this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Technology

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As Reddit Crushes Protests, Its User Traffic Returns to Normal (www.pcmag.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think that it's important to note the 1% rule.

Most of the traffic of any given platform will be created by people who interact with it only passively; they mostly lurk and, for good or bad, they don't care about it. Admins this, mods that, who the fuck cares, my cat pics sprout spontaneously from the internet.

In the meantime the people who actually contribute with the platform will be a tiny fraction of it. They don't add traffic, but they add value - because they're the ones responsible for creating the content (posting), aggregating value to the content (commenting), sorting the content (voting and moderating). The admins' decisions and the mod revolts affected specially bad this group. And... well, not even the stupid like to be called stupid, and that's basically what the admins did.

Now consider the link. The lurkers are back to Reddit because there's still content to be consumed there, but eventually it'll run dry - because the contributors are leaving the site. As such, you don't expect the mod revolts to have a short-term impact on the site, but rather a long-term one: the site will become less and less popular over time, as the lurkers are looking for content there and... well, nobody is providing them jack shit. Eventually the site will be forgotten by the masses, just like Digg was.

So Reddit will die, mind you. But it won't be a sudden death; it'll be a slow bleeding.

I just wish that this process was slightly faster, specially before the IPO.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The content will stay, at least in terms of posts. If the value-adders go to other sites, someone will just repost that value back to reddit.

It'll devolve into something like instagram, where it's literally impossible to discuss anything in the comments. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they stop making money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The content will stay, at least in terms of posts.

Content loses relevance over time, and becomes increasingly harder to retrieve as noise piles up: pointless threads, re-re-re-reposts, "marketing opportunities" (i.e. spam), so goes on. Reddit Inc.'s actions pissed off specially bad the people who were removing that noise - moderators.

someone will just repost that value back to reddit.

Usually you'd have the contributors doing this; the lurkers don't care about sharing. But even if someone/something (AI) consistently keeps posting stuff from other platforms back into Reddit, those newer posts will be further removed from the original source, and they'll arrive later. Reddit stops being the "front face of the internet" to become "yet another bottom feeder of the internet".

where it’s literally impossible to discuss anything in the comments. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean they stop making money.

In Reddit's case, I think that it does. Reddit might've started as a link aggregator, but its main value was as a forum platform. Without the ability to discuss anything deeper than "two plus two equals GOOD! EDIT WOW THANKS FOR THE GOLD, KIND STRANGER!@!11ONE", it's just yet another link aggregator again.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Time to just look to the future. reddit will have a lot of traffic for a long time because of it's huge footprint. So instead of making posts and engaging there, bring good content to Kbin and the fediverse.

Make it so useful and interesting that the good traffic starts to divert.

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

There are still some niche subs that didn't come to lemmy that I engage in, but I spend more time on Lemmy now than I do on reddit. I think there are probably dozens of us like that. So while I might still show "traffic" I'm not spending near as much time as I did on it and since reddit is trying to go public they wont publish that little fact.

Anyone can buy an article, so I expect to see more of these "everything is just hunky dory at reddit" articles because again they have profit motive.

Meanwhile lemmy grows and grows. Hopefully people continue to engage over here to keep it interesting.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now that i read it: i saw some ppl here wonder about bots posting comments or maybe downvoting, bc of apparently a lot of comments being against the protest suddenly more than before? And more downvotes on comments about it? If really bots are being used for this, will that also contribute to the traffic metric like a normal user would?

But that said im not sure if theyre bots, but i did see some people mentioned that they thought there's some false accounts speaking on Reddit's side.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

You take away power users and people fed up with Reddit and the casual user who doesn't care is left over.

If you look at blackout votes it was usually around 4 to 1 in favor.

During and shortly after the blackouts there were a ton of upset casual users calling the mods cunts, the blackouts don't help, stop holding other users hostage, give me back my content!!!

Those users don't care about third party apps, mod tooling and so on, they just want to browse the site. These angry users got the loudest while protestors took a break or left for the Fediverse.

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

Did anybody seriously expect anything different?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This site is the real difference. Lemmy had 0 activity until now. Now that there's a footing, there's a real chance of continued growth.

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

From Lemmy perspective there's been a huge influx of new users, but from Reddit perspective nothing changed. I do expect Lemmy to keep growing, but I don't expect that it's going to have any measurable impact on Reddit in the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly I'd rather have a smaller community to interact with. Less bullshit that way.

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

Yeah, I don't think rapid growth is necessarily desirable either since it brings a lot of toxic behaviors from reddit along with it. The goal for Lemmy should be sustainability, as long as there are enough people to have discussions with and to bring content, enough people to host servers, and enough developers, then Lemmy will be fine. Growth for the sake of growth makes little sense.