Reddit's Traffic is Down 3.36% Month-Over-Month, According to SimilarWeb

Paulius@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 1818 points –

SimilarWeb has just released traffic estimates for June. According to these estimates, Reddit's traffic has seen a 3.36% month-over-month decrease.

For comparison, here's how traffic has changed for other popular social networking websites:

  • Discord.com: +0.51%
  • Twitter.com: -1.65%
  • Instagram.com: -1.35%
  • Facebook.com: -3.18%
  • TikTok.com: +0.77%
  • Pinterest.com: -2.27%
  • Youtube.com: -2.02%

Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com/#overview

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On the one hand, this doesn't seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we're not seeing this reflected in the data yet.

Even so, no company wants to say they've lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that's still 51 million people. It's a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.

I used Apollo right up until it shut down, and I haven’t touched Reddit since. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.

Wefwef all the way now

It’s absurd just how good wefwef is as a web app. Such a natural transition from Apollo.

Since I’m here, RIP Apollo and thanks for all the hard work Christian!

I was also an enthusiastic Apollo user.

Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.

Thats why its up to all of us to start participating.

Protip: If you really want to start a conversation/get engagement, follow Cunningham's Law:

the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.

So, fill those empty posts with confidently incorrect statements and watch that comment section fill up as people rush in to correct you.

Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.

Most people didn’t create content and don’t interact with it (ie most people are lurkers). Take it upon yourself to comment and interact with posts and others will almost always join in and have something to say.

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I used sync up until the 13th or so, then started limiting my reddit usage, and increased my lemmy usage until July 1st. Now I'm solely on lemmy on mobile, and only see reddit on desktop when I come across a search I need.

Same with me. I haven’t deleted my Reddit account yet, but will be doing that soon, after I delete or overwrite my comments of 10 years there.

Between Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon, I have plenty to keep me occupied in what used to be my Reddit-scrolling time.

Same. I still have the app as a reminder but this is my home now.

Weekend I’m going to see about spinning up my own instance.

I really missed Reddit at first and it took a while to get TestFlight on Memmy and figure this out but it’s looking good so far.

Yep. Just check the site to see if my data request has been processed. Replied to a message in which someone was asking about Lemmy. But that's it.

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I agree. The real change will be from 1 July onwards since none of us can use our apps anymore.

Eh, reddit could'nt even do that right. They've not shutdown all apps

Yeah, I don't exactly understand how but RIF is working for me, despite the fact you can't log into it. I only kept it as a momento, but it still works as long as you have the subs you want to see memorized...

hate to be that guy, but I also want to contribute with content, so: It’s memento

Yea, Infinity is still working

Infinity has Spez's cock down their throat and is going subscription based.

It’ll be interesting to see how many users stick with the apps that are continuing. I think the devs are crazy to think that even more than 5% of the users they had will continue to use the app for $5/month. Especially when you can’t view NSFW content.

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I would love it if that was true, but think the impact of the blackout making ALL users unable to access whole swathes of the site might be bigger

I think there are still some subs that are private, and I know a couple went NSFW and a bunch are getting harassed by admins to reopen or remove the NSFW tag.

My friend told me the cyberpunk sub couldn't reply to the email they got telling them to turn off the NSFW tag. Because nearly full on sex scenes, decapitation, huge hogs with giant titties is absolutely SFW.

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Even if 3% is a low number, I guarantee that 3% were reddits more active users and content creators.

If most of the quality content slows to a trickle users will continue to leave and look for more viable platforms.

It's not 3% of users, it's 3% of traffic. This could be caused by 0.1% of power users leaving.

no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers

Reddit doesn't see users as customers.
They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.

That model started with literal radio. It's not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It's kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.

Don't forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.

No company wants to say they've lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.

They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don't realize the product has turned to shit.

I think this an overly simplistic way to look at the dynamic. Users are the primary customer, and they don't provide any direct revenue to the company. Their value is in attracting the secondary customers though, who directly pay the company to access the users. Bring a primary customer implies that the company still needs to treat you as a customer and at least not openly antagonize you. They can't take you for granted as a product. There is no secondary customer without you.

It's like bars that advertise free drinks for women on certain nights. The women aren't directly paying the bar, but the men who come to the bar because of them makes it a net profit. I'm sure there's other examples of this primary/secondary customer dynamic. Anything cheap for kids that sells expensive stuff to parents for instance.

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How many people are less engaged in the internet at the beginning of summer because they’re on vacation or partying? I would think drops like this as the weather improves are pretty normal.

Alternatively, people with more time sign up and shitpost. I recall every summer break Redditors would complain. 🫣

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spaz: were not profitable, heres ways were gonna become more profitable.

redditors: ugh leaves

spaz: your small protest from the landed gentry cant hurt me.

redditors: ok, bye.

spaz: jgvbefgbaegbeQANGBLEw

Think of how many ‘users’ are bots that likely won’t continue to work since no one would pay the monthly sub to bot Reddit like in the past.

In history terms, 3% is everything. I remember seeing a documentary where a guy claimed that every coup in history, in which 3% of the population were ardently dedicated to the cause, has been successful.

Yeah, I was using Lemmy and Reddit in parallel throughout June (aside from the blackout days, where I stayed off of Reddit out of solidarity,) and only really drastically reduced my Reddit usage this month.

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I am wondering how user count is calculated.

I guarantee you that a huge percentage of Redditors have multiple accounts. Many of which might be inactive. Are all accounts ever created on Reddit still considered part of their current total or are only accounts active in the 6 or 12 months count? If people are legitimately leaving Reddit, I think their losses are going to steamroll because they won't just lose one user, but instead they will lose that one user and their 2 or 3 alternate accounts as well.

Next month or three are going to look like a bloodybath for Reddit.

Can't wait!

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I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.

Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn't that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.

I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I've already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten ... weird.

Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there's no voice of reason to hold them back.

And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) ... it's a very strange place now.

The meltdowns are something else.

On one smaller sub that participated in the blackout people were seriously accusing mods of rigging the votes to stay closed for longer. Of course nothing actually indicated that, and neither did they present any evidence, they just couldn't stand not getting their content.

Same! I went to check it out earlier and the frontpage had a couple of subreddits I recognized but am not interested in, and the rest were all subreddits I had never heard of before. I also thought the scores seemed weirdly low, but not 100% sure about that since I dont usually pay super close attention. At least the weird vibe was pretty helpful in getting me to hop off, versus getting sucked in to browsing around more.

There was an r/Apple thread were people were going off about simplicity and just how hard it is to get into and use Lemmy… I am so glad I left lol

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Reddit is pretty much at the point where you can open any thread on the front page and the comments will be indistinguishable from a Facebook comment section.

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9gag... That's a word I haven't seen in a long time.

Reddit will stay, heck Digg if still around. It won't be the same though.

Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.

Back in the day, I discovered Reddit because people in the comments on 9gag would say a certain post was stolen from reddit.

I was a sucker for rage comics, so r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu (aka f7u12) was my gateway drug.

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On the other hand, most upvoted posts and comments on redit are far away from best. I expect most of those people will not even notice, they just scroll over reposts and bot.

Even the porn subs are starting to be overrun by onlyfans spammers

I thought they always were.

I mean, hey, free titties but always there.

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If only people would actually stop using Reddit instead of doing these useless “protests” like they do in /r/videos. They're still using the site, that's what Reddit wants...

I've been waiting for my third party app to break. Boost finally stopped working an hour ago so I signed up here.

Signed up three days ago but was still using Boost until it stopped working just now. Am now figuring out how Lemmy works.

Just FYI, the developer of Boost is making a version for Lemmy. I'll definitely be downloading it once it's available.

The Lemmy boost version is already in development and you can sign up for it already on the app store!

Boost is still working for me, but I haven't logged in/engaged since the blackout. If it does go any day now, I'm okay with that.

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The protests aren't all useless, necessarily.

Subs that go NSFW are depriving Reddit of advertising revenue, and sites that change their purpose are likely to drive away some users who don't want to shitpost, who might then go looking for alternatives.

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I see a lot of people saying, "I can't believe it was only a 3% drop," and I'd like to offer some context as to why there's not enough data here to really tell a story, yet. It could go a few different ways.

The Reddit protests in June were a big deal, not just on Reddit or Lemmy, but to the media at-large. Traffic surely saw a huge influx of people wanting to look at the dumpster fire. I know that I myself used Reddit a lot leading up to the blackouts, since it was, in a sense, the last hurrah of Reddit as we knew it. The Spez AMA would have driven traffic. The NSFW sub protests would have driven traffic. All those news articles linked to Reddit directly, and they would have also driven traffic.

Even with all that, there's still a decrease in traffic. As others have said, July will be a better metric for the actual damage done, since the media has largely moved on and aren't driving as many visits, and 3PAs are toast.

These numbers would have been more representative if we could have had more than a quarter to look at. What was the QoQ trajectory before this? For all we know, this could have indicated business as usual, or it could have indicated something much bigger, depending on what the traffic metrics over the past 12-24 months could show us.

I also would have liked to see the history for unique sessions and unique visitors. If there was a huge influx of unique visitors compared to the past few months, but traffic was still decreased overall, then that would indicate it came from news clicks or bots.

Basically what I'm saying is that the data doesn't paint any kind of real picture right at this moment. That doesn't mean there was no impact though. Time will tell.

Thank you for understanding basic statistics and data analysis (some people here do not). It's all about the trends shown by the data, rather than the raw numbers.

There’s also the rapid influx of bots, since admins were using GPT bots to astroturf on their behalf.

More importantly, traffic is a trailing indicator. The protests and anger were from content creators and moderators. As they leave, the quality on Reddit will decrease significantly but that will take months/years. And the traffic will decrease but will follow the drop in quality content and moderation. Based upon the increased quality of posts on lemmy just in the last 3 weeks, many of the content creators have moved to the fediverse.

This is for June. Third party apps were still working, and personally I didn’t change my Reddit browsing habit much during June. Now that third party apps are officially dead, I’ve been on Reddit a lot less, and been spending more time on Lemmy. Curious to see what the numbers look like for July.

A large number of people joined Lemmy before July. The user based for Lemmy jumped by 1600% if I remember right before July 1st

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Similar Web has no idea of traffic over third party apps to start with. So it wouldn’t even notice a difference at July 1st.

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Looking at the pages for lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, kbin.social, as well as lemm.ee paints an interesting, if expected, picture.

For one thing, lemmy.ml is categorized as "Games > Games - Other (In United States)" which made me scratch my head to the point of hurting my scalp. The rest are uncategorized (which is better than being miscategorized, imo).

Now, for the stats:

Instance Total Visits for June 2023 % Change from May 2023 Bounce Rate Pages per Visit Average Visit Duration #1 Incoming Traffic Source (from social media)
reddit.com¹ 1.7B -3.36% 37.98% 6.21 8:24 Youtube (52.48%)
lemmy.world 3.5M n/a² 38.12% 6.62 8:44 Reddit (97.29%)
kbin.social 2.9M +5000% 26.24% 11.2 9:18 Reddit (93.92%)
lemmy.ml 1.5M +1716% 51.79% 5.55 3:54 Reddit (98.86%)
feddit.de 791.7K +5000% 55.88% 2.76 3:57 Reddit (98.31%)
beehaw.org 790.1K +5000% 35.48% 4.50 5:44 Reddit (96.24%)
lemmy.ca 186.4K +1615% 69.14% 2.45 1:05 Reddit (100%)
lemm.ee 167.5K +5000% 29.58% 6.73 5:18 Reddit (86.81%)
  • ¹ -- reddit.com is included as a point of comparison
  • ² -- lemmy.world didn't exist yet in May 2023

We can see that the larger instances are already performing well in comparison to reddit when it comes to "interaction" statistics. It's a surprise, however that kbin.social trounces everyone else it was compared to--even comparing favorably with lemmy.world in visit numbers. In comparison, lemmy.ml performed quite badly especially in bounce rate and average visit duration. Someone who's better equipped than me in analyzing these figures can perhaps do a better anaylsis, but from what I can see, we're not doing that bad here.

I've also added lemm.ee into the mix just for good measure (and perhaps as a proxy for smaller-ish instances), and it's doing quite good as well.


EDITS:

  • Added lemmy.ca into the table as well.
  • Added feddit.de into the table.

Something to keep in mind to contextualize the interaction statistics: the density of contributors to lurkers in these numbers will be drastically higher here due to the greater barrier to entry as well as the average user type of the migration. It should be expected that the average user in a niche/early-adopter community will be more active.

Not me! I intend to be just as much a lurker as I was on Reddit!

Thanks! What do you make of the unusually high bounce rate (and low average visit duration) for lemmy.ml though? That has been a head-scratcher for me. Did it not gain people from the migration as well‌ (which makes for better interaction)?

Could it also be due to load/server issues? When I have trouble with page loads on .world I have a tendency to bounce and have a low average visit time.

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Could it be due to the fact they restricted registration? Not sure if it happened in June or July though.

What do you make of the unusually high bounce rate (and low average visit duration) for lemmy.ml though? That has been a head-scratcher for me.

It shouldn't be a head scratcher. lemmy.ml was running like ass for much of it, with some periods of being completely down. Poor performance will drive up your bounce rate massively.

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Okay, but 52% of traffic on reddit is coming from Youtube??? Those channels that just compile reddit posts must really be helping Reddit. Lets make some Lemmy reading channels

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Lemmy.ca is +1615%

Added lemmy.ca into the table as well, because, damn, what a ride!‌ I suppose given from the explanation I was given regarding lemmy.ml's figures, it wasn't able to cope well with the flood of incoming users, I suppose?

I think non English speaking instances like feddit.de are also not to be underestimated.

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We've actually handled it very well as while it's a major instance we are on the smaller side we also moved to a dedicated server at a good point right before it reached the limits of the VPS it was on.

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So from what I can tell the visits to the main lemmy instances are only ~.5% compared to total visits to reddit (1.7 billion vs 9 million). Smaller instances might bump that up to .7% or so. Reddit's 3% drop in visits might be mostly due to people using the site less, while transfers to lemmy account for only a fraction of that. Still cool, though, hopefully we can keep the momentum going over the next couple months.

I‌ really wish someone can compile the figures for all Lemmy instances (and Kbin) so that we can make such a comparison. But yeah, other alternatives also popped up such as Tildes, Squabble, Raddle. I suppose that can also make up for part of the missing 3%. Of course, there's also a sizeable number that have simply stopped using Reddit (be it in protest or other reasons--such as seasonal variability, as in people are actually touching grass!).

I actually forgot to include Tildes, Squabble and Raddle into the table, but then again, I was only trying to compare what we gained here against what Reddit has lost. I hope that this momentum (loss for Reddit, gain for the Threadiverse) keeps going. But more importantly, that we keep the engagement here at a high level in both quantity and quality.

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I was a heavy user before, for sure. I used to scroll Reddit for hours a day. I uninstalled my app when the blackouts started. If I do a google search where the answer is on reddit, i'll still look at that answer. But for the most part, I am gone. Seems like a lot of people are all bark no bite though.

I reddit a LOT at work so I was probably spending roughly 3-4 hours a day with reddit at least in the background and I haven't actually intentionally visited the site for two weeks.

Honestly, my mental health is improving. Reddit is a shitty outrage machine that's astroturfed by corporations and fascists.

Did the same thing and deleted my account. My muscle memory can't find the app and my battery last a full day.

I've just put Connect for Lemmy in the same place where the Boost for Reddit icon was on my home screen and the problem is solved.

I open all of my apps by usings iOS search feature, i'll occasionally still type "apollo" and be like, "oh yeah, i dont have this anymore". It isn't as often now though, compared to the first few weeks.

If I do a google search where the answer is on reddit

This is what I'm missing the most, because I've learned to automatically add "reddit" to most of my searches, since I usually could find a better discussion there.

But now it's useless - if you need a product recommendation, it's filled with bots obviously schilling for whoever paid, fake reviews, and it's generally useless. And technical questions mostly lead to subreddits that were closed, and I have no idea what state are they in now - but I still don't want to give them traffic.

But what to do now? The internet is basically unusable by now. Everyone and now even AIs are writing blog posts or videos about things they barely understand, you have literaly thousands of AI generated pages about programming questions, some of them are outright wrong, and if you need something more complex than a single command - for example how to write a good video game AI architecture (especially this search term is FUCKED. I need to rewrite steerring, navigation and behaviors for a video game, but good luck searching for "video game AI" in the last few months...), most of the articles or tutorials are pretty shitty.

Every search term is filled with mediocre blog posts, usually copy-pasted between eachother. I literally don't know how to use the internet for deeply researching a topic anymore - everything is just barely scratching the surface in the most popularized way possible.

I guess I just have to start searching on scholar.google.com...

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They’ve been astroturfing with bots to pump those numbers

There are soooo many GPT comments and threads on Reddit, at least when I left on the first. I imagine it’s going to get worse and worse now.

I have been noticing a few here and there on Lemmy too. Unsure how to report it as I kept getting errors.

Reddit started with nothing but sock puppet accounts created by the devs, so I could definitely see them doing the same thing to show "activity".

Think about all those running power delete suite or similar.

Havent been there since the day of the blackout, not missing anything.

The reddit we fell in love with is gone. Even if the website is still there.

The more I've heard from friends still using it the less desire I have to go back. At first I was gonna boycott until the end of the month but it sounds like it's not even that good now that a lot of active posters left. Haven't felt much urge to go back, although I do need to find new communities for some of the more niche subs I was on. My houseplant and travel hacks discussion has been very lacking since I left Reddit...

This gets made back by September.

95% of people who use reddit use the official app or website, and don't notice a single thing except the occasional stray John Oliver meme.

Not enough hobby communities left.

I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don't care so much anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I'm looking forward to what's ahead of us.

I think it's because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit's best days are behind it. Maybe it's the effect of ad money and monetization, or it's the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it's both.

Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it's all already long gone.

When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go "heh".

So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit's users make it here, I'm excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.

Well said. We're onto something good here. The discussions are great, & I think part of the reason is because comments aren't getting upvoted like crazy or downvoted into oblivion, nobody is karma whoring with stupid puns or references. Anyone here is just hanging out and shooting the breeze, it's goddamn refreshing. It won't keep that underground feel forever, but I'm glad to be here right now.

The thing that really bothers me is that some of the communities I was active in through mobile are pretty much impossible to find outside of reddit.

They're way small on it, too, so who knows if they'll even migrate or just fade away.

This here is really my only concern. I followed a good number of subs that existed for actual discussion, not just meme dumps, and unless they're migrated to Lemmy, I will be missing them.

Sure, I can access Reddit just for those topics, but so far I'm staying away from that site completely in my own self-protest.
( I know, I know, I'm a literal molecule in a drop in a bucket, but damnit, I'm doing my part! :) )

Be the change you want to see in the world. If those communities haven't come over, start them. Seed them.

I think that's going to be my plan, if I can talk to some of the current mods and ask them to do so here as well. I'll create the new communities, but have no interest or time for actually moderating them.

I've tried browsing with the app but the content I'm being fed seems to have different priorities to rif. The niche stuff that I really want to read appears to be being buried.

It's made it so much easier to just not give them any content myself as I decided to stop posting there.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where lemmy goes as it's attracting the kind of people I enjoy associating with. Reddit is headed in the opposite direction IMO.

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That is how I feel as well. I haven't completely given up on reddit just yet, but my usage is going down, and I open reddit more by accident than anything. Lemmy is my new default and I'm not complaining.

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I think you are being very pessimistic about this. Reddit's collapse will not be a linear process. If it happens mind you.

But if it happens:

  • First the most active 3% leaves. But the 3% creates a huge hole in the overall activity of the site. So another 3% leaves. And the site will at an ever increasing speed reach the point of no return. Reddits main user base is the drooling masses who want to read gossip instead of working.

But if there is no free entertainment, the masses just move on. Basically all a platform is, is it's core audience.

I've starting going to Reddit less and less, but if I do, my frontpage has gone to shit. I can't even recognize it, the few instances I visited regularly are read-only and since I've unsubscribed the most popular default ones, there's almost nothing left for me.

Which is good, since thanks to that I'm slowly learning to just automatically starting Lemmy instead of Reddit as my go-to social network.

DoorDash everywhere. That’s when I left.

Why the fuck is that sub so active!? Who gives that much of a shit about doordash?? I've never seen a Justeat/Deliveroo app. It's so strange.

My frontpage was mildly frustrating before ads. I won't browse reddit with ads and their terrible app

Most people are lurkers though, I'd wager a greater proportion of active posters left.

Most lurkers view the Twitter/TikTok reposts Reddit is full of, which have not slowed down, or the ""advice"" subreddits, which have not slowed down either.

The content that people like us like, some of it has moved away, but the people who are willing to chase that content are a very small minority.

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Honestly, that's fine. Good for Reddit.

It's just not a place for me anymore.

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If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram. Holy shit is it pay-to-play a cesspool. And I’m being targeted for ads for all kinds of ponzi schemes and crypto and FOREX scams. Probably from watching Coffeezilla videos.

We’ll see how Lemmy picks up. I’m really liking it, thus far. Right now we’re looking at Reddit like a former, toxic partner that we want to spite. Lately I was just going on the World News, Ukraine war mega thread.

Just like Etsy. Its a horrible place to try and build a business and be creative and make money, and is being overrun by dropshipped tat, but its where everyone goes to get nice things, so its where people have to sell

I’m a hobbyist and I went there to get something nice and save myself some time making it. I expected high quality reasonable cost and I found average/low quality high cost. Disappointed.

I'm in the same boat. Been trying a few different Instagram alternatives for a few years but the user bases are all too small. Pixelfed and Vero seem decent but too much of a ghost town to feel it's worth continuing to post.

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That seems small given the number of Redditors here

The number of users here is pretty minuscule compared to the Reddit userbase

I know more people who are just fine with using the official app than I know people who hate it. It’s kinda sad.

Seems like the backlash was loud but ultimately nowhere strong enough.

Depends on what the goal was. If the goal was to have so many people leave reddit that it dies, then yeah. Nowhere near strong enough for that (and I don't think that was ever going to happen).

If the goal was to get enough people motivated to make an alternative (like this one or kbin or whatever) viable, then I think it was extremely effective. Prior to June, these spaces didn't have enough content and discussion to be entertaining for me personally. But I deleted my reddit account on June 30th, and I haven't once regretted that or gone back to the site because Lemmy has been enough

Yeah that’s very true! My old account has been on lemmy.ml for two years and I never used it. Now it’s actually quite nice here with the increase in activity.

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Reddit also kept putting anti-protest fixed banners on the official app, so anyone using it, was likely convinced the protest was nothing.

It was strong enough that Lemmy/kbin now has a large enough userbase to be an active community and to work out the bugs in the software. We've got a strong base to grow from now.

People will keep looking for alternatives to Reddit as its own enshittification continues (either by things like eliminating old.reddit or just the degradation of the community) and people who've never used a link aggregator/discussion site will continue to sign up. It's also not just Reddit. With a bit of modification, a version of Lemmy could replace question-and-answer sites like StackOverflow. An embedded version of Lemmy could be used in place of Disqus. Sites that currently maintain their own discussion thread systems could use a Lemmy instance instead.

Any place with threaded discussions now has the option for a federated alternative.

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That's true, but also bear in mind most of reddit's active monthly users are barely interacting with the site (e.g., through clicking in off a search result, or following a link).

The average user engagement per day is in the single digit minutes, and the average post / comment count per day is <1... I know I used reddit a lot more than that.

So as the numbers drop further in July, consider that the share of highly engaged, highly active, content creating users has likely dropped by far more.

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To lemmy I'd guess the numbers seem a lot bigger. But by reddits standards yea its a small percentage.

refuse to use the default reddit app so here I am. I miss rif but lemmy is filling the void at least.

And lots of those users probably aren’t real.

But there’s a distribution curve. 10-15% of a user base is super super valuable because they create all the content. If they lost 3-5% of that segment, that would be a real problem.

Yeah, the vast majority of users don't contribute at all. Not post, not comment, not even upvote. They come only to consume.

Then you get the segment of people who contribute a bit, but not so much, and then you have the golden 1% of powerusers that are active.

That's why, yes, 3 party app users are just a small chunk off the greater Reddit pie - they are more likely to belong to the segment of Reddit users that actually create content for the side. Posting, commenting, up and downvoting, actively engaging.

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Quality is more important than quantity. The people who left Reddit are more likely to be engaged and create content. Most people on Reddit just consume content. If nobody is there to create any, those will leave too.

Completely agree with you there. I’m loving the fragmentation that Reddit caused because it seems I’m with a fragment of the user base that engages and shares incredible insights and knowledge.

Remember that many people didn't get on Lemmy/Kbin until July 1st. The July stats will be much more indicative of how many people left or cut down their use.

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One point to keep in mind is that drama also brings engagement IN, not just out. When the drama subsides, the temporary boost in activity from new users or lurkers will go down too.

That being said, the percent decrease was always gonna be in the single digits. The average redditor was never gonna stick with a prolonged protest of a service that remains free to use.

I still visit reddit maybe once a day for 10 minutes for niche subs or communities that aren't built up here. If those communities develop here, I will fully cut out reddit.

Edit: also when noting that I use Lemmy amount 90% of the time now, but my overall usage of Lemmy/reddit has gone down. Probably for the better, because I started reading again.

Are you me? I've been off Reddit like a week now and I've already read two books with the extra time I don't spend doom scrolling.

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I think it will go down a lot faster now that they've blocked API calls to NSFW subs.

Actually... that's something I have doubts about. It isn't all NSFW subs, just the porn ones... and how many people actually comment on porn subs, instead of just scrolling and... well, "consuming" it?

My guess is users of porn subs will use the official app and not care about it.

The point of those porn subs (generally) is to drive engagement to paid sites. If the content creators find that there is less traffic from Reddit, they're going to stop posting there, regardless of the app.

I'm genuinely surprised the Lemmy exodus has been as large as 3%. Reddit will be just fine. This isn't like Digg > Reddit.

I mean, this is actually a lot like Digg > Reddit, the same class of user has migrated. It's just that Reddit has long outgrown that techy/nerdy demographic. I doubt they'll miss us much.

Nor do I want that other 97% to follow us to Lemmy, especially.

For me personally it still needs to be far bigger though. On Reddit literally every bite of news was posted and discussed for many of the hobbies I have, large or niche. Yet on Lemmy some of my interests are barely represented nevermind being a reliable source of information and news.

Oh I agree with that! I also want to see fediverse grow.

What I meant was: I don't want Reddit.

Yeah, Reddit isn't going anywhere; but we are seemingly getting a viable alternative. Before, there wasn't really a viable alternative, which is why Reddit was comfortable making the moves it has, I think.

I can say what's helped me tremendously is finding a niche instance that aligns with your interests instead of the huge generic ones

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To be fair, this just says that Reddit traffic is down. It doesn’t say where that traffic went. I assume that most people who reduced their Reddit usage didn’t replace it with Lemmy usage. Sucks for those people!

I share your sentiment up until the last bit which feels like gate keeping. There are enough healthy discussions coming from a lot of people outside of that demographic to make me want them to follow us here. Plus it's bad for reddit if they do. I worry about the negative effects, where quick and easy comments that are easier to digest get upvoted over well researched and thoughtful comments. But I'm hopeful that we can learn from the past and develop tools to better incentivize people to write thoughtful comments. I think the fediverse has the potential to help us avoid dumbification of content, but it also brings greater risk of creating echo chambers.

I'm not trying to be gatekeeper at all. But we are absolutely not ready for an overnight deluge of 100 Million users. Nor does Lemmy have the technology in place to combat shills, influencers, bots, scammers and all the other crap that would be here next week if all of Reddit migrated.

I really want the Fediverse to grow, but I want that process to be organic. I want the servers, apps, mod tools to grow with the users.

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Appears that this doesn't include July numbers. I think most of the people leaving Reddit, myself included, didn't do it until our 3rd party apps actually got killed on July 1st. Will be interesting to see these numbers at the end of the month.

I'd say I slowed down my usage, as I looked for alternatives. But yeah, once Apollo stopped working, I cut out Reddit cold turkey.

Same. Apollo or bust.

Now happy wefwef.app and Tildes user, though. So not all is bad (=

I'm slowly weening myself off, but the main problem is that Reddit has a massive backlog information that's still useful to reference. Almost any question you search online comes back with a reddit thread.

Lemmy and the fediverse has a ton of potential, but we're really lacking in terms of content parity. Hell, even just communities vs subreddits.

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That may sound like not a lot, but Facebook as been hemorraging users for a few years now, if they're losing users at about the same rate as Facebook, that's a big oof.

I think the big deal will be if it's sustained. Losing a bunch of users for a month isn't a big deal if they come back, or at least stop leaving. If Reddit loses 3% of its users every month for a year then things will be pretty dire for them.

Can't say I've got much sympathy for Reddit, though.

Agreed on all counts, but y'know doesn't look good before an IPO, I hope it gets worse.

I would expect July to be higher since 3rd party apps were still functioning in June. That was the first wave, the second wave would have been after the apps actually shut down and will continue for a while as people see lower quality and people talking about other sites.

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Would be interesting to see engagement metrics as well.

Yeah, even just 3% could be very meaningful because it could be a lot of content creators who hopped ship.

And judging by how much content we have here on Lemmy - yeah, I’m thinking Reddit lost a bunch of valuable users and will only get worse with time.

That's the key point. More than 90% of their users never post, comment or even vote.

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Lol the only reason I clicked into this is because the front page truncated "Discord" to "Disco" and I wanted to learn more about this next new social networking site...!

Not enough to matter. Not even out of step with any other social media site lol. We’re doomed

Reddit doesn't need to be destroyed in order for Lemmy to succeed. There is plenty of room on the internet for multiple communities.

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The data is from June. I suspect July will show a more meaningful decline. I still used it in June apart from the blackout. After July 1st I login for maybe a few minutes via the desktop site to check the frontpage for missing news. That's about it.

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I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don't care so much about what happens to Reddit anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I'm looking forward to what's ahead of us.

I think it's because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit's best days are behind it. Maybe it's the effect of ad money and monetization, or it's the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it's both.

Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it's all already long gone.

When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go "heh".

So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit's users make it here, I'm excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.

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Zero surprise. Most people are living life on autopilot. They will continue to ignore major issues—like politics, climate change, and corporations mistreating people—to our collective long-term detriment. Anecdotally, I have friends who don’t give two fucks about such important things. Instead, they focus almost purely on MMA, reality TV, and stand-up comedy.

I mean, we all have hobbies but damn, pay attention and take a stand on serious issues that affect us all.

That's why I went vegan 4 odd years back. No point posturing about climate change, then not doing the easiest thing to personally combat it.

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I would really like to be a fly on the wall at their meetings to know if that is in line with their expectations or not.

Note that this only goes up to June. The July numbers are the more interesting ones IMO. Stats I've seen show that post/comment volume is about the same, but they could have bot accounts making up the difference.

I wonder if spez will be dumb enough to try to hide their bot use from investors and get sued after the deal when things get revealed. Or maybe he'll be stuck covering that up for the rest of his life.

While I wouldn't put bots past the reddit staff (they do so little about astro-turfing that it's hard to imagine they're opposed to it), they're not the only ones with something to lose.

Reactionaries and extremists have worked very hard to build "mask on" communities that aren't overtly far-right but are nevertheless an important stepping stone on the way there.

I'm sure they don't want to start over again on a new platform that is much more difficult to manipulate.

Yeah that's a good point. Some of the scammer bots were so easy to spot and even easier to automate that spotting while they were stealing comments to build karma for credibility/posting in subs that required a minimum karma that I wondered why they even still existed. The answer is some variation of Reddit didn't care to stop them, the only question was if it was based on resources, apathy, or corruption.

Those last two are less likely here. With it being open source, there's a lot of ambition to go around, so even when the main devs get tired of it, others can come and fill in the parts that are important to them. Corruption can't be too blatant or the corrupted ones will be cut out of the equation, which means even the scammers and propagandists will need to temper themselves even if they find something that works well for a while because anything too blatant will get noticed and dealt with.

Yeah I stuck around to enjoy the show through June. At 9pm EDT on 30JUN, Apollo stopped loading posts and that was the last time I saw Reddit.

Could be I’m an unusual case, but I imagine if Reddit was actually damaged in this fiasco the JUL numbers will tell the tale.

Remember about the Pareto principle: roughly 20% of users is probably responsible for the 80% of the content. This 3% is quite a lot in this context, especially considering the active people are probably much less complacent in this regard.

The 90-9-1 principle may also be relevant here: 90% are lurkers, 9% are contributors, and 1% are creators.

And how much % are bots, tho? I know that prior to and during the 3rd party API announcement I got so many requests from OF promoter bots that I suspect that Reddit will be the epitome of the Dead Internet theory

It will be much more interesting to see a year from now, after most of the actual content posters and decent mods have left. 🍿

I don't think that many content posters will leave. Sure, in tech oriented communities they will, as they are the ones most receptive to fediverse or other alternatives.

But painters, photographers, historians, chefs... etc are a large part of what make reddit great. And plenty of those don't really give a fuck about the platform. They will just use the official app and move on.

Yes! That's what happened with Facebook too. Techy people left the platform long ago but it's still really useful for other types of users, the ones who don't really want to invest time into learning how to use a different platform.

I deleted my account 7 years ago, but my SO is still using hers and it brings her real value. She is active in the local communities, uses the marketplace, etc.

Ironically, I've been trying to get her to use Reddit more over the past few years...

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No they'll find alternatives too if they don't like what's going on. There's really no need for reddit anymore

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I didn't think I would cut it completely, but once Sync died I tried to use the browser and it just forces that app on you. The app is unusable and very unenjoyable. Cold Turkey it is.

I imagined the numbers would be a touch higher but 3% feels shruggable.

I think the real question that these numbers don't tell you though is the quality of the content. When I have popped on just out in f curiosity and not logged in, the new 'front page of the internet' appears to be whitepeople twitter and memes. Doesn't look inviting enough for me to log in at all.

In June 3rd party apps still worked, the July numbers are what's really going to show the damage done.

Yeah I stopped going on Reddit when RIF stopped working.

Julys numbers will be down more I assume.

Need to be take SimWeb data with a bit of a grain of salt. Having used in previous businesses their results are indicative. They smooth big m2m changes from memory.

To add, from memory this won't include app traffic and will only be Web and msites.

I just realized that today is the first day in YEARS that I didn’t access Reddit. Sad, but it is what it is, and entirely their fault.

It was my primary social media site for over 10 years, and only one in probably the past five after ditching Facebook.

All I ever used to access it was baconreader. When the first talk of killing off the API started with the rate hike, I had a sinking feeling this was the end.

Rode it out till the last day, and reflexively kept opening baconreader just to realise again it was offline.

Decided to give Lemmy a try, and while it took a couple days to get it sorted, I have to say, for my daily browsing fix, it's more than enough.

Yes, reddit is a giant database, and when google searches take me there I'll view the info, but for everyday use, lurking, posting, and commenting, never again.

Not sure of its bias, user saturation, bot, shills, demographic, or what, but while smaller, the quality and content of the comments here just seems better. It reminds me of the early days on fark or even back on IRC.

It really does piss me off that greed over an IPO ruined something that had been a part of my life for so long.

I am enough of a grumpy old bastard that unless they fix the API and baconreader starts up again, I'm done. The internet is a big weird place, and I'm happy to go see other parts of it.

I just had my first experience today when I googled a question that took me to Reddit for the answer....which was deleted.

That happened to me too the other day, I stared at it for a bit and thought it must have been part of the mass deletion ppl did. It is one thing to read about it, it is an other to see it for yourself. But I fond my answer on a wiki page so it didn't matter much. It was amusing tho.

If this happens again, and youre really insistant on reading that answer, people are saying the wayback machine should have that info for you. It's sorta a win-win because you still get your answer and reddit doesnt get the revenue from your usage.

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I agree with pretty much every single word you wrote and have gone through the same thought process, with the only exception being that I used RiF instead of Baconreader.

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I never realized how significant killing third-party apps would be for me personally, but since Apollo stopped working my desire to use Reddit on my phone has dropped to zero. I've completely replaced it with Discord and "traditional" social media in my downtime.

If they kill old.reddit on desktop too, that will be the final nail in the coffin for me.

It took Apollo’s death for me to realize that I used Reddit primarily because of Apollo itself. Without it, I realized I just didn’t like Reddit all that much.

I haven't actively browsed Reddit since the blackout. Almost a month, it's flown by and I'm still fine

(Actively meaning I've accidentally clicked a link or two that pointed to it, but I never opened the app myself)

I'm the same.

Admittedly the time away from Reddit has been a boon for me as I've been consistently better at using spare time here and there time to actual hobbies and responsibilities.

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Now that Reddit made the decision to move it's NSFW content behind it's app, this decline will 3x in speed.

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Just found out about Lemmy for the first time, joined, and am loving the layout/website/app so far. Probably going to switch over to just this over time.

How long were you on Reddit? The lemmy desktop site is very similar to the old Reddit layout!

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I'd be more interested in next month's stats

All the media standing on the protests actually probably drive traffic to Reddit

July is what will matter. Most of either dropped or changed browsing habbits after July 1st

I really hope it will be at least another 7% If being this shity to their users ends up with loss barely above the rounding error, it does not bode well for the future.

Is this common for this time of year? I know I’m online less in the summer. Reddit is going/has gone to hell, but it seems like there are other factors here

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We did it, Red-- I mean, Fediverse!

Would be hilarious if they decide to federate after this shitshow as "Reddiverse".

With the speed at which they've implemented other features, won't be for years.

Curiously, they added several mod related features to the official app in the last month, that had been requested for years.

Just goes to show that they could've done it all the time, just didn't want to.

Everyone who would care about Reddit in the fediverse left Reddit already

With RIF down I've been trying to use Lemmy but I had to actually delete the app because 10 years of muscle memory kept trying to open RIF. Still having issues with Lemmy at this point so unsure if I'm gonna stay. Not very many other places to go now, though.

If they could make RIF for Lemmy that would be bloody fantastic. Personally I gonna see if Lemmy takes off, would be nice if it did.

The 3rd party app developers might just do that. Boost for Reddit is making Boost for Lemmy now.

Bro same! I still try to click the blank spot where the app used to be lol

I just placed my lemmy app in the same place. So now I open lemmy multiple times a day without thinking.

Wishing boost for lemmy comes soon enough.

I did the same, deleted my Reddit apps off my phone and replaced them with Lemmy apps. There are several options to chose from now which helps.

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SimilarWeb needs to invest a little in their presentation skills. A bar graph with no difference in the bar heights is not very interesting. And are they aware you can use more places after the decimal point? "1.7B" above each bar doesn't help at all.

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This is likely to not even include the exodus from the 1st of July onwards also. That's when my partner and I moved over here. Will be interesting to look again at the start of August, check the true scale of their fuck-up.

A well deserved outcome. Companies need to realize that they are nothing without their customers/users. An undeserved arrogance can only lead to eventual downfall.

To be fair, 3% of traffic missing is not going to be their downfall. They managed to rid themselves of virtually all third party clients in one swoop and had to trade in only a fraction of their monthly engagement - they'll sell it as streamlining.

That's only for June though. I'm going to wait for the august report to see the drop include the massive exodus that came July 1st. I know I hopped over here then, and all of the posts for like 3 days were people who left in June, or about the exodus with comment sections full of newcomers.

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It might go either way but it’s a good start. A loss is still a loss and those lost users will find new homes, hopefully in the fediverse. Even if it doesn’t cause an outright bankruptcy, anything to help promote a freer internet is good in my book.

We'll see how it turns out if all the power users and OC content creators jumped ship, and the platform devolves into a bot-run recycle bin of old memes and content.

Plus if they don't get better moderator tools for people the quality of subs will diminish

I think that it's worth it to note that even though only 3% left, we're a big part of fleshing out a new and improving competing website. Lemmy may not have seemed appealing a few months ago, but holy shit, its taken off in the last month. It'll be really interesting to see how we grow over the next year as we consistently keep leaching people from reddit.

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July will be more interesting to see since the third party apps didn’t die until June 30th.

I'm only hopping on reddit momentarily if I'm looking for specific information. For my casual browsing, I've largely transitioned over to here, and I'm enjoying myself immensely.

I'm not surprised it's a huge drop, but there's a vindictive part of me that wants the bleeding to continue.

Meh it’ll just be overrun with non original content by people reposting shit from Lemmy

July is the real indicator with API being turned off on June 30th. I don't think the protests themselves had a big enough drop off, but I have to assume a lot of folks have either left or use only desktop currently once that happened.

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If it remains a one-off, it won't make much of a difference. If it becomes a trend, spez is toast.

Does this account for traffic generated through official/unofficial apps?

Looks like no, it's desktop only:

reddit.com's traffic has decreased by 3.36% compared to last month (Desktop).

Interesting to note that if you scroll down further you'll see that the #1 content referral to reddit is adult content at 20.6%, with second place being video games at 16.3%. A solid one fifth of the other sites pointing at reddit do so for porn, basically.

Feels like if it's desktop only, these numbers really aren't worth much. Isn't a very large portion of reddit's traffic on mobile? I probably spent less than 10% of my reddit time on desktop.

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Most of that traffic is probably lurkers and content consumers. Reddit will continue chugging along for a bit, but the loss of power users and mods is about guaranteed to wither the platform over time.

There are enough reposts to keep them busy for a while I think. I swear the same post would get reposted a few weeks after the original and get just as many or more upvotes than the first time. And the top comments were usually the same or similar.

That’s the bots at work though. Create a circle-jerk of upvotes on certain topics with nothing inventive or new in between. I have yet to see a bot(like response) here. Most comments are well thought out. And the posts are pretty relevant and no ads!!!

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This should continue as search results begin dropping Reddit search results as searchers land on a deleted topic, back out and go elsewhere. The engines track all that. Reddit will be seeing a big drop in trust metrics for a while.

97% of the traffic but a shit load more data to monetize on each user is a win for reddit.

... except if it's the beginning of the trend, and specially if that 3% is from the people that actually contribute meaningful content to reddit. You could be seeing +15% less traffic by end of the year, then it's a problem and a loss

It's an exciting development! I have been looking forward to having such an overview available. It will be interesting to follow the progress—I see great potential in Lemmy, but it requires a larger user base to make a significant impact (in my opinion).

So, let's hope that the traffic jumps over here instead - and that they bring along the good posts 🤞🏻

That's a disappointingly low number. I was honestly fully expecting closer to 30% drop.

I think I would be surprised if it is in the double digits. With that said, I wouldn't expect it to have been in full force in June. Many people kept using it until the apps ran out. But I do think the people that really care is a relatively small group.

What I would love to be able to see is:

-The change in numbers for the official reddit app

-The change in traffic through July

-The change in content creation through July

I honestly expect the numbers to be 5-10% but I doubt we'll ever get reliable numbers for most of it.

True, and you're absolutely right. As much as we'd love it, Reddit would gain nothing for telling us how much damage we caused, and we're likely never to see the numbers to prove it. I was fairly optimistic with 30%, that's more a wish/dream rather than reality. I might be satisfied if we see 5-10%.

I have a habit of taking casual glances at other people's phones (don't @ me), and I can tell you I can count the times I've seen someone use an alternative Reddit app on one hand, where as the official Reddit app is semi prevalent.

It's really just us nerds that make the move to somewhere else, casual users would never have bothered.

I think it will be a long time until you can find casual lifestyle advice on Lemmy, if ever. Most people have a hard time grasping what the fediverse is, why it's supposed to be good and figuring out how to follow people on mastodon. We'll stay niche for a while

I think it'll take time but as things settle a bit I wouldn't be shocked to see a lot of uses spring up that draw in users without them really being aware they're even using the fediverse.

For example one of the main draws to Reddit was always the tech knowledge of the users but us nerds are all here now so it's only a matter of time before Twitter and Facebook have screenshots of Lemmy posts rather than Reddit posts, all the rabbit holes that used to lead to Reddit will start pointing here.

There are already interesting bots being written for communities here, I saw a chat GPT one and no doubt anyone making a fun toy is far more likely to design it to work here where it's not going to have API access destroyed and everything is more flexible - I know that next bot I write will be for lemmy rather then Reddit which I'd normally use. I might even get round to writing the community RPG game that was going to work on its own subreddit, I could have it as a custom instance instead and allow members of federated communities to play.

There's so many more possibilities and as they evolve they'll slowly draw people over and when they have their toe in I suspect meny will stay. I've got a hundred ideas for things to make and with ai coding helping I'll probably actually get round to finishing a dozen of them before the end of the year - I went to try new ways of visualising discussions, of working together and against each other to reach a common goal, I want to make games and mobile apps that work with communities in interesting ways and this is the perfect platform to do it on so I know I don't be the only one

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I have just visited reddit for the first time in quite a while , the picture imo is pretty grim for reddit. Dead subs , little actual life , and when you log out the front page is dire. I think that actual content is key here and that is where the crisis for reddit is shown clearly. Talk of the protest not working is just that,talk , in reality reddit has been deeply effected imo

So they also lost ranking (I assume to discord that moved up in to 4th place)

Does it include clicking onto the site through a google search for troubleshooting or something? Or is it registered users? Because I would count as using reddit in that case, even though it was through an Adblock and I didn’t click any further.

reddit counts it even if youre not logged in as a user, so yes google click-throughs unfortunately count.

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Seems like they just updated their mobile site, you no longer get the annoying popup telling you to download their mobile app!

Let’s keep that trend going

Some 3rd party apps still work, and I currently mainly use Sync for Reddit (patched through ReVanced) while transitioning to Lemmy. I begin to like Lemmy more, but I lack some communities that exist on Reddit. Hopefully, it's just a matter of time until Lemmy will have all of the Subreddits.

Huh. I'm surprised it's around the same as Facebook. Two additional facts I'd like to know about the other social networks in order to make a comparison:

  • App/mobile usage (this link only covers desktop)
  • Bounce rate +/- for month to compare with Reddit

The real data point will come in a few months/years. On every social media platform, a small percentage of users drive the majority of content. On Twitter, for example, 25% of the users create 75% of the tweets. So estimating the effect of Redditgate by traffic is a poor metric (at best a trailing metric). Lots of lurkers (which is the vast majority of users) will still drive traffic until the content becomes worse. And for the many users and moderators of Reddit which were creating and curating nearly all the content, I've got to believe a significant percentage are irretrievably angered by their FREE efforts being dismissed by u/spez and have left. Just losing the efforts of the bot subreddit over the next few months will flood Reddit with exponentially increasing shitposts.

I think many are coming to Lemmy just based upon my anecdotal observation that the quality of posts on Lemmy has increased dramatically in the last 3 weeks.

Compared to the other platforms it seems really insignificant, tbh.

Am I not reading the numbers right or Reddit lost the most traffic of them? I wouldn't exactly call it insignificant (although it's not that much either)

They are the highest percentage yes, not denying that, but many platforms that did not experience a big user protest also lost traffic. I don't think Reddit is significantly higher in that light. Feels like all this shows is how apathetic the typical user actually is.

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I'm glad to see there are viable alternatives. When the niche subs move, it's game over for reddit.

Good, let it die. Then stop talking about it entirely, mk?

I don't want it to die. I want it to be a place the degens, power mods and other radical screeching lunatics can hang out.

Fair enough! Condé Nast owns it so it won’t truly die, just dwindle until they realize it’s not worth paying for.