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Just in case anyone here was wondering how Reddit's numbers are looking these days...

Data and visuals from https://subredditstats.com/r/askreddit

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[-] Mentrix@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

The satisfaction of seeing this is hard to describe. Internet 1 : 0 Reddit

[-] Tygr@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago

I do visit Reddit on occasion (with Adblock) but I haven’t made one comment or one post since I lost Apollo. Why? I deleted all history then deleted the accounts. I can’t even upvote and that’s my little protest still in full swing.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

Same. It's unavoidable to use it when it turns up in Google searches or for niche content, but I've 100% stopped contributing.

The corporate world undervalues goodwill, both from their customers and their employees.

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[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 60 points 1 year ago

Not that I don't appreciate the cynicism, but by killing the api, could be a major dropoff in bot accounts.

[-] hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 93 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

this is not an opinion that should be shared by anyone who has opened a frontpage comment section in the last 3 months. bot spam has only gotten significantly worse since july.

the API changes had no effect on bot accounts, anyway. reddit corp specifically made an exception for them and other "low volume" API users - which is why you can still use your own API key to activate defunct 3rd party apps.

(yes, the implication is that normal users can go to hell if they don't want to use the app - but by imitating a bot, reddit gives you preferential treatment. they want bots juicing their activity metrics.)

my guess is that subredditstats.com is itself impacted by the API changes, or this is a consequence of frontpage posts cycling MUCH more slowly than they did before the protests. fewer individual posts reaching r/all means less traffic and fewer comments as a result.

[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

they want bots juicing their activity metrics

Seems like it would have been easier to just not destroy third party apps given that their traffic numbers have apparently collapsed because of that.

[-] hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

yes it's always easier to NOT fuck up a fully functional product and drive your userbase off a cliff, but that's not good enough for the huge IPO that huffman is courting. he wants to be able to say "look, we're monetizing 80% more MAUs than before and earning 45% more per person".

frankly i doubt they'll be able to go public at all at this rate. if i were the Newhouses (reddit's owners through Advance Publications) i would certainly be looking for someone to unload this hot potato onto.

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[-] averagedrunk@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Has it gotten worse, or has it stayed the same while real people left?

I don't ask to be a jerk. I'm genuinely curious. I don't roll over that way often anymore and when I do it's always for super specific things so I don't hit the front page.

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[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago

I loved Reddit, until executives took a nosedive and their admins screwed my account over with a blatantly false suspension.

Swartz would be appalled at what Huffman has done.

[-] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

i got perma banned once for.... absolutely no reason. it got appealed when i asked why i was perma banned in my appeal

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[-] Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago

Not sure I believe it. A drop off like this is absolute death spiral territory, and the exodus of users would be way more clear, as places like here would have exploded in new accounts. These people aren’t just going to go outside, so where are the commensurate rises in activity on other websites?

[-] wishthane@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

I actually did stop engaging as much after eliminating Reddit. Lemmy is nice sometimes, but I'm nowhere near as active. I probably post a few more YouTube comments, that's about it.

[-] butterflyattack@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Yeah same here. I used to comment on reddit multiple times a day, I comment on Lemmy maybe once or twice a week. There's just not as much here that inspires me. It's okay, though, and I'm reading more books.

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[-] EssentialCoffee@midwest.social 33 points 1 year ago

Well, I started just playing more my game backlog on Steam and finding other things to do that wasn't scrolling the interwebs most of the time. I come here, sure, but no where near as much as I did on reddit, and I don't comment here nearly as much as I did there either.

[-] CyberDine@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I quit reddit when they started charging for API. I started engaging with my local library. I'm 35 years old and started reading my local newspaper for the first time ever in my life.

I came back to Reddit only to discover lemmy and now I read both my local news and lemmy.

It's been nice. Calmer, less stressful. It feels good again and I realize now that I've been very unhappy with reddit for many years now.

[-] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah that kind of a drop looks more to me like a change in reporting

[-] barfplanet@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

They did change the API right around then, which is how this data would get pulled.

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[-] OpenStars@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

a) a lot of accounts are bots, and depending on how they are implemented, a LOT of these have remained (or even were created) after the API changes - remember, it's easy to spin up 1000s of these to each provide small traffic so as to not run up against the API limits. Overall, I suspect a ton more bots are there now, b/c the bot defense effort was suspended, b/c unlike a single bot, that one needs to look at ALL traffic (I suppose it could be re-written from scratch in a decentralized manner but... the developers did not choose to do that).

b) a lot of people who remain on Reddit, including myself, offer it WAY less traffic than before. I used to be a mod of a small sub, which I quit, so I went from checking it almost literally hourly, so at most once a day, and most days I do not even comment at all. Also, I used to browse r/all (actually, "popular"), but now I never do, instead preferring Lemmy/Kbin for that. My personal traffic dropped off a cliff just like this image shows, in fact probably a lot more so. Although I still do visit that small gaming sub, b/c while there is a version of it here, instead of like 5 posts a day we get at most 1 per week, which less than a handful interact with. So that is not an "exodus of users" so much as a (vast) reduction of interaction, which still impacts their advertising revenue and thus the continuity of Reddit as a corporate entity.

c) as people are saying, not everyone came to Lemmy/Kbin. Some went to Mastodon, others just stopped going online as much, and like myself I comment now a lot less than I used to, though I read just as much (here, not there). So just b/c the traffic did not come "here", does not mean that it did not leave "there". i.e., think of the shock of the event as making people regress more to lurking and not feel as comfortable interacting, especially given the lack of ability of smaller magazines (what are those called on Lemmy again?) here. Thus, even if they did not "go outside", they still may not be interacting on Reddit.

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[-] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago

The whales stopped posting, since those were most affected by the API ban.

The rest of the users are still there, but the content is just limited now.

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[-] Fades@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago

I clicked on an AskReddit link in google earlier today and wow the posts that receive engagement there now... From the little I've seen since leaving, reddit in general has dropped off a fuckin cliff in regards to content quality

[-] SgtAStrawberry@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I seen that too. It has become especially apparent on a small sub I still view as it didn't really migrate.

It went from people in their 20s discussing shared experiences with a medical condition, with the occasional high schooler dropping by to ask something. To babys first experiences, with condition. Absolutely filled to the brim with 13-17 year olds.

I'm fine with them being there and asking questions and talking, but not when every post and comment is just more teenage drama.

I seen a similar thing on another sub, while that has always screwed younger then the first, it definitely feels like it dropped like 5 years in average age.

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[-] ohlaph@lemmy.world 55 points 1 year ago

I was commenting regularly. Now I comment here, sorry y'all.

[-] machinin@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

I think that's what has surprised me the most. When I moved here after the API shutdown, things seemed pretty slow. But now it seems activity is really picking up. I would be very interested to see the fediverse growth rate vs. Reddit's when it first started. I'm just surprised to see how quickly things are changing here.

[-] ohlaph@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The momentum is strong. It's rather exciting to see and be part of. We are the change we wanted.

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[-] SolNine@lemmy.ml 52 points 1 year ago

Reddit's content has taken an absolute nose dive, I still lurk, but every time I think about posting, I close out the tab and leave now. The site has also become an ad filled dumpster fire.

[-] notst@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To me it also feels like the ratio of low effort content posts or reposts VS original content has changed considerably. At least when browsing /r/all.

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[-] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 46 points 1 year ago

I'm actually quite surprised by this, but satisfied nonetheless.

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[-] Squizzy@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

80% year on year drop is impressive

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[-] teolan@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

And it's not just r/askreddit all subreddits I tried show a similar drop, including the ones that still seem relatively active.

[-] Voyajer@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

I figured the highest engagement users would leave because they'd care the most about the api changes but wow, I checked a few subs and they all had harsh engagement drops just like askreddit.

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[-] otter@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 year ago

Wow I didn't know it dropped off a cliff like that in July

Has the community changed much during that time?

[-] hightrix@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

Yes. Drastically. It is almost as big of a difference as when Reddit flipped, overnight, from pro Bernie to pro Clinton in the 2016 election.

Comments and post quality took a nose dive. And I don’t mean the typical summer change, I mean drastic and significant change.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

You mean the API changes that stopped the only source of these statistics from collecting them stopped effectively collecting them?

[-] DarienGS@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

What the hell happened in the second half of 2020?

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

George Floyd was murdered on May 25. COVID was ravaging the world. The presidential election cycle was in full swing. And I'm sure much more.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago

Anna I'm sure much more.

Hello fellow Gboard user. I would have also noticed "abs" in place of "and".

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[-] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 year ago

Does that mean askreddit is good again?

[-] kadu@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

Do you do the sex? What's the saddest song ever? What's the sexiest sex ever? Sad song? Sex?

[-] Wodge@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Your forgetting "What's the saddest sex song to have sex to when you're depressed (sad)?"

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[-] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 25 points 1 year ago

Nope. It just means there are bots left chatting amongst themselves ;)

[-] SpicyLizards@reddthat.com 16 points 1 year ago

This is most pleasing

[-] aceshigh@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

what happened in the 3rd quarter of 2020? from 0 to 200k comments, and then down again.

[-] nfsu2@feddit.cl 15 points 1 year ago
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
658 points (96.7% liked)

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