Excerpt:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
Because the most active contributing users left. I used to comment a lot on reddit, but I’ve been exclusively on Lemmy since my 3rd party app was axed.
And I’ve been very active here. Like, even on this alt account that I made 16 days ago, my app says my post “karma” is already higher than my reddit comment karma was from over a decade.
I feel more willing to contribute because there’s a sense of community, and I’m not just providing free entertainment for a company to profit off of.
I’ve been having fun doing it. I just post a few memes throughout the day whenever I think about it, and I also try to spread it out among some smaller communities that I want to help grow.
So, memes and a handful of communities that I’m personally interested in.
I feel like I see you a lot, too. I don’t remember where, but it’s probably because I always notice the great username :)
I’ve commented more on lemmy in 3 months than the last 10 years on Reddit
I used to comment a lot on reddit
Same. I had a 15 year account with a couple hundred thousand karma and commented and posted a lot. If you piss off the people who actually use the site you will reap what you sow. Reddit should have known that since the exact scenario happened fir Digg when everyone migrated to reddit.
They looked at the leaves, and failed to see the forest, thinking that simply not killing old.reddit was enough to avoid Digg-ing the grave. Because from their view that’s how Digg died - v4 happened, users couldn’t go back, they got pissy, and they left.
@megane_kun@lemm.ee is also right when he says that they compared Reddit with other social media platforms and took the wrong conclusions. What keeps people in Facebook aren’t “content creators” or what have you, but their relatives and friends; in Reddit there’s no such thing, people weren’t there because of more people but because of the content that those people created, so their connection with the platform is considerably weaker.
I also think that the trust thermocline played a role. It wasn’t the first time that the platform pissed its own users.
Agreed on the reasons why FB stayed relatively strong despite its reputation going down the drain. What kept many people from leaving FB for good is actually network effects: that one’s friends and family, coworkers and colleagues, are more likely to be in FB than not in it. Huffman’s site? Not so much. I don’t care if someone I know IRL is in it, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want them to know I used it.
The platform formerly known as Twitter is a more apt comparison, to be honest, but it’s still way too early to tell if it has actually weathered the storm, or has become so rotten on the inside that it’d spectacularly fail in the near future.
It’s easy to argue why they thought it’s not going to happen to them. They saw Facebook shrug off all of its scandals, and thought that being in a similar position, network effects are going to help them weather any storm. And it can be argued that Steve Huffman and his site did weather this particular storm. But like Facebook, trust in Huffman’s site have taken a blow, and in the demographic that they would ill afford to antagonize.
That we’re starting to see its effects as early as now should scare any sane person in Huffman Inc.
I had over 300k comment karma, on the site every single day for about 10 years. Comparing the comments here vs there it’s crazy I hung around so long. It’s like getting out of an abusive relationship, you don’t realize how much you’re being mistreated until you’re out from under them.
Same. Thing is, I would usually get gold like once or twice a month. I would post well sourced, long and often highly upvoted comments. Try to be genuinely helpful or insightful. I used to be a journalist, it was an outlet for me.
Not that they were that great, redditers upvoting stuff doesn’t make a comment right or interesting, and wasting too much time there was really not something to be proud of, but if just ten thousand users like you and me quit reddit, that leaves mainly teenagers, bots and ‘comedians’ rehashing the same tired puns.
It can effectively kill smaller subreddits, as has quite obviously happened in some cases.
We weren’t just customers, we also produced a disproportionate amount of the content on reddit. More than our relatively small numbers would suggest. IRC the 1% rule states that only 1% of users actively post/comment. If you’re posting relatively coherent or thought out comments, you’re the 1% of that 1%.
I’ve been very active here
I’ve noticed your posts almost every day and appreciate them
I’m sure the notifications are annoying you by now, but I’d like to borrow the moment to agree with everyone else. You’re one of the users who have ended up becoming this place’s lifeblood somehow, and I pretty much always enjoy whatever you post. Or at least, a ton of what I enjoy ends up having your name on it.
I heavily appreciate seeing you around and while you are allowed to slow down for the sake of your sanity, I would notice and miss it.
No offense I thought you were a bot given how often I see your username haha. Good on you! You are helping to make this a better place
I’ve been noticing your username a lot lately. Solid memes, thank you for your service🫡
I’ve definitely seen you around a lot lately. 😁 Thanks for the joy and memes.
I was never famous on Reddit but I was a prolific commenter for six years. I gradually phased out from Reddit as I got into Lemmy until July, when I pledged not to comment or vote on Reddit ever again. I’ve since kept my word.
For Lemmy?
Some apps add it up for you. One of the apps I use frequently is Voyager (on Android), and it shows it on the profile page.
For example, here’s yours: (I assume I can’t see 100% of the votes though, in case your instance is federated with any that mine’s not"
I wrote an extension for firefox that shows your collective karma so I was wondering if you were using it, this is cool as well
Yeah I already seem to be somewhere among the 1% top posters on Lemmy and I bet users like me were much more valuable to reddit than 10 lurkers. I’m sure a relatively tiny fraction of the users created 90% of the content on reddit and those most likely are also the people most annoyed by the death of 3rd party apps and I’m sure there’s a ton of others like me who switched. That’ll definitely show in the activity even though it might not be much in absolute numbers.
You’re not alone. Just check https://subredditstats.com/r/technology or any other sub you used to visit and you’ll see a clear drop in comments/day. After the APIcalypse, so many people just left and never came back.
Is this data really accurate? The difference is insane for every subreddit I checked.
Well, the site says it shouldn’t be used for serious purposes, but I would say it’s still safe to consider it semi-quantitative. If you see a drop like that, there really is a drop. What the exact value was before or after might not be that reliable, but it’s not even important in this case.
Wow, this is really interesting! I checked a few, and you can see a severe drop in activity.
Every sub I cheked got totally nuked to oblivion. No wonder why people are complaining about the quality. Hardly anyone is there to comment or vote.
I feel like this is by design. Reddit never wanted to be a discussion board. It wants users to keep scrolling so they see more ads.
Wow, that’s a serious drop off! I looked at a few of my old fave subreddits and they’re all the same. It’s like one of those old towns in the US that was once on a main highway before a new route was built. Once bustling, now dead.
Because the most active contributing users left.
could have fooled me; my biggest issue with the fediverse is the lack of content and reddit’s content just keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day.
fortunately it works for me since i want to detox myself from all social media and the fediverse has so little content to i’m done after 30/45mins per day; in fact, i can still spend hours on reddit unregistered lurker and get more content every day than the entirety of the fediverse since its creation, combined.