Reddit users lost?
Do we at this point have any substantial data on just how many users Reddit actually lost due to this?
Any resources would be greatly appreciated.
As a sidenote, I'll add that they certainly lost my account the second I couldn't use RiF anymore.
You probably can't judge the loss in user count anyway. 99% of the users never actively contribute anything, not even upvotes or so.
I tend to disagree. Most of the users that actually cared enough about the API changes to make the switch to Lemmy were powerusers. I think most casual lurkers use the official app anyway and didn’t care about the protests.
Hell naw, I’m a lurker (on Reddit). I used Apollo because I’m an IT guy and I can’t stand ads.
I feel like I actually should start interacting here though, because I’m not being over spoken / silenced by AI bots and algorithms
Edit: I am already halfway to my number of updoots on my Reddit account of 7 years… it’s working! Be the change you want to see!
nevermind AIs, people will dogpile you and just generally be dicks over on that site even over something innocuous, and it's great being somewhere that spectre isn't hanging over your head
I can't stand ads and scabs, and I feel like a scab if I open reddit now.
I had an 8 year old account with a few hundred thousand karma, deleted it on July 1st once BaconReader went down.
Switching to Lemmy makes me want to participate even more and hopefully foster more people to join.
The karma is such a psychological thing.
In real life, it translates to nothing. But it makes it just that slightly harder to close an account.
I had an active 11 year old account that I deleted.
The final straw for me was an interaction with a ham fisted admin these last few days. It really and honestly is a toxic environment there, and the admins are following the lead from Spez, so it's deeply embedded into the culture.
I wonder if you could have sold those accounts. You get done money and Reddit gets worse. Win-win.
All I can say is I was one of the technical users that asked obscure questions that had no relevant results when searching before posting, and I tried to answer any questions I could. I haven't even visited reddit since the 9th of June and I never will visit it again. All of my searches on the internet include "-reddit" now too. I don't care, fuck spez. My password was saved in Infinity, I don't remember it, and I don't want to. Whenever someone starts a class action lawsuit over CCPA I'll file and join.
Now I understand where the negativity came from from some redditors; Lemmy is really not lurker friendly, you can't just browse All as easily and see quick dopamine hits.
Power users are the ones who build value on reddit, so with their loss the standard users will get less out of reddit over time and likely use it less.
Yes, that's what I meant. Reddit lost all the power users, which were just a small percentage of all users. So in numbers it doesn't look too bad for reddit, but it actually is bad because they lost the good users which actually provide content.
This is anecdotal, but I was neither an app user or a moderator on reddit, but I decided to leave when Huffman became an ass to the mods. I think you underestimate the chance to protest against corporate assholes.
Hey, I'm a lurker and I used the official app (un-installed it the day I created an account on fedi, it was shit anyway). There's still a moral ground attached to this. I don't browse reddit anymore, and I did a final post in a niche community that I really like, a couple of weeks or so, in an attempt to lead them here, because I do miss that community and I contributed more there. There's a bunch of good reasons people could stop using reddit, but imho what matters is that we build our communities in fedi and just forget about what happens to reddit.
I disagree from what I've seen so far. Most of the discussions I've seen lately about newly migrated reddit users have been folks who were lurkers or mostly lurkers. I myself used to be active on reddit years ago, but have been a lurker for a good 6-7+ years now or so. I think you're correct as of a few weeks ago when powerusers may have migrated earlier, but I think the migration post-API implementation has been a large amount of non-powerusers. Of course, users that are 100% casual, and don't have accounts at all or only rarely used Reddit, and might not even be aware of what's going on, those folks I'm sure didn't really move.
I used the official app, but still supported the protest.
Hopefully you’re right about the majority, but I’m also a lurker and it took me a single day without Apollo filtering away the ads for me to delete my few posts, my account, and throw in my lot with all of you! Can’t stand liars.
No real way to tell, but I don't think it would be immediately noticeable on Reddit. Like the satisfying "we killed reddit" probably isn't going to happen. On the other hand, being here clearly have discoverd the Fediverse as replacement, so IMO it doesn't matter what happens to Reddit now. (Not to say the drama/any issues Reddit ends up with won't be endlessly entertaining)
I used to think this until all of the recent blows they have had, such as the IAmA losses and Microsoft withdrawing their Minecraft support. With advertisers withdrawing and users leaving, I think they are going to have problems covering operating expenses in the near term that could lead to an implosion due to lack of funds.
Before all this started, Fidelity's Reddit investment was devalued pretty heavily and they have had profitability issues. Tech companies in general are having investor problems due to interest rates so Reddit have problems is going to really scare away any risk-adverse investors. They have proven they cannot control their user base (which is good news for users) which scares advertisers away from content unfriendly to their interests. They just doubled their employees from like 1000 to 2000 in the past couple of years, which just adds astronomically to their operating expenses.
I think they make about $500 million in revenue and are still in the red. Even minor changes to this expense/income ratio can cause issues that make them suddenly insolvent with no one to bail them out.
What's the Minecraft thing? I'm not on Reddit any more so missed that bit.
Minecraft devs left r/Minecraft and won't use it as a source for news anymore. https://www.pcgamer.com/minecrafts-devs-exit-its-7-million-strong-subreddit-after-reddits-ham-fisted-crackdown-on-protest/
Good opportunity for them to host a separate instance with a Microsoft domain. That will contribute even more to their legitimately.
I definitely think getting interested in the fediverse is a long game. Think the death of Facebook. It was a slow burn between 2016 and 2020, involving lots of different communities moving at different times for different reasons
But...Facebook isn't dead. I mean it's dead to me, but it's still going quite strong.
Really? Feels like a graveyard when I log in. I mean everyone over 65 still uses it and there are a lot of weird holdouts but all my friends moved over to instagram, which is so much worse than facebook ever was IMO
People like Instagram over Facebook because it's much, much harder to share links to ragebait on Instagram.
The secret sauce though is that one out of every 3 reels is ragebait. just a different kind that you cant get away from because you're so addicted to the scroll feature
Exactly. Whether or not Facebook or Reddit or Netflix or Twitter survive, thrive, or perish is irrelevant to me.
What matters is that they won't profit off my data, they won't sell any ads from my activity, and they won't get a penny more of subscription money out of me.
If others wish to continue diving down those rabbit holes, that's on them.
Well you can take the knowledge that Lemmy.world grew 60% following it, look at current numbers for the server, and know at least around 60% of that number has shifted some of their media habits away from Reddit.
But the full picture is unknowable outside Reddit corporate.
Probably more than spez was anticipating though...
But probably not enough to make a bit immediate impact on Reddit. I’m more interested in long term impact, seeing if the people who left were big contributors, or just mostly lurkers
Don't underestimate lurkers. They play a big role by upvoting, downvoting and reporting inappropriate content. They are the invisible force that keeps a website healthy and sane.
I feel seen
Indeed.
I Am Lurk.
By definition lurkers don't do any of that. A lurker literally just looks at stuff
That user you described is still a contributor, you could perhaps call them a curator or something but they aren't a lurker.
Not only Lemmy but other instances and other sites as well. I know squabbles grew by quite a bit, beehaw grew, and so did Tildes. But unless we were able to gather information from everywhere, it's impossible to know. What is heartening is that we do know that it was not an insignificant amount.
I didn't fully quit reddit, but I'm going to Lemmy first and foremost and rarely go back to reddit for very specific communities. My reddit usage dropped by 90+% probably, but I'm not completely gone.
I'm sure the same is true for many other users as well, so simply counting the number of (active) users then and now won't get even close to the actual loss in traffic and participation.
Same here. Since I was an Apollo user, there’s no loss of revenue though, and I haven’t posted much, barely any loss of new content.
I haven't gone back to Reddit yet, but I'm sure I will at sometime for, like you said, some of the smaller communities or something specific I may not be able to find here for now. I'll stay here as much as I can though, I'm sure it will only improve.
https://the-federation.info/platform/73
The numbers do speak for themselves.
While it's not huge, compared to reddits numbers, it's a massive boost to lemmy. A lot of those leaving are more likely more active users. It's bootstrapped Lemmy into a viable platform. It now has a critical mass of users to generate content.
The Active Users Ratio graph is not filling me with hope - if I’m reading it correctly there isn’t increased activity, just increased sign ups.
I want to comment and submit content, I just feel like I don't have anything of value to share. That tends to be why I lurk. Not sure if that's the case for most other lurkers.
yea i feel the same way. heck, the only reason I'm leaving this comment is just to prove your point
That’s certainly the reason I mainly lurk, I don’t have anything of value to add at the moment. When I do I definitely plan to create some content.
Total users have sky rocketed and iirc like 90% of users/people who log in to say vote, save and subscribe to communities are lurkers. Hell, I've been "lurking" since I've signed up.
Since there's such a spike in users, and prior to the Reddit death, most users were power users. I'm surprised that the active user ratio didn't decrease. (My 90% lurker figure would give a 0.1 ratio). The fact it near increased by .05 instead is wild.
..and my axe!
And my sax! (We need a good soundtrack)
Eventually but at the moment most users are using both Lemmy and Reddit but soon the quality of content will shift from reddit to Lemmy and that will be the end of reddit. Post quality memes, questions and answers to kill reddit quickly
Uhhh, about that...
*hides beans*
imagines himself as an old man, picking at his ears "Ay? Wassat? Post quality beans?" Shrugging, and humbling under my breath while going to the cupboard to take a photo... "Not sure how that'll help, but I'll do me best."
I hadn’t saved a meme from Reddit in a looooong time.
Joined lemmy July 1st and have been filling my phone with memes.
This place seriously reminds me of old Reddit. We don’t need a huge influx of users. Maybe just a few more but it’s pretty much perfect as is.
this ^^. even if we peel off 5% in a relatively even scrape across all the interests that's enough content for me to scratch the itch daily.
Generally I agree, but one of the things that was actually pretty cool about reddit were the smaller niche subs.
Some of them though were just too niche and small and thus pretty dead even with Reddits huge userbase.
And while I am pretty optimistic in general, I am a bit afraid that it will be harder to find active communities for niche interests if Lemmys userbase were to stay the current size.
But hey let's stay positive and active here and spread the word and we can grow into the perfect size, which doesn't necessarily need to be reddit-behemoth size.
At least three: You, me, and some person who built this platform.
Disclaimer: It's entirely possible two of the above individuals are bots.
Wait, could I be a bot too?? 😧
This statement is false
@IjonTichy Don't think about it-don't think about it-don't think about it
@andxze @Mammal @CaptainBlagbird
Uh... True. I'll go with true.
Good bot.
I’ve been keeping track of this tracker and since July 1, peak comments/post per minute have definitely gone down. Although as the site mentions, you really shouldn’t draw any firm conclusions from that. Just interesting to see.
This is not public information, you won't know anything about that until the next quarterly reports. That being said if you go to the front page right now it seems pretty much like business as usual.
To be fair, with a website as huge as reddit, a 25% or even 50% decrease in user activity probably won't be that noticeable from someone like us. Instead of 2 million posts a day, it's not now 1 million. Or instead of 500k, it's 250k. None of those are knew we could feasibly differentiate.
Maybe if you sit on r/all and keep track of how fast new posts are moving, but even then, the algorithm may still just move the same number of posts up and down the main pages. So even then, it would be hard to tell if usage is down.
Now obviously there's no way it's down that much. It's significantly lower. But I'm just saying even if we pretend that it was down that much, it would look like business as usual.
Also, either way, I'm still glad to find this place. It feels nicer and offers what I wanted in a way reddit couldn't.
A saw a post a while back commenting on how many upvotes it was taking to get onto the front page of r/all having dropped, but not sure if there is any way to see stats from before API changes now.
One of the people on (I think) modcoord noted that for years reddit has allowed moderators to look at traffic stats for their subreddit. And that the traffic stats are no longer available; the last day they could access was ... June 30.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence, though ...
The other method was looking at how many people are "here now" in each sub
Yeah you're right that it wouldn't be immediately noticeable but just because a few thousands of us jumped to Lemmy doesn't mean there is any significant change on reddit. I checked on my most active communities and all the usual suspects are there, posting and commenting as usual. The amount of people that left reddit are probably a fraction of a percent.
The real question is how many power users and moderators left, the first are the ones that produce the most content, the second are the ones that prevent the place turning into a shithole. If an important fraction of those left, it WILL impact the site.
Precisely, the importance is if the mods stick around or not.
One sub I was in the Mod basically said a few weeks ago 'I've had it with this, no offense guys but just run it how you want from now on'I'm retiring'. The users didn't turn it into a protest sub but somehow it's worse than that because it's repetitive and boring.
So there's a few old hands sticking around but I doubt there'll be new people joining it. And I think that will be true for a lot of unmoderated subs, they won't all get full of porn and spam, they'll just become much less interesting
Out of the hundreds of millions of redditors i'm sure some people will pick up the slack of content creation and moderation. Now will they do a good enough job ? I don't know, i bet spez is betting they will, but only time will tell.
The quality of the obscure subs is dropping. Ironically, this is actually what is valuable to the LLMs.
The front page is mostly twitter and TikTok anyway.
Because front page wasn't user generated anymore.
It looks different for me - I didn't want to go back, so I just installed Reddit Enhancement Suite and the old.reddit redirect and disabled my ad blockers for it, and sure enough it looks like garbage now so it's easy to remember not to use it.
Frontpage by the very way it works will always be the same it picks up the top content, and even if a larger portion left would still leave plenty of posts. The forntpage worked 10 years ago when it was 10% the size.
It is looking at the mid size subs that will be interesting
It's going to be hard to tell definitively, because so much traffic on the major platforms like Reddit are bots. As a percentage of overall traffic, the reduction may only be a few percentage points.
But all that traffic that is leaving are from Actual Humans. Humans who cared enough about their interactions to have preferences about how they engaged with Reddit. In a few years, Reddit will just be a bunch of bots talking to each other.
One of the founders of Reddit mentioned in an interview a while back that it was all bots when it started, to give the illusion of being populated when it was too new to have any users except the people who worked on it. From bots it came, and to bots it will return. The circle of life.
I certainly stopped once RiF stopped working.
Yeah RIF was my go-to for years. Reddit is just not the same experience anymore, so I'm basically done with reddit going forward. Alternative or bust
For me, interestingly enough, it still works when I am logged out. I am still using it to skim the Ukraine live thread on worldnews or other news stuff, but it lost me as an active participant in any way (including voting on content).
This is impossible to know. It is more important to see what Lemmy is getting more so than what Reddit is loosing. At least on the fediverse the number is realistic and not something for the shareholders.
Couldn't agree more. People here need to be okay with the possibility that Reddit continues to be popular even though it will continue to be the same scummy company that treats its users like cattle. Those of us who care about that kind of stuff are a minority of the users. There are likely tens of thousands of people who lurk Reddit, click the ads, and don't even know about the API debacle... and that's okay, we should all let it go.
I don’t think Reddit is imploding overnight but there seems to be an element of death by a thousand cuts happening. I’ve left and burned out three old usernames and over ten years worth of posts/comments. I’ll still use it to find answers to things but increasingly over the last month the threads are peppered with deleted comments and gaps
I've stopped using it to look for answers to things. I've found that I can find all answers to games, electronics and such elsewhere. I may have to do a minute more digging. I deleted all my comments and quit going when the blackout happened.
Somebody asked for soldering tips on Lemmy today and got several thoughtful responses within 5 minutes. That's pretty amazing compared to the feed a few weeks ago.
It's only been three days since the API change. Give it a month and we might have a bit of usable data, but for precise information, we'll need to wait a few months or even up to a year.
It actually hasn't. The api hasn't been changed. Reddit is such a shit show they didn't make their own deadline. Apps that didn't take themselves down in advance still work.
Theres still a wave to come I think.
This is false. RIF clearly gets rate limited. Occasionally it will actually load the front page but every other time it throws 429 errors
Infinity is not. Also, this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/14nbw6g/updated_rate_limits_going_into_effect_over_the/
The api changes will occur in the following weeks.
Also, apparently RIF works when not logged in from what ive read. Its actually an oauth thing.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/1/23781408/if-rif-is-still-working-for-you-when-youre-logged-out-heres-why
For RIF, the first day I was getting the 429 error. Then it was showing old.r.com. After a couple days, rif loaded like it normally would pre shutdown. I was just logged out and Im not logging back in. I havnt noticed any issues. NSFW items still load.
There likely won't ever be an official number on how many users jumped ship. Even unofficial ones will be guestimates.
🙋♂️
There are dozens of us!
This is the only response we need
We are like in the... many.
Well seems simple enough. You look at how many new users Lemmy got and subtract that from whatever reddit numbers are online. Only posters/commenters count for Lemmy activity, and the number of lurkers is likely several times bigger. Anyway so based on what I see online, Lemmy has about 50k active users, maybe up to 10x more lurkers. So like half a million users maybe. Reddit probably has 55 million users. So that's still 11x bigger than Lemmy
So if I'm even remotely in the ballpark, Lemmy managed to grab like 1% of the reddit userbase & the management won the mainstream crowd as usual. Of course Lemmy isn't ready for the volume and legal costs anyway
Loads of reddit refugees on tumblr, squabbles and Tildes too. Tumblr is fucking crawling with them/us at the moment.
50k very active users that try to have integrity is a pretty big deal. Because with that will come development of the platform, meanwhile Reddit is going to struggle with a new chapter of shitty moderation and decreased quality. There are also a lot of people burnt out on the issue and so I expect real numbers from the immediate to be more visible over the next month or two.
Plus, which instances are you looking at for those numbers? Are all the lemmy instances and kbin included in those numbers?
Let's just assume that it's going to be about 1% of reddit's userbase. Does it matter which 1%? How will the platforms evolve? Because both are very different now than before, we're seeing realtime changes across a lot of tech and the internet. A lot of faith was lost by the public in many platforms by the people at all paying attention, and a lot of hope was garnished by the successful move to new platforms.
Stuff is definitely changing. I'm curious what big tech is gonna do to try to restore faith, or if they'll try to pretend nothing's happened and try to sweep it under the rug. A lot of people already try to downplay the events into just numbers, but in reality, there are a LOT of eyes watching and waiting to see what happens. People are tired of the same old capitalist bullshit and want something better, it isn't just ex/reddittors, it's Twitter users, Linux users, Amazon users, Netflix users, students with debt, homeowners, and a LOT of young people. People want better and the messed up economic future is making people pay attention more than ever.
It's all interwoven and something's gotta give.
It very much does. The old metric was that 1% create, 10% comment, and the rest consume (I don't think the metric included a number for moderator-types). I suspect most of the emigres have a heavier percentage of moderators, creators, and commenters. And I suspect it also contains a larger percentage of old-time redditors. While there are undoubtedly a bunch of people stepping into place on reddit right now, the loss of the people who left is going to hurt reddit.
there's a distorting effect here too, years ago policy changes on reddit had some contributors stop almost entirely. I spent a large amount of the last few years shit posting if i posted at all.
We may have a large chunk of the current 1% of content creators and as number of dormant creators re-activating after years. It does explain the pace of some of these communities.
I don't like the distinction between commenting and creation tbh. Comments were most of reddit's valuable content. 90% of everything else in the past few years has just been rehosting content from tiktok and Instagram
That assumes people’s usage is all-or-nothing, though. I started using Lemmy and I now use reddit a lot less, but still use it for communities that don’t exist or aren’t active here. I don’t imagine I’m the only one in that boat.
I think it's a good chunk but not enough to outright kill the site.
The shitshow that was Spez's AMA certainly drove away a few users, but I think many more were hoping that they'd dial back the API changes at the eleventh hour to allow third-party apps to at least coexist.
What AMA? It was nothing more than 3-4 pre written comments that didn’t answer anything.
If there is a change, Reddit shouldn't share the real numbers. Would be bad for business.
Looking at the stats for the subreddits I moderate, I can't see any actual change in unique views since the apps shutdown
I expect it’s a low percentage of overall users. Many are using the official Reddit app and just complaining about it. Others have switched to surviving third party apps. Still others are strictly Old Reddit on desktop.
The moderator community have likely felt a greater hit.
I have Wefwef now. I’m not lost, just on substitute.
I quit reddit on my phone, and I'm never looking back. I'm still browsing Reddit with RES on my PCs though. So a drastic reduction in use.
Reddit feels like different now compared to a week ago. Browsing a new fresh site opened my eyes to how shit r/all are. Even with blocked subreddits a new hate fueled subreddit emerges every week.
You're really not likely to find that out unless it becomes so obvious everyone can see. Reddit will not give that information out. My opinion is, not to dwell on what they've lost but instead what I've gained.
Unfortunately, reddit probably won't see a huge dive in viewership because a lot of niche questions still are only on their website and they're probably going to talk about their monthly users instead of daily users.
I‘m still using Reddit a tiny bit to search for some stuff with Google and I noticed an increase in deleted and overwritten comments in my results. Will be interesting to see how many that truly is, but I have a hunch it‘s the active users who commented and posted who were more likely to leave, so even if the total percentage is small, the percentage of original content has been hit hard.
Same thing. I knew people were doing it, but figured "what's the chance it will happen to my searches?" turns out, a pretty reasonable chance.
They've been training bots to post for years
Sadly we won't know the amount of users Reddit lost with Reddit being willing to publicly admit how much they fucked up. Through info on user increase on Lemmy we'll get an idea but it doesn't mean those new users have completely stopped using Reddit.
I wonder if you could guesstimate based on ad-buys - cost, interactions, etc.
It’s hard to say, but assuming they all went to Lemmy, you can get an approximation from this site: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
The number of active Lemmy users seems to have increased by ~50k last month.
I think the critical question is not so much how many users it lost, but how many contributing users? Given the majority of Reddit users are lurkers, you could easily lose half the content by losing only the top 5% of contributing users...
Very good point and this place seems like it's getting a lot of the content contributors...
My third party client (Relay) still works over there so I'm still using it until it switches to paid. The developer said he plans to switch to the paid model so he is keeping it running for free now.
Heretic