The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 614 points – The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.
gizmodo.com

The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.::Reddit corporate claims victory over its disgruntled mods as r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos abandon the "John Oliver rule."

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Bullshit. Nobody, or at least very few people, expected Reddit to revert the changes. A protest can be successful even if it doesn't lead to immediate change. I was here on Lemmy long before the API nonsense happened over at Reddit, and the difference over here is night and day. Lemmy has been around for awhile, but until these last few months it couldn't hold a candle to Reddit in terms of content or activity. Maybe it still can't, but now it has enough users to be viable. Reddit might go on like nothing happened, but in the background a competitor has been born.

I migrated from Reddit. Most of the communities I followed would be hours or days between posts (if they were not private). Everything left was just not pleasant.

I am still fumbling around here but for the most part it is has better discussions and people seem less rude.

I do not regret leaving at this time. I am sure my infinitesimal presence or lack there of does not bother Reddit, but it made me feel better.

Yeah, when I have looked at reddit recently I have observed that mostly the conversation is terrible. There is definitely more content than on Lemmy, but I also like talking to people who speak in entire sentences.

"Posts" and "content" are not the same. Most recent Reddit posts are not content. Few people left, but the ones that left were the content creators and moderators. Reddit, the platform, is dead, and Reddit, the social media, wears its skin.

I have enjoyed differing viewpoints with reasons, or examples included. I feel this helps promote continued engagement of the topic especially when presented without hostility.

I think that's a good thing. Less is more, maybe? Dose it really have to be at the scale of reddit? I hope not. Tbh I hope Lemmy becomes bigger for sure but it doesn't need to become the biggest thing. The more alternatives the better!

Same here. I think that the only thing that I can do now to add something of value is to participate in good and respectful discussions while sharing content that I genuinely like. A grain of salt ends up adding to a mountain they say.

I deleted 16 years worth of my 'content' across 6 handles and moved to Lemmy/kbin. When I do go back to check on Reddit, it's easy to see that many of the better contributors are gone, the quality of comments and posts, as well as the voting on posts, has greatly diminished. Some subs barely have anything in their 'new' queues.

Thanks. I'm happy for no ads no boys

Edit *no bots

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For sure. I'm using Lemmy much more than reddit. But it sucks because I really loved Reddit and I still use it to some degree. But when Relay stops working I might just stop altogether. I'm not installing their shitty app.

Reddit still holds a ton of valuable info in niche topics which will take Lemmy years to build, and that's only if the niche communities here ever see the light of day. I've deleted most of the useless content I have there, but the more helpful ones I'll leave for the sake of others like me who still visit occasionally for answers you can't get anywhere else.

For sure. I hope that Lemmy becomes one of several reddit-like platforms that can compete against Reddit. It's going to be hard considering how Lemmy is designed but it's going to be nice to have a more decentralised social media presence. I would love if something would come and defeat Facebook as well... I only use it to stay in touch with friends.

I use Signal to stay in contact with friends and family. Works well for me anyways.

Why is relay not affected?

Not entirely sure as the dev have yet to comment on why. It seems like he has a deal with Reddit where he is allowed some breathing room to develop and make available a subscription solution. But it's been awhile now so I dunno. It's the only app I've heard about that is still working.

I've made the switch over and Lemmy feels perfectly viable and improving very quickly especially with the third party app devs working on supporting Lemmy. Reddit won't die but it looks like it'll stagnate, whereas Lemmy has got a brighter future.

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It was to be expected, but I found Lemmy because of everything that happened, uninstalled Reddit, and now use Mastodon and Lemmy as my social media platforms of choice, so it’s a personal win.

Hopefully, as Lemmy continues to thrive, instances hold up to the pressure of growth and we see an influx of content that made Reddit so valuable to users and Reddit corporate alike.

I also found Lemmy because of Reddit's fiasco, and I think its much better. Being able to have so many instances to get stuff from and forge communities offers a lot more freedom.

+1, I wouldn’t have even considered moving off of Reddit until all the drama that had happened but once it did - and I found out about Lemmy - I’ve been happily more active on here in my communities of interest. Only reason I go back to Reddit these days is to encourage others to give Lemmy a go.

I am struggling with finding a space for the majority of my communities of interest over here. I curated such a niche homepage over my decade on Reddit that it does not compare being here. But the apps I have found that simulate my experience on my now defunct third party Reddit apps have kept me here, in the hopes that enough folks will migrate over so that communities will grow in the same way they did on Reddit.

I know Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m stubborn enough in my refusal to use the official Reddit app, and annoyed enough with old Reddit on mobile, that I will sit here and wait for the same experience I used to get over there.

Same here, and I also hope communities will grow as more and more people move to the Fediverse. Basically it's the niche parts of reddit that I'm missing but I've managed to stay away from it for the most part. I think we need to make sure to generate some content in the communities we are interested, being lurkers won't help Lemmy grow.

I wouldn't say Lemmy is better but it has great potential. The mobile apps aren't as good as Reddit's third party apps but that's changing. The content we are getting here isn't as good and reddit has its history of content to search through. Lemmy will have its own issues we will have to sort out but it can be done if we work together.

I think a big issue on Lemmy that I'm seeing is people making it to be Reddit-no-corporate when I believe it should be is own unique thing. Since it isn't corporate and thus no ads I think it would be hard to monetize high "karma" accounts so maybe we can get higher quality discussions. But if also seen people trying to create their echo chambers here by demanding defederation when one instance has a problem with a few trolls.

You compare Lemmy and Reddit but I see it like this : Lemmy is the code, so if you want to compare, compare say lemmy.world with Reddit, it makes more sense.

And lemmy.this and lemmy.that, that's the cool thing, everyone can have a go at making a "subreddit", with their own rules.

And I'm not holding my breath for ads, "people have to eat" etc will bring them to popular instances I guess, but then you can just migrate if you want to!

Interesting times!

Yep, same for me. There are are dozens of us. DOZENS.

You’re not alone, the growth stats of several instances show that thousands of us did the same move. I now only use Reddit when I search error codes at work and an old reddit post has the answer. It’s gone from my phone and I’ve been on lemmy since the day Apollo was murdered

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They didn't win, they just didn't fail as badly some had hoped. What was accomplished was spreading out a fair portion of their user base. Maybe not a huge percentage of it, but enough that they don't have the same level of monopoly. People are more aware of other options (and Reddit's flaws), and more will depart in time.

Reddit assisted their competition. Lemmy use doubled.

Doubled? I see posts with user engagement and it's a wall. Low, low, low, and then boom, astronomical.

It's still a drop in the ocean for reddit and the people who left (or just spend less time on it) were never the target audience of this "new course". Reddit will be just fine.

I'd argue a lot of the people who actually add value and produce content (for fun, rather than for profit) have left or want to. And those people are what grew reddit in the first place by making it somewhere worth going.

Perhaps reddit will end up just like all those sites that just repost shit from reddit... Except it won't be reddit anymore.

I'm not sure I'd call it a drop, Reddit has a large number of users yes, but most of those are not active users (post or participate daily.)

And that is not touching the massive number of bots that just recycle old content and mass upvote or downvote when they see keywords to drive a narrative.

Reddit isn't gonna collapse any day now, but what remains now is a lot of rot. What actual users are left are likely going to notice and start to migrate away towards alternatives with actual user interaction and not just a series of bots and trolls spewing the same predictable results.

Haha dude, I was a MAJOR contributor on Reddit. I spent HOURS each day posting fresh new content for people to read on various subreddits.

Drop in an ocean or not, if all the content creators stop doing it, the content stops.

Imagine YouTube without LinusTechTips, or Hollywood without any actors. They are, as you say "a drop in the bucket", a tiny percentage of overall YouTube users.

But that doesn't matter because most people on Reddit and TV viewers, are passive consumers. The statistics showed that less than one half of users were actually logged in, and a third or less ever posted anything (non-comments).

Trust me, Reddit is hurting. They haven't won. They think they've won but that's just shock and adrenaline before it wears off.

The users are the content, and if they all leave, there's nothing left. Digg and MySpace know this.

Imagine YouTube without LinusTechTips

Most of my YT usage is watching music videos or random clips. I don't think I ever watched LinusTechTips, or any other vlogger, on purpose for that matter so it would remain the same for me. People use platforms in different ways for them.

Yeah I was a big contributor too. Doesn't matter if they cease to exist, as long as I get enough joy out of Lemmy and contribute back in return

And let's face it. Even if they only lost 3% or whatever of their user base to Lemmy, it was definitely the coolest, smartest, best-looking 3%.

"the coolest, smartest, best-looking"

Crap, I didn't realize there were prereqs...

Well put. I think there was permanent damage done to user's trust, but don't see many of the smaller subreddit communities migrating away yet.

I worry that Lemmy is even more an echo chamber with a handful of default communities, I hope it grows to the point where I don't feel obligated to join the popular communities so there is actual content to scroll through.

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In my eyes Gizmodo is not seeing the big picture. The protest didn't kill reddit, but that was not a realistic outcome to begin with. However it significantly hurt reddit and helped push lemmy as an alternative. Reddit will be around for a long time, until lemmy has more widespread adaptation. It's the beginning of the end for reddit and they'll experience that with a disaster ipo

Lemmy actually feels like a viable alternative now with apps like Sync upping the experience. Seems like Reddit literally shot itself in the foot by kicking 3rd party apps to competition.

The number of folks interacting too is such a night and day difference. I dabbled in some lemmy instances before all this but never stuck around being there just wasn't much going on.

Lemmy appears to be financially stable due to user donations. Reddit relies on investors and monetizing users.

I bet, if we keep donating like we need, and the code iterates and works... this place can be hopping. I'd like quality to not suffer, but there will be more options as population increases.

This is not a zero sum game. I benefitted by finding Lenny and Lenny benefited from an influx of users.

Reddit hurt its self by damming the social contract with mods. That doesn’t help Lenny.

That isn’t a win, but reddit aren’t going away either.

Nobody cares though. The reddit administration has dethroned their own site, it will never gain that back. They're done, even if the site hangs around like a bad smell for a few more years.

Maybe they 'won', but I don't count a pyrrhic victory as winning. It will take years to recover.

They won't recover.

I would desperately love to know what they estimated the IPO at before and after this whole mess.

Is also worth remembering that the person doing the estimate was insane. Even before all of the process the site was never worth the four billion dollars or whatever the hell that stupid number was.

The site was massively valued because of the user data not for the site itself now that a lot of the user data is gone and not a lot of new user data is being generated the site is less valuable. The websites still exists of course but that was never the valuable bit of it.

Reddit won? Good for them. I'm still not going back.

The incredible thing about these articles is that they don't make the slight mention of lemmy.

That one linked is a well written summary of what happened, but it's partial if they don't include the migration that happened, even if it wasn't that big.

Now that you've noticed the PR industry, you may realize that basically every article is fawning of its subjects in this way these days

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Did they win, though? Everybody who actually cared left. It was clear in June that they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted to regardless of what anyone did or said.

The real test of win/lose is if they are able to turn a profit

They haven't in 10 years, I wouldn't hold my breath.

The FED & BCE jack's the cost of borrowing money, so once a "I just borrow more it's basically free" now it's "those dollars gotta bring money in or we're bust".

Interesting times for Reddit...

Long term.

No, short term. Spez is looking to sell, he doesn't care how it looks after the sale goes through.

Honestly I feel that this protest just showed me how uninteresting Reddit has become. Outside from small niche communities it's basically equivalent to any other news feed out there be it google news, Twitter or whatever.

Maybe it's not as good as we thought it was.

Me too! I thought it’s be hard to be without reddit, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. And I’ve noticed that lemmy is growing faster than I expected.

I’m here and I have an ad-free, troll-free, wholesome community to engage with on mostly the same topics I followed on Reddit. I declare myself the winner

I read that as toll free and was wondering if I was missing something.

Yah, too early in the morning for me!

I didn't realize I had misread that till I read your comment. It's late here.

Reddit won against its own users, the very people it relies on to stay relevant. In doing so, it showed a large number of users they don’t need reddit.

As the Lemmy apps get better, more and more people will check out the ad-free reddit. We can get their content without needing their platform, which is huge.

Reddit won the battle, but will it win the war?

I have never seen so many fight videos and politics on the front page. Reddit has completely lost its sense of humor and is basically a Facebook feed.

Reddit won at building its own viable competitors like Kbin, Lemmy, and Squabbles and all the users of those platforms also won big from Reddit's hubris. The one thing I know for sure is that they have grown Lemmy by 7000%, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

Time will tell what happens to Reddit.

Really‽ I just checked and many of the small subreddits I used to follow became much less interesting/active if not dead.

Meanwhile, some of the bigger subs became a repost dumping ground of years old posts/images/videos/memes by fairly new accounts (i'm guessing those are bots karma farming).

The fediverse is the much better way IMHO.

In any case, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit have become too toxic to use I will keep away (though, I never had a Facebook nor a Twitter account)

First I want to say hurray at the interrobang I love seeing them in the wild!

Secondly, I recently started doing research about Electric Vehicles and made another account for reddit to ask questions. I...forgot how much of a difference it was between Reddit and Lemmy when it came to discussion. There's so much aggression on Reddit it's crazy.

I joined a few EV groups on Facebook for the first time in years and it was nasty there too, not to mention my feed was full of shit I didn't even ask for.

I think I'm good here.

Interesting. The small subreddits I follow either moved or are just as active. Most are just as active.

I'd like to spend more time here, but Lemmy is still not attracting enough people to support a lot of the small subreddits I follow.

I am not really shocked because the only way to really beat Reddit is by leaving the platform completely as in what many did when Melon Husk took over Twitter. Mass exodus. Express displeasure by voting with your feet and GTFO.

it feels like a biased, paid and made up news for spez's money to try and revive this hole of a website. most of r/all posts are repost bots, as well as comments in them.

A huge tech company paying another big tech company to stroke it's digital cock?

Never!

Sadly, for some they will believe it and feel defeated and return to reddit thinking it's true, and watch as reddit becomes the Facebook/Myspace of this era.

How nice it will be if the IPO is an absolute disaster!

I can't use a mobile browser to view most content on Reddit anymore due to one of the changes to the site. I get a bunch of prompts to log in or verify my age or something that can only be removed by switching my browser to desktop mode.

This basically ensures that I won't ever use Reddit because I do most of my doom scrolling on mobile when I'm bored.

I think today I'll investigate one of the means of automatically changing all of my comments to fuck spez and then delete my account.

Let Reddit become Myspace. Lemmy wins, however we use it.

Myspace? You already got reddits predecessor. Digg

I wonder how many users and how much traffic they lost in the process.

Real or faked? Because they have tons of bots and paid traffic to make the site look busier than it actually is. Steve figured that out years ago because he's a sociopathic liar with access to venture capital and an IPO to defraud.

Steve looks forward to the hell of interfacing with shareholders, which makes me giddy. Reddit is now a money machine and no longer a community. The enshitification is well underway.

Hi Aaron, Thankyou for leading me to find Cory Doctorow’s essay on enshittification. I think this should be taught in every higher learning institution in the world, immediately.

So happy you found it. Thanks so much for letting me know.

Oh from the day Reddit went live there have been fake accounts. That’s how Steve and Alexis made it look like people were using the site.

Looking at the site recently it feels like half the content is gone. A lot of old stuff hanging around /hot on subs that I frequented doesnt seem like anyone "won" here. Reddit lost content creators, the users lost site functionality and content and half the mods got kicked to the curb for nothing.

Seems like human relationships turn out like that. Hey, nobody benefits, but look who's the alpha! Take wars for examples.

That's not true. It may be true in r/technology, but reddit hasn't won. It's just that those still on Reddit didn't make it.

We showed that we care, and we showed that we can dump them. Reddit is currently dying. It may be a slow process, but I don't think the enshittification of reddit will stop.

Yep, and while Lemmy was rough around the edges when people started looking for alternatives, now there's a glut of great clients and active communities. Reddit only needs one more screw up before the remaining users find a compelling alternative.

And the screwup will come. Either in another big blow or gradually.

I think "one more screw up" is a little optimistic tbh

I won't really call that a win,

Reddit lost the trust of many users, a non insignificant part of contributors and moderators left, the enshittification of the platform is not going to stop but they lost a big part of what made Reddit great. They damaged their image and popularity.

It's like saying Elon won by trashing Twitter. Sure he does what he wants with it but making your platform less desirable sure isn't a win for the platform.

Won the battle... NOT the war.

I don't know, it's more like Reddit lost a skirmich and that's it. They are heading downwards à la Facebook though.

Look at Digg, dying takes time.

They might have won but now that Rif doesn't work anymore I'm testing Lemmy. I've noticed that reddit content is less updated throughough the day so I suppose that some active posters have left.

I bet the "Reddit won" statement is a bit premature. Yes in a sense it pushed forward what they wanted to do kicking out third-party apps and moderators who didn't toe the line. In the end, they kept the traffic but it must be mostly the silent majority of lurkers. I bet a significant chunk of the minority providing content and discussion went away or at least is trying out alternatives and finding a new home in the likes of Lemmy.

Time will tell if Reddit stagnates/declines content-wise.

I'm using Sync for Lemmy (with a lemmy.world account) it's like Sync for Reddit, same!

Spez gambled that most mods would give up because they where power whores. He won because he was right.

My old time allocated to Reddit is now allocated to Lemmy (65%) Reddit (35%).

And Infinity for Lemmy is making Lemmy even more familiar than ever.

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And Lemmy won people's heart.

Lemmy feels like the first real alternative to reddit. Everything else was a ghost town or had no moderation so only banned subs would move. This recent exodus won't kill reddit but it created a viable reddit alternative for when they inevitably do something worse. Reddit ran as a number 2 to digg for years before digg screwed up. I can see the same happening here.

I dont know what you say, I transitioned to Lemmy 100% and deleted my acc at reddit.

The only super annoying thing is that they get to keep the cake whole and the dog full (my comments by deleting my name and my acc deleted). Which I despite them for that even more now and just make me avoid the platform even more and dis-advertise it.

I would be fully happy if I had my account, changed my comments first to "fuck /u/spez" and then had deleted my account, but I only knew so much. I was naive enough to think they would delete my comments too, since they're My Intellectual Property. Right? They came from my own mind, I took the time to write them, and I deleted them! But no! We will keep them, just delete your name.

And when you google my reddit username, you still get from the google's cache directed to threads with my deleted comments. Fuck you spez. Fuck you.

Time will tell if reddit won. It's not a short-term fight. I deleted my discord a Chinese Tencent's vessel and a product that makes no money but burns money for the sake of gathering data. My Instagram, my Meta account thus my FB too, my WhatsApp, every app that was there just to gather my data or exploit me now or in the future.

I do everything to keep off being fingerprinted. I use platforms that use more and more end-to-end encryption like Matrix. Or at worst Telegram which is not end to end but the best of the worst since my relatives still use it.

Just because you don't see it yet, doesn't mean that a movement against anti-consumer platforms like reddit don't exist. I inform my mom about it, I inform my relatives and friends about it. I move friends and friends move me to safer for the future to use platforms and de-centralized.

A battle may be short, but the war is long.

I removed all of my comments first, so they dont have anything. Used app to do this, took few minutes to remove thousands

Reportedly, they were restoring the comments of some deleted accounts for which they detected this.

If you still have access to your account there's a bot service that will edit all of your comments to whatever message you'd like (eg. "Fuck spez" or w.e) and then when you delete them that's what it'll display.

I don’t unfortunately, I would even have done it by hand despite that I’m a developer and could have made a bot myself. Point is, if I knew about it I would be so furious that I would have no problem doing it by hand. Fuck spez.

Discord isn't owned or majority controlled by tencent at all. That's antivax level paranoia.

Tencent owns a majority of the shares. If you want to dispute me, at least throw a source … it’s a well known fact in the business community.

Crunchbase - Discord Principal investors

Crunchbase - Discord Series B Lead investors (Tencent, Benchmark, 9+ Program)

You just claimed that out of your ass again. There isn't a single source that says tencent has a majority stake from their investment with Discord Inc.

Not even the links you provided state what you are claiming.

Tencent owns a majority stake in GGG.

Tencent has only funded Discord for $158 million. Less than 1/3 of the total funding($500 million) it has received and well below the $15 billion the company is valued at.

Either you don't know how investments and shares work, you're bad at math or both.

Is most likely that tencent has a 10-15% stake in Discord.

Depending on when that funding came in and how the stocks got priced they could be majority shareholders, the founders of the company I work for own over 50% together although they've gotten way more funding from external investors than they've put in themselves

Tencent has only funded 158 million [...] that's only 1/3 of the shares

and that's not a majority of the shares? Are you stupid or you're pretending to be?

Because so far you've only insulted me but now it's time for me to insult you. You firstly clearly don't know how to make a discussion work without insulting your counterparty, and secondly don't know in english the difference between "THE majority" and "A majority".

You talk like a classic 9gagger who only knows how to talk with insults and misinformation and with pure arrogance. 1/3 is a majority of the shares. That's how it works in business. 1/3 is a big number to take big decisions and make vetos and be on the table.

1/3 is not the majority. Majority of share has to be 50% and more. Usually majority is kept by the company and other shares are promised.

Investing doesn't gauentee stakeholdership. You are making nothing but conspitorial assumptions.

Again, you have little grasp on economics, buisness, math and stakeholders.

I didn’t say THE majority. You continue to change my words. I said A majority. There can be multiple majorities in a community in relation to something else. And in the business world when you say 1/3 of shares is owned by X entity, that IS a majority. Because the rest is most likely 1 million other people/entities with no power, some are VC, some are CEO, some are other seeders.

I understand you may not know much about the business world. It’s not bad not knowing things. And stop insulting people for not knowing something. Shaming people for lack of knowledge is just such a loser mentality. It’s like sucking your own cock.

And at last you answered without direct insults, but you still gave me a “you have a little grasp of business economics and maths” which is ironical.

1/3 is a big portion to own from a company. I’m in the business world, I’m also been a trader for years now, we also do discussions on our company’s surge meetings about IPOs and I have friends who’ve been bank CEOs or still are. Believe me. 1/3 is a big portion to own from a company. You own

1/3 of the decisions in a sense that the company does. You have huge voting power and rights. Stop pretending to be blind for the sake of proving yourself right.

The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented,

Some small subreddits are still protesting and planning on doing so indefinitely. Others have migrated to Lemmy/Raddle/Squabbles/Etc

So buying reddit coins and gilding every “fuck spez” comment/post didn’t work? I can’t believe it!

Just If you consider the growth of 7000% of a competitor in the era when many players fight for the attention of the users a victory. Time will tell

News brought to you be [official news side totally not paid by spez]

Partly because the majority of the people didn't even know there were 3rd party apps lol. Many people don't even care about the protests. Reddit is too big for it to go down overnight.

The only thing we could do now is build better communities here.

I was one of those people, didn;t even know about the 3rd party stuff until they were nearly gone. The site took a noticeable decline in quality and that's why I'm here.

I thought Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin were all the same thing until about a week before I lost access to RIF. I'm glad I looked into all the Reddit alternatives and found Lemmy. Reddit has been shitty for years anyway.

Just a matter of time till majority of its users realise how easy it is to migrate to lemmy and how greedy and evil reddit has become.

Reddit didn't win over me. I edited all my comments to "fuck u/spez", got suspended from a couple subreddits, and then never logged back in to my account. Been using Lemmy ever since.

There's two problems...

  1. There is no easy to use singular Reddit replacement. (The fediverse is not easy to use to normal people.)

  2. Reddit is such a large social media site now that all the nerds getting angry and leaving doesn't matter. 10 years ago this change would have killed Reddit, but now that normal people like my mom are on Reddit they don't give a shit about using the official Reddit app, in fact they were probably already using it.

Nobody is surprised. They strong armed all the mods with integrity off the platform and replaced them with the spineless willing to play the game. Somehow they’ve become even more of a vacuumed echo chamber than they already were, which I’m sure they’re pleased with anyway. But they lost even more legitimate users. I do have a “troll” account that I use to express my true opinions before I’m eventually banned for saying something that goes against the status quo. But it is nice to not have to worry about every comment I ever make getting me downvoted to shit and banned because I said something the hive mind didn’t agree to. Lemmy is my main now, but I also check out Tildes and Hacker News. Glad I found these places instead.

The victor is not victorius if the vanquished does not consider themselves so

Never stop fighting, we will win!

Why fight when you can just delete your reddit* account and be done with it? :)

Assuming that this is not just Reddit paying Gizmodo for an article to discourage people from using Lemmy by shaping the narrative that everyone is back on Reddit, then I would say it's just way too early for Gizmodo to make this call.

Enough people have come over to make a push/pull environment happen between the two sites. Time will tell which one pulls the most over to their side.

I don't think the war has been won. This might have been the biggest battle, but it's going to be the years that tell the story, not the months or the days.

This is like Bush's mission accomplished. Too early to tell. Thanks to that though I found this nice community.

Can moderators on reddit delete the subreddits they moderate?

Nope. You need to kick everyone out and leave. Anyone could message admins and request to take over.

I was thinking it was like chat groups in IM apps the owner/creator of the group can delete the group, so only Reddit can delete the subreddit that I create!

Afaik only reddit can delete a sub and I believe even they probably only lock them and kick everyone out?
I speak from experience as I created a novel sub r/FuckYourBoat (or something like that) and got tired of being considered a mod in the toolbars (don't need them there) so I tried to get rid of it. No dice: Only leaving.

Well yeah because all the people who cared moved to Lemmy or kbin

No surprise here, just like Bernie Sanders, Mueller, and everything else, le reddit blindly overestimated what was going to happen. I'm willing to bet less than 10% of reddit even knows there were other apps, they just want cat pics and reposted tiktoks.

I agree that reddit won but it was a, pyrrhic victory the content quality has massively gone down. I still have a secondary account there but I only use it to spread the word about lemmy. Haven't used it in weeks because I don't want to attract too much attention and get suspended.

No they did not win. People just expect people to move out from an historic platform overnight. This just doesn't happen like that. Like Twitter, they'll be small events that will make users want to find alternatives and migrate here.

That crisis made Lemmy way more populated, just for that we won in a way

A shadow of its former self but they managed to clear out the troublemakers

Sadly, Reddit has won. Their traffic is higher now than before the API protests. It seems like the saying "All publicity is good publicity was true in this case. While one can appreciate a minimal downtrend in Twitter interest (as expected), Reddit interest is growing and even more after the protests. Google trends:

That is search terms not traffic. If I Google "Reddit controversy" it will add to the Reddit stat. Your literally just asking Google to tell you how many people included the word "Reddit" in their search query.

You're right, I should have said search interest. Though, I would argue it is correlated.