Oh that's interesting! I thought the spike in 2017 was the Tumblr NSFW crackdown.

But yeah, new accounts vs active accounts is a VERY different metric. I would love it if I could have access to that kind of data over a long timeframe.

Edit: I just looked it up and the tumblr drama was in 2018/19 so yeah that must have been LJ. Makes sense actually, given the similarity of the platforms (DW and LJ) vs how foreign a tumblr user would feel coming here.