Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests - by Adam Bumas

Last month marked the official end of the Reddit protests. Any subreddit that had changed its rules or gone dark — or forced its users to post exclusively about John Oliver — has now gone back to normal. On the surface, it seems like a complete victory for Reddit, but things aren’t so simple when a major element of that victory was forcibly removing moderators for dozens of communities. In fact, according to Reddit users, the protests have caused a major brain drain on the site. The question is: can you prove it? And the answer is: well, sort of, yes.

For the last six months, we've been tracking the top Reddit posts every month. When we first started, the subreddit with the most posts in the top 20 was r/OddlySatisfying, with three posts. As of last month, however, 10 of the top 20 posts all came from r/MadeMeSmile.

The fact that all of the top posts on Reddit are coming from the same subreddit, as far as we're concerned, means either people aren’t browsing as much or there just aren’t as many people on Reddit. But it was hard to tell which was which, since the actual number of upvotes on the most popular posts are pretty identical to where they were six months ago. But investigating that, I found that Reddit has always had certain caps on how many upvotes a post can get, which suggests that isn’t a good way to measure. Over on Subreddit Stats, however, we found a much better way of working this out.

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.

This chart from SubredditStats show the daily comments and posts for 5 major subreddits: r/news, r/facepalm, r/mademesmile, r/oddlysatisfying, r/mildlyinfuriating.

And that’s how we've now ended up with a Reddit full of r/MadeMeSmile. And, just in case you're curious about what that looks like — four of the top five Reddit posts were reposted TikToks.

Reddit was one of the last major spots online where you could expect to interact with people who aren’t making money off you. Which also why Reddit was able to completely replace its existing moderators since they were virtually all unpaid.

We’ve talked a lot about Cory Doctorow’s concept of “enshittification”, but he was only talking about individual platforms. Larger trends like AI and crypto (or even pivoting to video) have a cascading effect on the process. One big platform trying something is enough to legitimize it, and soon everywhere you can go has a noticeably worse user experience. If people stay off Reddit, then the site definitely didn’t “win” the protests, but neither did anyone else.

When Reddit announced the API pricing that kicked all this off, they justified it by talking about lucrative AI tools trained on Reddit data, saying, “we don’t need to give all that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free”. Ironically, that’s exactly what you do every time you go online, and it looks like a lot of people have decided to choose the same thing for themselves by staying off Reddit.

atlasraven31,

I’ll argue that people that left Reddit for better places did win. Lemmy itself is less susceptible to corporate BS shoved at end users.

ForestOrca,
ForestOrca avatar

I'm on Kbin, and feel that this shift is a majorly positive one for me both in short and hopefully in long term. I had two accounts, and one became a much more active than the other over the course of about 12 years. I dl'd my content, erased it, and left without looking back. I've used the more obscure acct to check on things a few times, but really don't have time for that. Onward! We've got a Fediverse to build!

ShellSurf,
ShellSurf avatar

Similar here, I actually comment occasionally. More than that, I've gone back to self hosting multiple things, I've shifted away from Google, all good changes I think. Prompted by reddit changing the api price, who would have thought they'd have such a positive influence on me.

SinningStromgald,

Lemmy just seems better overall. Only feature missing is a multireddit equivalent. Once that happens it’s all hookers and blow far as the eyes can see.

thingsiplay,
thingsiplay avatar

@SinningStromgald

Only feature missing is a multireddit equivalent.

What do you mean by that? We can create our own groups or communities (or also known as magazines). Isn't this "multireddit"? Otherwise, what do you mean by that term?

cutitdown,

They allow users to make their own shortcuts to a custom selection of subreddits and view them sort of as if they were a single subreddit.

https://guides.co/g/a-beginners-guide-to-reddit/9662

thingsiplay,
thingsiplay avatar

@cutitdown Oh that feature. Yes, I used it too and it was a really good and useful function.

Protoknuckles,

I miss the obsessive niche commenting, but I’m hoping it will come about after the user base expands.

SinningStromgald,

Like the person who never uses the letter “f”? Or the one whos stories always included their father beating them, usually with jumper cables? Or motherhorseeyes who was posting random bits of a book in random comments? That sort of niche commenting?

Nicenightforawalk,

I miss the days of reading stories about sons with broken arms and their mom having to help him out.

Kbin_space_program,

One thing I lamented recently was the loss of AskHistorians, AskArcheology and AskScience.

Particularly the last one, as I wondered, while putside having lunch, if Wasps dance like bees do, and if not, do they have a similar form of communication other than pheromones?

Because how do those little angry bastards scout out that I'm enjoying lunnch in a park, and then go back to get the gang together to annoy me into leaving.

Protoknuckles,

Nah, that was kind of background culture stuff. I posted about it in another thread, but the long and short of it was that I was looking for niche analysis of how a rules change would affect my faction in a game (Warhammer 40K). Unfortunately, I could not find a community here discussing it, the discord did not facilitate focused discussions, and I am not knowledgeable enough to start the conversation. So I had to go to Reddit to see what people were thinking.

ArtieShaw,
ArtieShaw avatar

I was thinking about the group who could look at a 2,000 year old coin from Syracuse and tell you whether or not it was an obvious fake, a probable fake, an ancient forgery, and the reasons why.

Or look at a photo from your basement and tell you - yeah, you're really going to need a plumber to come in and look at that.

Or chat about the dirty secrets behind their hobby. Graverobbing: OK never, OK sometimes [because reasons], or OK because we pretend it isn't happening [looking at you, Harlan Berk AMA]?

Or analyze whether your mushroom growing setup was contaminated or not. ("Gonna need a better photo, but that cake looks dry AF")

Some of the side conversations in Hobby Drama were also really interesting.

I also learned a lot from some of the city-specific subs. Why has that one Pub seem to have gotten shitty? Is that just me? No, it's because the owner died and his weird son took over and fired the old staff because they didn't like his politics.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

Your comment inspired me to give a shoutout @AncientCoins, (@PugJesus could likely answer all your questions) but I agree - those communities are in their infancy here, and suffer from discoverability.

Posting to them when and where you find them helps them tremendously, however, especially those on smaller instances. You're bringing their community content over to your instance, and if you're the first person to subscribe to an instance previously unknown to yours, you're likely introducing that content to your server. While many of the big instances federate each other, they rely on crossposting, follows and subscriptions to federate with the smaller ones.

PugJesus,
PugJesus avatar

Oh, God, no! I appreciate the shoutout, but I'm an amateur's amateur - I couldn't tell a lead fake from burnished bronze. I'm just enthusiastic, not knowledgeable!

ArtieShaw,
ArtieShaw avatar

@PugJesus I do appreciate your content to @AncientCoins

For me, leaving that particular Reddit sub was the hardest part of dumping Reddit. I should do my part by posting some content on the subject of modern fakes. Or just post photos from my collection. Anything, really.

Or possibly reach out to some of the Redditors on that sub. I'm getting some ideas, and have a good guess about who is moderating the federated thingy.

paultimate14,

I’ve left reddit when the protests started and have been on Lemmy since.

Lemmy just doesn’t have the content. Or if it does, it’s harder to find. There’s fewer posts and fewer comments. A lot of the niche communities I enjoyed on Reddit technically exist on Lemmy but are completely dead: hopeful attempts by other former redditors to try to replicate what they left.

scabrous-leper,
scabrous-leper avatar

@paultimate14 this has been my experience as well...a huge number of hollow magazines, whose titles reflect the Reddit DNA, but are sadly empty. _I've been on kbin, lemmy and Masto since abandoning Reddit, and I wish them all the growth at the expense of the rotten old platforms that they can muster!

@Arotrios @atlasraven31

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

@scabrous@kbin.social

I hear you on the empty communities - a lot of the more interesting content comes from the Mastodon side of the Fediverse (one of the reasons I'm on Kbin instead of Lemmy is so that I've got access to it via following users). It really takes a dedicated mod to make a community run in this space, as it's difficult to build an audience on smaller platforms, and harder still to build a community that actively comments and posts. I'm not surprised that there's a lot of available virtual property floating about in the wake of the Redditoxdus.

However, if you're a content poster, one thing I have noticed is that a lot of these empty communities have a lot of subscribers, and it can be an excellent place to post or cross-post your content - helps revitalize the community, and often can be surprisingly successful if you hit the right tone for where you're posting.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

You might dig Kbin. It bridges the gap between Mastodon and Lemmy, and allows you to follow users, which opens up a wealth of new content, as what they post appears on your feeds. It's new, so there are bugs with some of the more advanced features, but the dev is very cool and it's had a better uptime than lemmy.world. Here's some instances that run it:

kbin.social - main instance, run by the dev @ernest
fedia.io
feddit.online
kbin.cafe
kglitch.social

Links to others

If you do choose to use Kbin, you'll want to follow and subscribe to communities and people actively. I've got about 100 communities and 300+ people I follow, and my feed is better than Reddit's ever was.

ForestOrca,
ForestOrca avatar

I'm still in the process of adding communities and people. Thanks for the tip!

Lowbird,

I wonder how many people, like me, ended up drastically reducing their social media use altogether, at long last. I still pop in here now and again, but I’m not spending anything like the amount of time I spent on reddit.

scabrous-leper,
scabrous-leper avatar

@Lowbird me as well! a good thing!

@Arotrios @atlasraven31

ForestOrca,
ForestOrca avatar

Reddit became a significant time sink for me. I'd already backed away from FB and IG. Kbin seems a better fit for me, and it's a customizable fit. Yay!

ryan,

I would have a slightly different takeaway from this - it's the vocal users, the ones that commented and posted and were active contributors, who were pissed off and left. I would wager a good amount of lurkers who idly browse memes and upvote content have remained.

In the short term, Reddit still ends up with ad impressions, no change, there are a ton of lurkers. But in the long term, this becomes a bit of a death spiral - less new content for the lurkers and they're more likely to be peeled off onto a more active platform with fresher memes, and the remaining contributors have less people to talk to and so they, too, are peeled off elsewhere.

This also means, if Reddit wanted to curate and sell their text data for AI training, that there's suddenly much less of that coming in. Whoops.

Niello,

I've also seen some mentions of it being caused by the new API changes messing with the tracking so not allposts and comments are counted. Anyone has better insight on this?

MorrisonMotel6,

Point taken, and I’m definitely not disagreeing with you BUT…

Where did those high value users go then? They’re definitely not here

mustardman,

You’re high value to me, friend.

MorrisonMotel6,

Hey, thanks! Back atcha!

Supervisor194,
@Supervisor194@lemmy.world avatar

I resemble this remark.

Carnelian,

They’re definitely not here

hey :(

theluckyone,

I beg your pardon? I have obviously arrived.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

In my experience, they're split between the Mastodon side of the Fediverse and the Lemmy side. On Kbin, which bridges both, and where you can follow users, you end up with a pretty rich feed if you follow enough people and places - I've got about 100 communities subbed and 300+ users and my feed is better than Reddit's ever was.

Another thing to note is that your instance benefits from your discovery - it doesn't start indexing posts from another instance until someone from the first instance subscribes to it. This means a lot of smaller instances get lost in the shuffle, but they're out there - you just have to find them. I've noted that this is much more difficult to do on my Lemmy account than my accounts with other software, so you might benefit from an instance jump if things feel dry on your current account.

TropicalDingdong,

In the short term, Reddit still ends up with ad impressions, no change, there are a ton of lurkers. But in the long term, this becomes a bit of a death spiral - less new content for the lurkers and they’re more likely to be peeled off onto a more active platform with fresher memes, and the remaining contributors have less people to talk to and so they, too, are peeled off elsewhere.

Its why having a functional alternative like Lemmy matters. People are creative, and funny, and inventive. They want a place to put all that and share it.

Its why getting the flies out of the ointment is so important.

MonsieurArchi,

Memes on lemmy are a breath of fresh air! Especially when sorted by top/day. It really feels like the early internet times and I’m loving it!

I completely stopped using reddit on my phone and i rarely check the website now. I miss it though but when i open it, it’s just really really bad, especially when viewed in incognito mode. Since it shows content based on your location which is really bad quality.

I can’t wait to use Boost for lemmy when it goes live!

scabrous-leper,
scabrous-leper avatar

@ryan Yes, I posted daily, really enjoyed my interactions with various sub-groups of humanity, and now...I set up an outpost , a reddit lurker account, but generate zero traffic. no pics no text... I imagine that mine was a fairly common response...

@Arotrios

Squizzy,

Reddit had started fucking with the algorithm anyway. My frontpage often had stuff that would linger or shite that got posted to multiple subs. It was on the downhill slope for the last while.

wilberfan,

I haven’t posted to “my” subreddit since the protest. (Posted over 100 times on Lemmy tho.) I check in occasionally to make sure it hasn’t gone full Lord of the Flies, but…

CodingAndCoffee,
@CodingAndCoffee@lemmy.world avatar

Give a random user the conch. Let chaos prevail

nicetriangle,
nicetriangle avatar

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago

I want to believe this is due to the protests and people noping out (and I bet some of it is) but this observation ignores the Covid effect.

Reddit aside, basically every online community I frequent has seen a major dip following the end of the worst of the pandemic. Slack and Discord communities I have been in for years have tanked considerably. Tons of YouTubers I follow have dropped off majorly in the frequency of new videos. Forums are way sleepier. Engagement on a lot of social sharing platforms I use is way down.

I think a big chunk of this is people being able to go out into the real world again and also having spent a couple years being chronically online because that was kinda all there was to do. And now they're wanting anything but that.

Xanvial,

Yeah, thr reduction of 90% maybe caused by covid recovery. But AskReddit, for example, has dropped off suddenly almost 50% in the end of July based on here subredditstats.com/r/AskReddit (scroll down to comments and post per day)

emeralddawn45,

A year ago was already well after the worst of the pandemic though.

PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES, (edited )

If you look at the charts the drop started in July. Most people stopped caring about Covid last year. I don’t think it was that much of a factor.

nicetriangle,
nicetriangle avatar

All that said, I resigned from my mod positions on a few pretty large subs, wiped my 120k karma account of all comments and posts, and haven't submitted a single thing to the site in about 2-3 months.

Good riddance, tbh

Custoslibera,

Isn’t there like some 1% rule of thumb where of 100 people only 1 will comment and of 100 commenters only 1 will post?

It actually doesn’t require many people to leave to see a large decline in interactions on reddit. You just have to lose that core group of posters.

foggy,

It’s often called the 90/10/1 rule, I believe.

For every 101 users you have 90 lurkers, 10 people active in your community, and 1 content creator/contributor.

JRichardson,

@Arotrios
If Reddit continues their way, it will be another social media that will probably be either Remembered. Or Forgotten. Either way, it is digging their own grave.
It's a shame, I happen to love Reddit! I am a current member on there. But if it continues, I will most likely stay on here.

Rayspekt,

I am really happy that Reddit supposedly lost its core members by large. I just hope that it won't take ages to restart the hobby communities that I appreciated the most.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

The one thing I never understood is why did the Oliver subs go back to normal instead of sticking with Oliver. Finally, interest was lost in the Oliver jokes and traffic was going down. So it would have been the perfect time to enforce Oliver and cut into the ads traffic that way. News articles at the time didn't show any indication that this was another moved forced by reddit admins so why did the mods seemingly cave in without cause?

Pandoras_Can_Opener,
@Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz avatar

Probably got threatened with removal behind the scenes?

jeeva,

I’m confused by the “any subreddit that went dark […] is now back.”

Mine aren’t. But mine are tiny, so it’s probably just missing some qualifiers.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

You are correct. If you look at the tracker at https://reddark.untone.uk/ you will see that there are still subs that are private as part of the protest.

Reddit forced some of the biggests ones to reopen, and failed to force some other slightly lessor subs to reopen and ended up shuttering them. But this means the protests worked. Traffic at Reddit is down, and staying way down, so signs are that they have permanently lost ad traffic.

sir_wandelf,

Have they ever heard of this little thing called web scraping? Making your API crazy expensive is only going to increase your server load.

Gargleblaster,
Gargleblaster avatar

Is Reddark still being updated? Cuz it still shows 1600+ subs as dark.

Is this yet another individual announcing the end without really knowing if it's over?

bbplay13, (edited )

I've been on Reddit a few times since the third party fiasco. (looking up old responses to help with an issue I had) It seems just as lively, but something is definitely different. Everyone seems like bots, or one person running the same account. I just can't explain it, glad I'm gone though, it's just not fun anymore.

reddig33,

Still no Reddit IPO, which I find interesting.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

I'm guessing a lot of accountants have been busy revising their projected P&L statements. Reddit was already unprofitable after nearly two decades. I can't imagine wanting to invest in it now.

Seasoned_Greetings,

Well, typically you try to put the fire out before you sell your dumpster…

CodingAndCoffee,
@CodingAndCoffee@lemmy.world avatar

Very generally, it’s advised to have a minimum of 3 years “clean” accounting books before an IPO. I believe that means taking no additional capital, no rescues, etc. Just what the company can earn with what it has.

Losing mods and power users, plus losing advertisers, probably caused a few hiccups in their bottom line this year.

TropicalDingdong,

“we don’t need to give all that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free”

Its not actually “your” value Reddit. Its your users. That’s what you got wrong.

HipPriest,

And they never did comprehend that. Or at least were unwilling to admit they'd completely misunderstood their own value.

I check in to Reddit every now and then for some support communities, my city sub and the comics sub. I'll occasionally browse old haunts just to check what the quality is like on subs I used to follow and it's generally either the same or worse. 'The same' isn't necessarily a negative, but applies to the niche subs.

An example of a worse sub is Android Gaming - it used to be people discussing games on Android and recommending interesting actually good things on the Play Store. It appears to now either be people suggesting the same obvious things over and over (last time I was there lost count of the times I saw Slay the Spire mentioned), Devs advertising their dubious wares or people posting screenshots of their games for a kind of 'rate my collection' thing.

Jordan117,

I noticed the SubredditStats thing the other day, but how accurate is it? Like it says NonCredibleDefense activity fell off a cliff, to a few hundred comments per day, but it seems like posts in the last 24 hours easily have over a thousand at least:

subredditstats.com/r/noncredibledefense

I wonder if the API changes are affecting their ability to collect stats.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

Not seeing that on my end - 173 posts a day in the overall stats, and comments fell off a cliff after mid-July according to the 3rd chart. I know a lot of that subscriber base moved to the Fediverse:

!noncredibledefense

!noncredibledefense

@NonCredibleDefense - small but scrappy shoutout to my kbin homies.

atocci,
atocci avatar

It says they're getting 544 comments per day, but out of curiosity, I added up the comments from the top posts from the last 24 hours on the subreddit and they totaled over 1000 within just the first few posts.

It feels like something must have broken with the tool after the API changes.

donio,

The post count is relatively easy to verify by hand (just sort by New), I checked a couple random subreddits and they seemed to more or less line up. The comment counts are suspicious though.

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