I know some people left reddit, but are we sure they actually lost more users than they gained from all the noise?
I haven't used reddit or even visited the site since the policy change, which was the last drop for me. So I only know what I hear and read from other people, and I never see any solid data.
It doesn't matter if they had a net gain, they lost their power mod squad and a ton of regular contributors and they're trying to make up for it with bots and crypto.
Anyone else smell a corpse?
Reddit will persist, but it will be a shell of its former self.
I absolutely agree on your logic, reddit has lost a lot of valuable contributors, and should therefore lose in the long run. But sometimes reality is weird, and doesn't behave according to even the best theories.
No doubt reddit has become worse, but to really suck apparently doesn't preclude success. Let's for arguments sake say reddit is now full of people with a certain level of intelligence. But maybe people of that like to stick together? And there are a lot of them!
Depends on what we call success. Is Facebook a success? If yes, the I agree, reddit could "succeed," but personally I'd call Facebooks track record a huge failure if we compare it's social standing circa 2010 vs now.
Good point, I guess I meant success financially as in surviving. From a content quality standpoint I think reddit had already been declining for years when the API debacle started.
Debates are generally better here on Lemmy despite being probably only 1% the size of reddit.
despite being probably only 1% the size of reddit.
I think they might be better because they're only 1% the size of Reddit. It's impossible to have a meaningful conversation with everyone, all at once. And a smaller website means less social pressure, less corporate influence, etc.
Just from casually checking traffic stats on various websites it doesn't seem to have changed much, though I have no idea how accurate those sites are. This is more likely just Spez copying Elon's dumb ideas in an effort to increase monetization
Spez copying more of Elons dumb ideas can only make it worse. but I'm not surprised if they have traffic about as usual, although IMO reddit has become steadily worse since Ellen Pao was fired in 2015, after banning revenge porn.
I'm guessing that is the shitstorm Spez was referring to, when he claimed those blow over. The difference obviously being that the shitstorm against Pao was lead by crazies, and the shitstorm now is way more legitimate.
Overall users? Probably not. The casual lurker does not know or care what an API is.
But the vast majority of content is made by a tiny fraction of the user base, and that fraction are the ones they pissed off. The quality of posts on large subs very much went down, with repost bots becoming even more prominent than before.
But the vast majority of content is made by a tiny fraction of the user base
Yes, I agree that's a crucial point, question is if there are enough left to allow reddit to stay relevant. They are still a huge forum, that is valuable to have an influence on.
As long as they can maintain traffic, they may still recover.
Which makes it important to bomb old accounts' content. Adding "reddit" to a search term often lead to better results from search engines. It's better it shouldn't anymore.
I have occasionally checked my former favorite sub since leaving - the stats are still the same (~900k users) but the content has gone downhill in a very obvious way. Each time I checked, the sub was filled to the brim with lazy, unfunny shitposts, extremely obvious t-shirt scammers and repost bots, offtopic content, conterfeit merch and sometimes an actually interesting post with like 12 upvotes or so, and you would have to dig quite deep to reach it.
And the sub creator seems to have abandoned it entirely. The description still says that the sub has gone private due to spez' decisions and that you need to use discord instead (the sub has been public again since the initial protest, just the description was never updated) and they haven't touched their own sub in 3+ months.
PS: I just checked again and they have a 2 day old screenshot of a dead frog with 2k upvotes as the current top post.
Just adding to the testimony of others: overall quality of both posts and comments have dropped very noticeably. I visit occasionally on my desktop but there isn’t much to keep me there. I find more good content here.
I know some people left reddit, but are we sure they actually lost more users than they gained from all the noise?
I haven't used reddit or even visited the site since the policy change, which was the last drop for me. So I only know what I hear and read from other people, and I never see any solid data.
It doesn't matter if they had a net gain, they lost their power mod squad and a ton of regular contributors and they're trying to make up for it with bots and crypto.
Anyone else smell a corpse?
Reddit will persist, but it will be a shell of its former self.
I absolutely agree on your logic, reddit has lost a lot of valuable contributors, and should therefore lose in the long run. But sometimes reality is weird, and doesn't behave according to even the best theories.
No doubt reddit has become worse, but to really suck apparently doesn't preclude success. Let's for arguments sake say reddit is now full of people with a certain level of intelligence. But maybe people of that like to stick together? And there are a lot of them!
Depends on what we call success. Is Facebook a success? If yes, the I agree, reddit could "succeed," but personally I'd call Facebooks track record a huge failure if we compare it's social standing circa 2010 vs now.
Good point, I guess I meant success financially as in surviving. From a content quality standpoint I think reddit had already been declining for years when the API debacle started.
Debates are generally better here on Lemmy despite being probably only 1% the size of reddit.
I've been pissed off at reddit for years now but only now has there been a viable alternative.
I think they might be better because they're only 1% the size of Reddit. It's impossible to have a meaningful conversation with everyone, all at once. And a smaller website means less social pressure, less corporate influence, etc.
Just from casually checking traffic stats on various websites it doesn't seem to have changed much, though I have no idea how accurate those sites are. This is more likely just Spez copying Elon's dumb ideas in an effort to increase monetization
Spez copying more of Elons dumb ideas can only make it worse. but I'm not surprised if they have traffic about as usual, although IMO reddit has become steadily worse since Ellen Pao was fired in 2015, after banning revenge porn.
I'm guessing that is the shitstorm Spez was referring to, when he claimed those blow over. The difference obviously being that the shitstorm against Pao was lead by crazies, and the shitstorm now is way more legitimate.
Overall users? Probably not. The casual lurker does not know or care what an API is.
But the vast majority of content is made by a tiny fraction of the user base, and that fraction are the ones they pissed off. The quality of posts on large subs very much went down, with repost bots becoming even more prominent than before.
Yes, I agree that's a crucial point, question is if there are enough left to allow reddit to stay relevant. They are still a huge forum, that is valuable to have an influence on.
As long as they can maintain traffic, they may still recover.
Which makes it important to bomb old accounts' content. Adding "reddit" to a search term often lead to better results from search engines. It's better it shouldn't anymore.
Yes I agree, I deleted my account a few years ago, and only visited a few subs through bookmarks in my browser.
When the API shit show started, I deleted my bookmarks too, and haven't visited reddit at all for 4+ months. Not even for curiosity.
I have occasionally checked my former favorite sub since leaving - the stats are still the same (~900k users) but the content has gone downhill in a very obvious way. Each time I checked, the sub was filled to the brim with lazy, unfunny shitposts, extremely obvious t-shirt scammers and repost bots, offtopic content, conterfeit merch and sometimes an actually interesting post with like 12 upvotes or so, and you would have to dig quite deep to reach it.
And the sub creator seems to have abandoned it entirely. The description still says that the sub has gone private due to spez' decisions and that you need to use discord instead (the sub has been public again since the initial protest, just the description was never updated) and they haven't touched their own sub in 3+ months.
PS: I just checked again and they have a 2 day old screenshot of a dead frog with 2k upvotes as the current top post.
Wow, I don't like reddit anymore, but that sounds sad. I still remember good times there a few years back. 😐
Just adding to the testimony of others: overall quality of both posts and comments have dropped very noticeably. I visit occasionally on my desktop but there isn’t much to keep me there. I find more good content here.