbase. Lemmy has a userbase; Reddit has a userbase. Lemmy’s userbase has a lot fewer users than Reddit’s.
“users” is a singular group in this context.
It’s not, but even if it was, the original comment would be grammatically incorrect.You wouldn’t say “You have a lot less herd”. “Less of a herd” would work, “Your herd is a lot smaller” would work better, but it was written originally as though ‘users’ was a collection of individuals, not a userbase as a singular item.
Both may be correct depending on the speaker. English has exceptions to everything… I learned that from a European.
You really need to be ‘that’ guy