this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

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The bad, although expected news is that according to Similarweb via Gizmodo Reddit traffic is back to pre-protest levels. The caveat is that some of the traffic might still indicate protests, (i.e. John Oliver pics). Most interesting:

However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.

For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.>>>

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Basically the protests are still working. Even the John Oliver ones - reddit has to pay expenses to handle the traffic but are getting fewer revenue in response.

Keep up the good work people!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Even if it doesn’t happen now will slowly happen if people keep moving over here and more content is posted and more involvement happens. Keep it up peoples

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

However: Getting through with their API changes will earn them more money/reduce costs in the long run, so it will return profitable for them anyway.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So is the traffic useful traffic, or is it people lurking on 3rd party apps while those work, commenting about alternatives and popping over to crosspost Reddit's stuff?

This notes a chunk of the increase is the protest posts. What does interaction look like when you take away those and all the bots? Did they make a few more to make up the loss of several hundred thousands of their most invested users? Because bots can't click ads.

I know nobody new is going to join reddit after seeing the headlines and, having joined, the progressively shitty atmosphere makes them less likely to stay

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

increase is the protest posts

Posts are posts, clicks are clicks, all grist for the mill. From the article:

"traffic is up in subreddits expressing their discontent with photos of Oliver. Traffic to r/pics, for example, is up 564% compared with last month, while traffic to r/Aww is up 152%"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The question now becomes, what does traffic look like once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?

Dunno, but doubt users currently posting & clicking maymays of the now will get bored & come up with a new forms of 'protest' (which, you guessed it, will also involve posting, scrooling & clicking on reddit).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's probably some number of those users that 'll stop posting in a week when their apps stop working. I can only speak for me, but I probably won't be bored of Mr. Oliver yet will definitely stop contributing to traffic.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Ad-buying traffic is roughly half of what it was pre-blackout? That's huge, and IMO should have been in the article's headline.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Reddit declined to comment on the traffic analysis from Similarweb.

Of course lol, keep up the good fight!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Let’s understand that Reddit has spent over a decade enjoying its status as a world-leading platform while kicking the ‘we’ll figure out how to monetize later’ can down the road. Along the way, some important social questions have arrived and Reddit is still failing to show leadership in this matter. Let me explain:

Those that say Reddit ‘will continue on’ aren’t looking at the situation through the lens of history. At its core, ‘Reddit is a rare social product that has seemed to become more relevant over time, as a growing user base comes to appreciate its distinctive, human-centered approach to digital conversations.’ A digital third place, built on mutually-shared beliefs and principals of digital altruismReddit existed to Give People Voices – aiming to create a safe space for all viewpoints.

So that’s what Reddit is supposed to do as a ‘platform.’ What about Reddit as a ‘company?’ Sadly, boardroom shenanigans have pursued Reddit throughout its entire lifecycle. Reddit lost the public-spirited people like Aaron Swartz, and gained trolls, hate groups, and the soap opera that was the Ellen Pao debacle. As Will Durant said: ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.’

Actions this year by Reddit have pushed it much farther down the path of ‘less user-oriented.’ Worse, public statements and private actions by the company leave nothing to doubt when it comes to their intentions. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Steve Huffman the CEO of Reddit, wrote in a recent AMA.

Spez' decisions have ripped the guts out of Reddit's understood social identity and community intent. Those public statements and private actions by the company I mentioned earlier? They aren’t there to make Reddit a more human-centered place. Monetizing API use won’t increase Reddit’s stature as a ‘a safe space for all viewpoints.’ Like when managers decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle, “the concerns about the O-rings that ultimately led to the explosion were buried in a vast sea of thousands of other decisions … leading up to the ill-fated launch.”

Risks don’t rely on your perspective for existence. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” as Philip K. Dick famously said. This recent Reddit move to monetize APIs creates major cracks in its foundations of digital altruism and human-centered behavior. As I said last year with Twitter: “Twitter has every chance to prove to us that it can be a safe, responsible place for us to interact with our readers if they want to. In the meantime, it’s getting too weird around here. I’m mustering at the life boat station now, in case we must abandon ship.”

Originally posted here

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Interesting.. not surprising the majority don't care. (Admittedly, i only put up with reddit until now because i wasn't aware of the alternatives which the latest foofaraw revealed).

i've fully migrated to kbin (replaced my reddit feeds with kbin rss feeds into miniflux for a completely transparent migration.. like nothing ever happened, except the noise went down along with toxicity and no intrusive ads).

Glad to be here with people who care about their discussion platform.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wait until after the proposed changes took effect. A portion of that traffic is due to content creators saving multiple years' worth of their posts before pulling them from the site permanently, and once that's done and they close their accounts, this type of traffic will die. The same applies to redditors trying to save as much content as possible from other people while they still CAN access the site, as a last minute tactic to not lose access to guides, videos, advice etc.. Of course that leads to more interaction with the site - temporarily.

(For example, it took me 3 full days to save and then delete most of my posts and I'm still working through the comments. I currently definitely interact with reddit way more than usual, but this will stop once I'm done and disable my account)

I can not say how big that portion really is tho, but it IS something to keep in mind with the current situation. Not all current traffic is "business as usual".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I never click on ads anyway. Is it okay for me to start using Reddit, at least a little, or should I continue not to give traffic to them?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You do you. Whatever works best for your life imo. I will no longer browse Reddit, I will never download their app. If a question I google seems to ONLY have a solution on Reddit, I will only view it on browser (old.Reddit, ad blocker, logged out).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think the release of [email protected] in about a month or so will seal the deal for lemmy for me, and probably many others.

Sync for Lemmy's release is not nearly as well known as it should be though fsr...

There's also Memmy for ios inspired by apollo, and I hear it's being developed insanely fast

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I’ve been using kbin as I prefer it aesthetically and functionally over Lemmy, and the mobile browser functions pretty well. But I do use Memmy and Mlem to check in on Lemmy stuff, and while they’re very bare bones I can see them becoming useful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You don't have to click on ads to give them money, impressions still count. You can use uBlock Origin, but they'll probably still make money from the traffic as they show off their number of visits to advertisers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Measure of traffic is not a good indicator, since unmoderated subreddits will be full of trolls and chaos, generating traffic.

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