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.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps Twitter is a third can of worms, it’s neither about content (as Reddit) nor the users’ social circles (as FB), more like a few anchor people keeping the others there. Due to that Musk’s idea (to pay creators to stay there) might actually help.
I still think that it’ll fail due to other decisions Musk took, but less spectacularly than Reddit. Musk is at least trying to think by himself, Spez is simply following others.