I see an awful lot of people here who have quote left reddit, and yet they still go back to Reddit every day to see what's going on, or to grab popular posts so they can repost it here and try to get imaginary points or something. All they're really doing is helping inflate metrics like this.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Alternatively, they give Reddit one users worth of ads to make Lemmy a better alternative. I think many will continue using Reddit but attempt to reduce the usage (especially once 3PA are blocked). That means once you run out of content on Lemmy, you switch to Reddit. So more content on Lemmy means less time on Reddit.
The simple truth is that there are communities on Reddit that I care more about than about the API changes. And for those I will continue using Reddit until an alternative exists. So it is a gradual change for me and everyone that helps moving the good content to Lemmy helps me indirectly.
I guess it comes down to whether you consider highly upvoted content good content, especially when it comes to memes etc.
This here. I still check Reddit regularly, but I’m mostly just checking in on a handful of communities, not nearly as much engagement as last month, so if daily active users is their metric then I guess I haven’t moved the needle, but if it’s about actual API usage, number of posts viewed, votes given, comments made, etc. it’s probably 5-10% of what it used to be.
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I'm not really surprised, I'd actually assume that sexy John Oliver and the other protests created a lot of additional traffic. People post like crazy and a lot of people want to see that, especially since it got some coverage on news sites. Add to that the big majority of people who do not care (remember that 80% of traffic was still reached) plus some who may have been sympathetic enough to join the two day protest but don't care enough to continue to stay away. It's really not surprising that we're back to normal numbers.
Thankfully this isn't the only impact people currently still make, so this isn't over. The real question now will be how else it might change Reddit.
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Sure, the party won't stop, but the fun people already left, they are here!
maybe i'll use the web version for some time, not gonna use their app for sure
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I look up my acct and see my deleted comments and posts being magically revived. Did screen caps of most of it and it is definitely a real thing. Is that a metric for traffic?
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My first reaction was one of questioning the statistics.
Then I realized that the way they were generating their stats wouldn’t have counted me for the most part.
Then I realized that I wasn’t really all that unique; most power users wouldn’t have shown up in those stats.
At that point, the stats made more sense.
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Did anybody seriously expect anything different?
There may be some impact, come July, when the third party apps stop working. However, I have to imagine that the vast majority of mobile users use the official app. Quality may take a hit, with the loss of some mods and mod tools, but Reddit will be just fine. Sadly, Reddit rates too highly on content, users, and resultant utility (for many communities) for most users to completely abandon it.
Reddit rates too highly on content
But who provides the content? Power users. Reddit follows the same curve as most social media where only like 1-5% of the users actually post the content, and the rest are consumers. When the content creators are gone, it's just a platform with no content.
The only people who will stick to submitting content are the poor content reposters or various spammers, which the mods have been doing free labor to filter out. Heck, even the bots using the API will die too, so all you'll have is the TOS-breaking bots posting content.
This will not end well when third party apps are gone. I didn't realize it myself, but most of my time is reading Reddit when I'm bored in bed, or on the train, on my phone. I've been a redditor for 17 years, and my time now has mostly shifted from my desktop to the "RIF" Android app, and without that, I'm simply not using Reddit, and have already uninstalled.
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As I expected.
I'm not sure it it's just Reddit that makes me sick, or Google. It's the way that society is getting dumber and more subservient.
I definitely get angry when I hear people are 'googling' everything they want to 'search' for. Similarly that people simply wish to protest Reddit - when they don't really care, they're just jumping on the RANT bandwagon.
With the advent of instant gratification, smartphones/internet access, I welcome the lack of need for a paper dictionary.
However, people go further - they love the way the big tech can aggregate their content and dish it up to them.
They don't care that they are being spoonfed solent green, and increasingly denied the ability to find actual answers to their questions.
If you do disturb them, like a borg they will become disoriented. They start to drown until they can feel the comforting caste of blue light on their faces as they dive back into their familiar environment.
Reddit's CEO is not stupid - he knows that most of it's users are sheep, and the escapees will be a minority. The mods, addicted to their power trips, will return and take whatever shit they have to... what else is their life good for?
Reddit is not 'crushing' the protests. The protests were mostly a flash in the pan - now most folks got bored, and just wanna go back to reading their joke of the day.
Moving Forward
A couple of problems. Firstly, even if I've been talking on Fediverse somewhere about a topic - if I search that topic, it will not take me to the Fediverse - I get taken to Reddit.
Unless the Fediverse content is getting included in search engine data, it'll never be driven from that direction.
I know personally that the reason I created my Reddit account is that I would find answers there, and then end up discussing them where I found them.
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This doesn't surprise me. Most people don't have the time or desire to keep up with tech news, and they just want to feed their addiction. It'll be interesting to see what happens 1~2 weeks after the new API rules are active, and people realize the app they use no longer works.
I never created a Reddit account, and only visited under duress, so I'm not really affected by this. So I'm just cooking up popcorn & watching the show.
Oh, man, I'm sure the traffic is up... It took me FOREVER to delete all my comments and posts across 18 accounts. That 5 second lockout on API calls is a total bitch!
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