Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
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7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
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My wife uses reddit, and couldn't be bothered to use anything other than the official app. Sadly she's in the majority with this. I'd say somewhere between 5-20% of mobile only/heavy reddit users will end up over here, and that's heavily dependent on whether or not the subreddits that they like come over here too. I see far too much content for the moment just linking back to reddit
The question is: Are users like your wife submitting popular content, or are they mostly consumers? If nobody submits good content, there is nothing to consume.
The stats assume all users contribute the same amount to the community.
Like you've said, if a large number of the people who submit content are the ones using the third party apps then the loss of those users has a large larger impact.
The same thing applies to moderators who use third party apps (among other tools that may not be affected) because their mod tools are better than the official app.
This. Reddit and their stans keep trotting out this, what, 2% or so of "super users" as a "Who fucking cares about 2% let em cry" but -
Who tf do you think is providing the content and doing the moderation that keeps it falling apart? I learned in all this there's a big viewership who don't even have accounts, they're not suddenly going to sign up and start posting and interacting out the wazoo. People who just comment and chat after work aren't going to take up moderation duties (especially since all the stuff that made it manageable is bust.)
It can float without that 2% for a while, but it's going to become outdated quick. You'll lose that cultural edge of typing "Reddit" after internet searches, cause it stops working because there's no longer ALWAYS posts about every little thing. The people bickering and providing entertainment are gone, they were all on RIF or the other app, so people stop popcorn scrolling.
I wonder if it'll go Twitter and just start catering to the fascists cause it's the only market left.
A lot of Reddit mods rely on third party apps though, as the modding tools in the native app are garbage. I foresee another exodus of users as the modding quality declines and subs start turning into dumpster fires of spam
this is the key. it doesnt really matter how many regular users rely on 3rd party apps, when the percentage of mods that use them is considerably higher. (In fact I would guess if 5% of regular users use 3rd party apps, probably 5% of mods use official reddit app)
and without the free help that reddit have relied on for years, the place falls apart.