The statement Reddit gave us is the oldest trick in the book. (The Verge)

hardypart@feddit.de to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 58 points – The Verge on TikTok
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Eh if traffic has returned to normal it's up to their journalistic integrity to report it.

If it hasn't then they are lieing and it hurts the brand more

You’re 15 years too late to see “journalistic integrity”, son.

Its all about the motherfucking clicks!

I think you’re brushing with a much to wide brush. There’s certainly still journalism with integrity out there.

"Reddit Claims Traffic Has Returned to Normal"

Versus

"Reddit Traffic Has Returned to Normal"

traffic has returned to normal

This is a very non-specific statement. As a former moderator, Reddit gave us lots of metrics to measure "traffic". Site visits, unique visits, engagement.... all of these can be used to talk about "traffic". It's also not hard to spin up a couple bots, talk about site visits, not unique visits and call everything "normal".

Metrics, especially vanity metrics are very easy to twist if you have a narrative to tell. And boy, does Reddit, Inc. have a narrative to tell.

Yep.

The first thing they taught us in my graduate level statistics class was:

Anyone can make a statistic that backs up their bias. You're here to learn how to accurately represent a situation with statistics, and be able to point out when others are misusing statistics

That's the hard part