When you lose 30% of your users because you got greedy about how ‘unprofitable’ your own app was, it’s gonna hurt.
Reddit Migration
### 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/
True punishment would be active, content rich posters zeroing out their posts and comment history. By doing so, the Google searches - which currently refer a ton of traffic to the site - will start to fade. The body of knowledge- users knowledge, not Reddit’s- is what drives new traffic to the site. I plan to remove my contributions later this month, presuming nothing changes.
15 year redditor, though only with ~250k karma. Scrubbed the crap out of my account. I'll probably still use reddit on desktop for as long as old.reddit exists, but for mobile I'm definitely trying out alternatives.
Same here, going to do it a few days before the API change just in case they pull some crap to prevent mass scrubbing losses
The other significant factor is that even their recently-slashed valuation was based on some degree of projected user growth. If you're trying to IPO and your growth has flattened, it's bad bad news. If your engagement numbers are actively moving backwards, that's catastrophic.
Looking at posts per minute seems like a great way to judge the effect though. I anticipate Reddit, Inc. will attempt to downplay the effect by focusing on numbers that take engagement out of the picture, like Monthly Average Users. If you touch the site once in the month, even by absent-mindedly clicking on a Google result, you'd get counted in that for June. And they wouldn't report the July numbers until August because, golly it's an incomplete month. And by then, their hope is that the world will have moved on.
Internally, I'm sure there aware of the impact. But externally, I believe they'll cherrypick favorable metrics to try and control the narrative for the investing & advertising communities.
I anticipate Reddit, Inc. will attempt to downplay the effect by focusing on numbers that take engagement out of the picture
You pretty much described every corporation in the history of mankind. This is what they always do.
They lost more than 30% of their actual users. Of the remaining traffic a portion is just bots. Maybe 10%? Maybe 30%? No idea, but not all of the remaining traffic is real people.
I don’t know. Since the API pricing has not been applied yet, I assume many boys are still running.
Only to add some clarification: reddark is only showing you the list of subs that announced they'd go dark versus the amount of those subs that have gone dark.
The exact number is hard to pin down, but reddit claims to have "100k+" active communities.
So 60% of the subs that said they'd go dark are still dark.
Correct. At best estimate that's 5%of reddit communities but the impact in users might be much larger as a lot of those 100k subs have just 1 or 2 subs
I deleted my 12 year old account history after the "AMA" with Spez and will be fully deleting my account on the 30th. That being said I clicked back on reddit today and browsed a bit of what was up and after spending the last few days on kbin and beehaw I don't think I can go back.
The amount of toxicity that I was putting up with on reddit was astounding. I can't believe I didn't notice it was so bad, even on the smaller subs I was active in. I always have referred to reddit as a cesspit with islands of good content, but I think the landscape changed while I wasn't paying attention.
I do hope the protest works and 3rd party devs can continue their wonderful apps, but reddit is kind of over for me regardless. The fediverse somehow feels like the early internet, kinda like going home.
Let's not have too rose colored glasses. A lot of it is because lemmy and kbin are tiny and haven't received their "eternal September" moment yet. It's bound to get worse so I hope our moderation tools will evolve sufficiently until then
Right there with you, also had a 12 year old account and deleted it. It's absurd how this is going. Federated definitely feels more tight knit and less just a media consumption platform.
The fediverse is definitely feeling like the early internet, and it's really taken me by surprise. Even though I reminisced about it and lamented it's loss, I think I never really understood just how much I missed it.
It's like 1995 all over again, and it's glorious.
Thank you for eloquently putting into words what I've been feeling.
The day before the blackout, I was feeling a lot of grief. Reddit had been my "home" for more than a decade, and I thought i would miss the community. Instead, I feel…lighter? Things are much nicer here!
Just a heads up, those 8k subs are just the ones that pledged to go dark. The actual total number of subreddits is much higher.
Still, 60% of subs still participating is much higher than I had expected.
Came to clarify the same. Title is very misleading.
Agreed though, actually surprised at how many are still dark.
I also didn't expect that large of a percentage to continue. It's very rare nowadays for people to resist capitalism and just end up complicit in the end like the Netflix situation.
I'm glad Reddit has a backbone against its tyrant.
This is seriously impressive! I think a lot of us were worried this would all collapse after a couple of days. I don’t think they knew how many of us were looking for an excuse to quit. Their mobile site is trash. Their desktop site is trash. Their mobile app is trash. Forcing us to use them was just not a strong bargaining proposition.
Comment levels are back to normal. But those creating the posts, initiating engagement are down and it will probably become worse once the API changes are in effect.
Subreddits are dark and posts will disappear from the Google Index reducing traffic to the site. Many big subs, as r/formula1 or r/apple to name a few, are dark indefinitely.
Moderators, those who keep the platform more or less peaceful, are sick of it - as you can see in the blackout rates.
The casual normie or lurker will see a drop in content, the site will gradually or exponentially loose its top value users and become a Facebook.
Or not. We'll know in a few months to come, the internet is a fast paced place.
I agree, it definitely was uncomfortable moving from reddit at first, but seeing how familiar the site was, and how much nicer the community is, it feels more like an upgrade than just swapping platforms.
Also, I didn't expect the protest would have so much of an impact, but I'm all for it!
You can feel humans behind these posts. No AI generated content. No toxicity, no "in conclusion" and stupid summaries. Amazing
I’m with you. It really is amazing how much kinder this community is. I love it!
The -30% value is taken from the peak value, but doesn't look at the total amount posted per day.
So I took the data from the blackout.photon-reddit site source.
It seems that it makes a Reddit Api call every Minute searching the newest Post and Comment and calculates both per Minute rates.
I wanted to see the effect the Blackout had over the day, so I summed the data and plotted it: Seems like between 11th and 12th June the comments/day diminished by -19.2%. The posts/day saw a decline of -8.9%
The sub with the most Activity was probably Askreddit
Subs going dark is great but keeping users off is the real goal. I'm not even going to view anything Reddit until corporate pulls back
reddit is dead, it happens to all websites eventually and this is a long time coming. I'll never go back, I'm happy to have found the Fediverse.
I'm doing my part
Almost 30% drop in posts per minute probably demonstrates better the real impact this blackout has had. And that's seems pretty drastic. Reddit must feel the impact.
Revoking the API really felt like one of those, "pull-up the ladder," moments. The API access and the choice of 3rd party UI's it allowed seemed like part of Reddit's initial community-focused strategy, a method to drive people there from other platforms by being more open and accessible by allowing people to experience it the way they wanted. Then, they stupidly pulled a Digg by revoking that with no way back.
2 days will do nothing, give them a week next time we do this
Screw a week, we should have gone indefinite from the start. Spez would have pissed himself
No, he would have immediately replaced the mods with internal people and internal bots, and turned off the "private" option. Frankly, I expect he'll do that anyway, or, in 30 days, a whole bunch of them will be going up on RedditRequest - with a new group of powermods.
This is the way
Check those stats next month when people can't use RIF, Appolo, etc.
I mean it's great and all just don't forget we're not here purely as anti-redditors, we're also here to build the new community. Not looking back is the only way to move forward
The issue is you lot. I've been perusing all these new sites. Everywhere I go I see reddit mentioned and all the comments say exactly the same thing.
I like the protest. "I have visited reddit"
You aren't protesting if you keep going to it. You are an active users. Your click your ad revenue your engagement is not a protest.
In order to protest do not access the site. No app no website no third party. That hurts them. You can't protest but keep going on the site.
It's 3 days. It's tough. I've honestly struggled something stupid. J probably spend about 12 hours on and off reddit. Whenever I get a minute I hope on. First thing in the morning and last thing at night.
This is affirmative strike action. We are on the picket lines.
DO NOT CROSS THE POCKET LINE.
or it's not a strike
I have to wonder how much of what’s left is just repost bots and spam bots. I’ve noticed since the blackout and I’ve stopped opening the app much, I’ve gotten a lot more of those stupid onlyfan bots following me.
Been away from Reddit since Monday. I do not mis it.
Same. Missed in the first day maybe but out of habbit. You can see the growth in the community here compared to just a few days ago. Rich engagement, no toxic users and interesting & diverse content
According to the the article's own source, https://blackout.photon-reddit.com, traffic is pretty much back to what it was before the black out. Not sure where they are getting that large drop from. Unless they are cherry picking a high start and finishing somewhere in the middle of the normal daily ebb and flow.
Wait, really? I keep hearing that the whole thing was a disappointment. Hopefully people stick it out long enough to actually force some change, then.
I think I've settled here. But I'm glad people are putting up the fight regardless.
Gotta fry the greedy porky boy /u/spez
It felt really good to delete my reddit account. I hadn't logged in or posted in months, and just lurked for a while. I was amazed at how toxic it had become. Reddit angries up the blood! (to paraphrase Grampa Simpson)