SimilarWeb has just released traffic estimates for June. According to these estimates, Reddit's traffic has seen a 3.36% month-over-month decrease.
For comparison, here's how traffic has changed for other popular social networking websites:
Source: https://www.similarweb.com/...
I used Apollo right up until it shut down, and I haven’t touched Reddit since. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
I downloaded Memmy yesterday, and so far I like it.
WefWef on the desktop and Memmy for Lemmy on the phone...
I was also an enthusiastic Apollo user.
Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.
Thats why its up to all of us to start participating.
Protip: If you really want to start a conversation/get engagement, follow Cunningham's Law:
the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.
So, fill those empty posts with confidently incorrect statements and watch that comment section fill up as people rush in to correct you.
Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.
Most people didn’t create content and don’t interact with it (ie most people are lurkers). Take it upon yourself to comment and interact with posts and others will almost always join in and have something to say.
I used sync up until the 13th or so, then started limiting my reddit usage, and increased my lemmy usage until July 1st. Now I'm solely on lemmy on mobile, and only see reddit on desktop when I come across a search I need.
Same with me. I haven’t deleted my Reddit account yet, but will be doing that soon, after I delete or overwrite my comments of 10 years there.
Between Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon, I have plenty to keep me occupied in what used to be my Reddit-scrolling time.
Same. I still have the app as a reminder but this is my home now.
Weekend I’m going to see about spinning up my own instance.
I really missed Reddit at first and it took a while to get TestFlight on Memmy and figure this out but it’s looking good so far.
migrated to wefwef, would prefer a native app, but nevertheless i’m not even looking back. 13 year club.
Same
Same, it took me to 7/1 for me to finally uninstall RIF. Let's wait and see what July's numbers look like
Yeah, I don't exactly understand how but RIF is working for me, despite the fact you can't log into it. I only kept it as a momento, but it still works as long as you have the subs you want to see memorized...
hate to be that guy, but I also want to contribute with content, so: It’s memento
Infinity has Spez's cock down their throat and is going subscription based.
I think there are still some subs that are private, and I know a couple went NSFW and a bunch are getting harassed by admins to reopen or remove the NSFW tag.
My friend told me the cyberpunk sub couldn't reply to the email they got telling them to turn off the NSFW tag. Because nearly full on sex scenes, decapitation, huge hogs with giant titties is absolutely SFW.
Even if 3% is a low number, I guarantee that 3% were reddits more active users and content creators.
If most of the quality content slows to a trickle users will continue to leave and look for more viable platforms.
That model started with literal radio. It's not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It's kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.
Don't forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.
No company wants to say they've lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.
They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don't realize the product has turned to shit.
I think this an overly simplistic way to look at the dynamic. Users are the primary customer, and they don't provide any direct revenue to the company. Their value is in attracting the secondary customers though, who directly pay the company to access the users. Bring a primary customer implies that the company still needs to treat you as a customer and at least not openly antagonize you. They can't take you for granted as a product. There is no secondary customer without you.
It's like bars that advertise free drinks for women on certain nights. The women aren't directly paying the bar, but the men who come to the bar because of them makes it a net profit. I'm sure there's other examples of this primary/secondary customer dynamic. Anything cheap for kids that sells expensive stuff to parents for instance.
overly simplistic way
It was hyperbolic of course. But really,
Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue
How can someone who doesn't provide revenue be the primary customer of a profit oriented company? Ahead of others who actually do, like advertisers?
It might be better if the terms are swapped. I'm only calling them primary because they have to come first before the secondary, and they're the foundation for everything. There's probably a better way to term them.
They also don't want to lose 3% of their product.
spaz: were not profitable, heres ways were gonna become more profitable.
redditors: ugh leaves
spaz: your small protest from the landed gentry cant hurt me.
redditors: ok, bye.
spaz: jgvbefgbaegbeQANGBLEw
In history terms, 3% is everything. I remember seeing a documentary where a guy claimed that every coup in history, in which 3% of the population were ardently dedicated to the cause, has been successful.
Yeah, I was using Lemmy and Reddit in parallel throughout June (aside from the blackout days, where I stayed off of Reddit out of solidarity,) and only really drastically reduced my Reddit usage this month.
Same. I spent most of June trying to find a lemmy instance to join. Quit cold turkey on 1st July along with nuking my post history. Keeping my account till 31 July just in case they decide to revert my deleted posts.
I am wondering how user count is calculated.
I guarantee you that a huge percentage of Redditors have multiple accounts. Many of which might be inactive. Are all accounts ever created on Reddit still considered part of their current total or are only accounts active in the 6 or 12 months count? If people are legitimately leaving Reddit, I think their losses are going to steamroll because they won't just lose one user, but instead they will lose that one user and their 2 or 3 alternate accounts as well.
Next month or three are going to look like a bloodybath for Reddit.
Can't wait!
Also, this data isn’t from Reddit. It’s from SimilarWeb. They track browser access to websites, not API calls. Reddit absolutely won’t report their drop in API access, which is where the largest drop will be.
I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.
Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn't that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I've already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten ... weird.
Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there's no voice of reason to hold them back.
And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) ... it's a very strange place now.
The meltdowns are something else.
On one smaller sub that participated in the blackout people were seriously accusing mods of rigging the votes to stay closed for longer. Of course nothing actually indicated that, and neither did they present any evidence, they just couldn't stand not getting their content.
Same! I went to check it out earlier and the frontpage had a couple of subreddits I recognized but am not interested in, and the rest were all subreddits I had never heard of before. I also thought the scores seemed weirdly low, but not 100% sure about that since I dont usually pay super close attention. At least the weird vibe was pretty helpful in getting me to hop off, versus getting sucked in to browsing around more.
There was an r/Apple thread were people were going off about simplicity and just how hard it is to get into and use Lemmy… I am so glad I left lol
Reddit is pretty much at the point where you can open any thread on the front page and the comments will be indistinguishable from a Facebook comment section.
9gag... That's a word I haven't seen in a long time.
Reddit will stay, heck Digg if still around. It won't be the same though.
Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
Back in the day, I discovered Reddit because people in the comments on 9gag would say a certain post was stolen from reddit.
I was a sucker for rage comics, so r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu (aka f7u12) was my gateway drug.
Even the porn subs are starting to be overrun by onlyfans spammers
I thought they always were.
I mean, hey, free titties but always there.
If only people would actually stop using Reddit instead of doing these useless “protests” like they do in /r/videos. They're still using the site, that's what Reddit wants...
Just FYI, the developer of Boost is making a version for Lemmy. I'll definitely be downloading it once it's available.
The Lemmy boost version is already in development and you can sign up for it already on the app store!
Do you think Boost for lemmy will give lemmy a boost?
Mine also finally stopped about an hour ago 😭 Good bye, Boost
I uninstalled on the 1st. I didn't want the dev to get hit with a giant bill
Welcome aboard! There’s now over 400,000 of us! (Source).
Boost is still working for me, but I haven't logged in/engaged since the blackout. If it does go any day now, I'm okay with that.
Same, ‘cept my 3PA died a few hours before it should’ve. Reddit admins are clowns.
The protests aren't all useless, necessarily.
Subs that go NSFW are depriving Reddit of advertising revenue, and sites that change their purpose are likely to drive away some users who don't want to shitpost, who might then go looking for alternatives.
I doubt it's seriously hurting Reddit, if at all. People would really hurt Reddit if they just stopped using it entirely. No posting, no commenting and no lurking.
It's trivial to setup a LLM designed to argue or astroturf a point now. That's the problem.
I see a lot of people saying, "I can't believe it was only a 3% drop," and I'd like to offer some context as to why there's not enough data here to really tell a story, yet. It could go a few different ways.
The Reddit protests in June were a big deal, not just on Reddit or Lemmy, but to the media at-large. Traffic surely saw a huge influx of people wanting to look at the dumpster fire. I know that I myself used Reddit a lot leading up to the blackouts, since it was, in a sense, the last hurrah of Reddit as we knew it. The Spez AMA would have driven traffic. The NSFW sub protests would have driven traffic. All those news articles linked to Reddit directly, and they would have also driven traffic.
Even with all that, there's still a decrease in traffic. As others have said, July will be a better metric for the actual damage done, since the media has largely moved on and aren't driving as many visits, and 3PAs are toast.
These numbers would have been more representative if we could have had more than a quarter to look at. What was the QoQ trajectory before this? For all we know, this could have indicated business as usual, or it could have indicated something much bigger, depending on what the traffic metrics over the past 12-24 months could show us.
I also would have liked to see the history for unique sessions and unique visitors. If there was a huge influx of unique visitors compared to the past few months, but traffic was still decreased overall, then that would indicate it came from news clicks or bots.
Basically what I'm saying is that the data doesn't paint any kind of real picture right at this moment. That doesn't mean there was no impact though. Time will tell.
Looking at the pages for lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, kbin.social, as well as lemm.ee paints an interesting, if expected, picture.
For one thing, lemmy.ml is categorized as "Games > Games - Other (In United States)" which made me scratch my head to the point of hurting my scalp. The rest are uncategorized (which is better than being miscategorized, imo).
Now, for the stats:
| Instance | Total Visits for June 2023 | % Change from May 2023 | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | #1 Incoming Traffic Source (from social media) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com¹ | 1.7B | -3.36% | 37.98% | 6.21 | 8:24 | Youtube (52.48%) |
| lemmy.world | 3.5M | n/a² | 38.12% | 6.62 | 8:44 | Reddit (97.29%) |
| kbin.social | 2.9M | +5000% | 26.24% | 11.2 | 9:18 | Reddit (93.92%) |
| lemmy.ml | 1.5M | +1716% | 51.79% | 5.55 | 3:54 | Reddit (98.86%) |
| feddit.de | 791.7K | +5000% | 55.88% | 2.76 | 3:57 | Reddit (98.31%) |
| beehaw.org | 790.1K | +5000% | 35.48% | 4.50 | 5:44 | Reddit (96.24%) |
| lemmy.ca | 186.4K | +1615% | 69.14% | 2.45 | 1:05 | Reddit (100%) |
| lemm.ee | 167.5K | +5000% | 29.58% | 6.73 | 5:18 | Reddit (86.81%) |
reddit.com is included as a point of comparisonlemmy.world didn't exist yet in May 2023We can see that the larger instances are already performing well in comparison to reddit when it comes to "interaction" statistics. It's a surprise, however that kbin.social trounces everyone else it was compared to--even comparing favorably with lemmy.world in visit numbers. In comparison, lemmy.ml performed quite badly especially in bounce rate and average visit duration. Someone who's better equipped than me in analyzing these figures can perhaps do a better anaylsis, but from what I can see, we're not doing that bad here.
I've also added lemm.ee into the mix just for good measure (and perhaps as a proxy for smaller-ish instances), and it's doing quite good as well.
EDITS:
Something to keep in mind to contextualize the interaction statistics: the density of contributors to lurkers in these numbers will be drastically higher here due to the greater barrier to entry as well as the average user type of the migration. It should be expected that the average user in a niche/early-adopter community will be more active.
Not me! I intend to be just as much a lurker as I was on Reddit!
Thanks! What do you make of the unusually high bounce rate (and low average visit duration) for lemmy.ml though? That has been a head-scratcher for me. Did it not gain people from the migration as well (which makes for better interaction)?
I'm actually quite the opposite, I wait until a page loads. Between the two of us, it evens out, lol!
But yeah, I have a pet theory as to why lemmy.ml has a high bounce rate and low average visit duration: people migrating from Reddit dismiss lemmy.ml for whatever reason and check out other instances instead. That's probably also why it didn't gain as many users as other instances (comparatively speaking).
What do you make of the unusually high bounce rate (and low average visit duration) for lemmy.ml though? That has been a head-scratcher for me.
It shouldn't be a head scratcher. lemmy.ml was running like ass for much of it, with some periods of being completely down. Poor performance will drive up your bounce rate massively.
Ah, I see. I wasn't aware that it was that bad over in lemmy.ml, thanks!
It was in June, during the protest-blackouts.
As far as I understood that stat, it's traffic coming from "social media sites" that's counted there. What their definition of a "social media site", I've got no idea--especially not since they include Youtube in that designation.
Added lemmy.ca into the table as well, because, damn, what a ride! I suppose given from the explanation I was given regarding lemmy.ml's figures, it wasn't able to cope well with the flood of incoming users, I suppose?
Damn. You're right! I was surprised that it surpassed Beehaw.org in page views.
We've actually handled it very well as while it's a major instance we are on the smaller side we also moved to a dedicated server at a good point right before it reached the limits of the VPS it was on.
Thanks for the clarification. I was just guessing based on similar bounce rates and average visit durations (lemmy.ca and lemmy.ml).
So from what I can tell the visits to the main lemmy instances are only ~.5% compared to total visits to reddit (1.7 billion vs 9 million). Smaller instances might bump that up to .7% or so. Reddit's 3% drop in visits might be mostly due to people using the site less, while transfers to lemmy account for only a fraction of that. Still cool, though, hopefully we can keep the momentum going over the next couple months.
I really wish someone can compile the figures for all Lemmy instances (and Kbin) so that we can make such a comparison. But yeah, other alternatives also popped up such as Tildes, Squabble, Raddle. I suppose that can also make up for part of the missing 3%. Of course, there's also a sizeable number that have simply stopped using Reddit (be it in protest or other reasons--such as seasonal variability, as in people are actually touching grass!).
I actually forgot to include Tildes, Squabble and Raddle into the table, but then again, I was only trying to compare what we gained here against what Reddit has lost. I hope that this momentum (loss for Reddit, gain for the Threadiverse) keeps going. But more importantly, that we keep the engagement here at a high level in both quantity and quality.
Where's this data coming from?
Same website as used in the OP, SimilarWeb.
This is for June. Third party apps were still working, and personally I didn’t change my Reddit browsing habit much during June. Now that third party apps are officially dead, I’ve been on Reddit a lot less, and been spending more time on Lemmy. Curious to see what the numbers look like for July.
I just realized that today is the first day in YEARS that I didn’t access Reddit. Sad, but it is what it is, and entirely their fault.
I was a heavy user before, for sure. I used to scroll Reddit for hours a day. I uninstalled my app when the blackouts started. If I do a google search where the answer is on reddit, i'll still look at that answer. But for the most part, I am gone. Seems like a lot of people are all bark no bite though.
This gets made back by September.
95% of people who use reddit use the official app or website, and don't notice a single thing except the occasional stray John Oliver meme.
Not enough hobby communities left.
Most of that traffic is probably lurkers and content consumers. Reddit will continue chugging along for a bit, but the loss of power users and mods is about guaranteed to wither the platform over time.
One point to keep in mind is that drama also brings engagement IN, not just out. When the drama subsides, the temporary boost in activity from new users or lurkers will go down too.
That being said, the percent decrease was always gonna be in the single digits. The average redditor was never gonna stick with a prolonged protest of a service that remains free to use.
I still visit reddit maybe once a day for 10 minutes for niche subs or communities that aren't built up here. If those communities develop here, I will fully cut out reddit.
Edit: also when noting that I use Lemmy amount 90% of the time now, but my overall usage of Lemmy/reddit has gone down. Probably for the better, because I started reading again.
Are you me? I've been off Reddit like a week now and I've already read two books with the extra time I don't spend doom scrolling.
Good stuff. We just read Cinema Speculation and the first volume of Elric of Melniboné.
niche subs or communities that aren't built up here
Oh how I wish someone would make a shittymobilegameads community.
...or for me to get the willpower and motivation to do it myself.
That seems small given the number of Redditors here
The number of users here is pretty minuscule compared to the Reddit userbase
Depends on what the goal was. If the goal was to have so many people leave reddit that it dies, then yeah. Nowhere near strong enough for that (and I don't think that was ever going to happen).
If the goal was to get enough people motivated to make an alternative (like this one or kbin or whatever) viable, then I think it was extremely effective. Prior to June, these spaces didn't have enough content and discussion to be entertaining for me personally. But I deleted my reddit account on June 30th, and I haven't once regretted that or gone back to the site because Lemmy has been enough
I love seeing old stuff from Reddit pass by on my feed, long dead memes are living a second life!
It was strong enough that Lemmy/kbin now has a large enough userbase to be an active community and to work out the bugs in the software. We've got a strong base to grow from now.
People will keep looking for alternatives to Reddit as its own enshittification continues (either by things like eliminating old.reddit or just the degradation of the community) and people who've never used a link aggregator/discussion site will continue to sign up. It's also not just Reddit. With a bit of modification, a version of Lemmy could replace question-and-answer sites like StackOverflow. An embedded version of Lemmy could be used in place of Disqus. Sites that currently maintain their own discussion thread systems could use a Lemmy instance instead.
Any place with threaded discussions now has the option for a federated alternative.
That's true, but also bear in mind most of reddit's active monthly users are barely interacting with the site (e.g., through clicking in off a search result, or following a link).
The average user engagement per day is in the single digit minutes, and the average post / comment count per day is <1... I know I used reddit a lot more than that.
So as the numbers drop further in July, consider that the share of highly engaged, highly active, content creating users has likely dropped by far more.
To lemmy I'd guess the numbers seem a lot bigger. But by reddits standards yea its a small percentage.
refuse to use the default reddit app so here I am. I miss rif but lemmy is filling the void at least.
And lots of those users probably aren’t real.
But there’s a distribution curve. 10-15% of a user base is super super valuable because they create all the content. If they lost 3-5% of that segment, that would be a real problem.
Yeah, the vast majority of users don't contribute at all. Not post, not comment, not even upvote. They come only to consume.
Then you get the segment of people who contribute a bit, but not so much, and then you have the golden 1% of powerusers that are active.
That's why, yes, 3 party app users are just a small chunk off the greater Reddit pie - they are more likely to belong to the segment of Reddit users that actually create content for the side. Posting, commenting, up and downvoting, actively engaging.
They’re also more likely to be moderators
Yknow i hadn't considered that but thats a great point. How many of those users are just bots that are karma farming to spam communities? And with Reddit crippling mod tools, that issue is only going to get worse.
Quality is more important than quantity. The people who left Reddit are more likely to be engaged and create content. Most people on Reddit just consume content. If nobody is there to create any, those will leave too.
Traffic is likely not just users, but bots or scripts scraping sites and whatever.
If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram. Holy shit is it pay-to-play a cesspool. And I’m being targeted for ads for all kinds of ponzi schemes and crypto and FOREX scams. Probably from watching Coffeezilla videos.
We’ll see how Lemmy picks up. I’m really liking it, thus far. Right now we’re looking at Reddit like a former, toxic partner that we want to spite. Lately I was just going on the World News, Ukraine war mega thread.
Just like Etsy. Its a horrible place to try and build a business and be creative and make money, and is being overrun by dropshipped tat, but its where everyone goes to get nice things, so its where people have to sell
If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram
It's funny, but my photography is precisely the reason I'm not on Instagram. Since day 1 I've never thought it is a good place for actual artistic photography; indeed it kinda directly undermined artistic photography back in the day with the "all photos must be square" rule. I've always considered Instagram more of a place to share snapshots. Flickr isn't what it once was, but it's always been more of a true photography-focused social media site.
I'm in the same boat. Been trying a few different Instagram alternatives for a few years but the user bases are all too small. Pixelfed and Vero seem decent but too much of a ghost town to feel it's worth continuing to post.
I haven't tried Pixelfed yet. I just got into the Fediverse and several instances on Lemmy. So I'll eventually try Pixelfed. But 500px and Flickr seemed kind of dead to me. Vero and Vsco, I've heard mixed things, but also ghost-towns.
It's to the point in IG that not even close friends nor family, see what I post. Adam Mosseri and Mark can fuck right off.
That may sound like not a lot, but Facebook as been hemorraging users for a few years now, if they're losing users at about the same rate as Facebook, that's a big oof.
I think the big deal will be if it's sustained. Losing a bunch of users for a month isn't a big deal if they come back, or at least stop leaving. If Reddit loses 3% of its users every month for a year then things will be pretty dire for them.
Can't say I've got much sympathy for Reddit, though.
I would expect July to be higher since 3rd party apps were still functioning in June. That was the first wave, the second wave would have been after the apps actually shut down and will continue for a while as people see lower quality and people talking about other sites.
Precisely. "We're" (I hate doing this, but I'm a part of the 'oh crap I need an alternative 'doomscroller'' group) the early movers.
The real test is when the official app is the only game in town.. from others it seems like it's bad and will drive the traffic down even further..
Another major element is the effectiveness of moderating with the lack of API tools. If that 3% consists largely of moderators and content creators then that is going to have an impact.
The thing that kept me on reddit were the well managed niche subs. I really need to take the time to go through my pages and pages of subscriptions, and either find or start equivalent subs here.
I rarely commented on reddit, and almost never posted. The one sub I created never had a single use. Here though, I feel almost compelled to contribute as it is new and small and I want it to grow.
When the 2nd and 3rd waves of users come looking at Lemmy to see if there is an alternative, I think there should be quality subs and content to get them to stay. It's on us to provide that.
Agreed on all counts, but y'know doesn't look good before an IPO, I hope it gets worse.
Facebook "lost" a lot of users when GenZ decided they didn't want to make accounts, but Instagram and (likely) Threads, did a fine job supplementing that. Meta corporation as a whole doesn't have a big issue with maintaining their userbase.
I think it will go down a lot faster now that they've blocked API calls to NSFW subs.
Actually... that's something I have doubts about. It isn't all NSFW subs, just the porn ones... and how many people actually comment on porn subs, instead of just scrolling and... well, "consuming" it?
My guess is users of porn subs will use the official app and not care about it.
The point of those porn subs (generally) is to drive engagement to paid sites. If the content creators find that there is less traffic from Reddit, they're going to stop posting there, regardless of the app.
It will be much more interesting to see a year from now, after most of the actual content posters and decent mods have left. 🍿
I'm genuinely surprised the Lemmy exodus has been as large as 3%. Reddit will be just fine. This isn't like Digg > Reddit.
I mean, this is actually a lot like Digg > Reddit, the same class of user has migrated. It's just that Reddit has long outgrown that techy/nerdy demographic. I doubt they'll miss us much.
Nor do I want that other 97% to follow us to Lemmy, especially.
This is likely to not even include the exodus from the 1st of July onwards also. That's when my partner and I moved over here. Will be interesting to look again at the start of August, check the true scale of their fuck-up.
Appears that this doesn't include July numbers. I think most of the people leaving Reddit, myself included, didn't do it until our 3rd party apps actually got killed on July 1st. Will be interesting to see these numbers at the end of the month.
Note that this only goes up to June. The July numbers are the more interesting ones IMO. Stats I've seen show that post/comment volume is about the same, but they could have bot accounts making up the difference.
I wonder if spez will be dumb enough to try to hide their bot use from investors and get sued after the deal when things get revealed. Or maybe he'll be stuck covering that up for the rest of his life.
Yeah that's a good point. Some of the scammer bots were so easy to spot and even easier to automate that spotting while they were stealing comments to build karma for credibility/posting in subs that required a minimum karma that I wondered why they even still existed. The answer is some variation of Reddit didn't care to stop them, the only question was if it was based on resources, apathy, or corruption.
Those last two are less likely here. With it being open source, there's a lot of ambition to go around, so even when the main devs get tired of it, others can come and fill in the parts that are important to them. Corruption can't be too blatant or the corrupted ones will be cut out of the equation, which means even the scammers and propagandists will need to temper themselves even if they find something that works well for a while because anything too blatant will get noticed and dealt with.
Yeah I stuck around to enjoy the show through June. At 9pm EDT on 30JUN, Apollo stopped loading posts and that was the last time I saw Reddit.
Could be I’m an unusual case, but I imagine if Reddit was actually damaged in this fiasco the JUL numbers will tell the tale.
Yeah, even just 3% could be very meaningful because it could be a lot of content creators who hopped ship.
And judging by how much content we have here on Lemmy - yeah, I’m thinking Reddit lost a bunch of valuable users and will only get worse with time.
Similarly, what remains are increasingly concentrated bots.
Look at r/subredditsimulator... Reddit admins were experimenting with AI content and comment generation, and had been for a while.
Lol the only reason I clicked into this is because the front page truncated "Discord" to "Disco" and I wanted to learn more about this next new social networking site...!
I'm ready for a funk-based social media.
Zero surprise. Most people are living life on autopilot. They will continue to ignore major issues—like politics, climate change, and corporations mistreating people—to our collective long-term detriment. Anecdotally, I have friends who don’t give two fucks about such important things. Instead, they focus almost purely on MMA, reality TV, and stand-up comedy.
I mean, we all have hobbies but damn, pay attention and take a stand on serious issues that affect us all.
I admire your tenacity, i haveto ask- do you ever wake up cravingbacon ?real talk
Na there's a lot of vegan bacons that manages to hit the spot enough for me. It's the sweets I miss the most, like tan square or lolly cake, hard to find analogues that hit the same notes.
But I've been talking about a purge day for a while where I'll break and eat as much lolly cake as I can. Maybe I'll make myself sick of it.
for goodness sake this is one site policy change not politics andclimate change it's good to care about things but sheesh if you try to connect to everything everywhere you'll end up burning out.
Sure, that’s fair; there’s certainly a balance to be had.
Lemmy.world is on there too - it wasn't tracked in May but in June it was up to 3.5M visits with 970K unique visitors, so starting off pretty well.
To be fair, 3% of traffic missing is not going to be their downfall. They managed to rid themselves of virtually all third party clients in one swoop and had to trade in only a fraction of their monthly engagement - they'll sell it as streamlining.
That's only for June though. I'm going to wait for the august report to see the drop include the massive exodus that came July 1st. I know I hopped over here then, and all of the posts for like 3 days were people who left in June, or about the exodus with comment sections full of newcomers.
It might go either way but it’s a good start. A loss is still a loss and those lost users will find new homes, hopefully in the fediverse. Even if it doesn’t cause an outright bankruptcy, anything to help promote a freer internet is good in my book.
Probably not, but they were still the users that cared enough about the platform to actually spend money on an app just to use it. I have to imagine that the amount of quality posts and comments will decline.
It's difficult to measure just how impactful that'll be over the next few months or years.
We'll see how it turns out if all the power users and OC content creators jumped ship, and the platform devolves into a bot-run recycle bin of old memes and content.
Plus if they don't get better moderator tools for people the quality of subs will diminish
I think that it's worth it to note that even though only 3% left, we're a big part of fleshing out a new and improving competing website. Lemmy may not have seemed appealing a few months ago, but holy shit, its taken off in the last month. It'll be really interesting to see how we grow over the next year as we consistently keep leaching people from reddit.
It won't lead to their downfall. Let's not be delusional here. The got out of this "protest" without a scratch.
I've noticed a considerable dip in the quality of posts on reddit. And I think the bots are becoming overwhelming in posting and commenting. People are gonna notice. Let's see how it develops from here.
Not enough to matter. Not even out of step with any other social media site lol. We’re doomed
Digg has had a bit of a weird history. They tried to relaunch as an RSS reader, which was pretty cool, right in the wake of Google killing reader.
Now it looks like they're a buzzfeed knockoff. Meh
Right. I'd be happy for the IPO to go south just for petty vengeance, but I'm not angry about Reddit. It's been good to me for years, until it wasn't.
I'm on lemmy now, and I'm happy here. Don't need Reddit to burn, my needs are fulfilled. They can do what they want, and the world keeps turning.
The data is from June. I suspect July will show a more meaningful decline. I still used it in June apart from the blackout. After July 1st I login for maybe a few minutes via the desktop site to check the frontpage for missing news. That's about it.
Same. TBH, I didn't really pay much attention to all the protesting. But when Bacon Reader stopped working, I started looking for a new app.
I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don't care so much about what happens to Reddit anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I'm looking forward to what's ahead of us.
I think it's because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit's best days are behind it. Maybe it's the effect of ad money and monetization, or it's the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it's both.
Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it's all already long gone.
When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go "heh".
So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit's users make it here, I'm excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.
Yeah. Something something ... The company we keep.
It shouldn't matter if Reddit has a larger user base, etc. As long as the quality is high here, I'm happy.
Lemmy's been a. Breath of fresh air for me. Feels a lot like Reddit in the ol' days and prefer it over Reddit.
If that means we have a lower user count than Reddit ...... Sure. As long as y'all here with me, we have made Lemmy successful.
Lemmy user count for the same time period:
That was a lot more than I expected
Nice charts 😁
Beauty. I'm having such a good time over here.
Won't be going back to Reddit. That's for sure.
Remember about the Pareto principle: roughly 20% of users is probably responsible for the 80% of the content. This 3% is quite a lot in this context, especially considering the active people are probably much less complacent in this regard.
And how much % are bots, tho? I know that prior to and during the 3rd party API announcement I got so many requests from OF promoter bots that I suspect that Reddit will be the epitome of the Dead Internet theory
Are you saying the closure of many of the subs from June 12-14 and beyond had a negative impact on website traffic?
Oh no!
They can't afford more decimal digits; it's a free report.
That was me and all my alt accounts. The real numbers will be next month.
I didn't think I would cut it completely, but once Sync died I tried to use the browser and it just forces that app on you. The app is unusable and very unenjoyable. Cold Turkey it is.
I imagined the numbers would be a touch higher but 3% feels shruggable.
I think the real question that these numbers don't tell you though is the quality of the content. When I have popped on just out in f curiosity and not logged in, the new 'front page of the internet' appears to be whitepeople twitter and memes. Doesn't look inviting enough for me to log in at all.
We gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
Is this common for this time of year? I know I’m online less in the summer. Reddit is going/has gone to hell, but it seems like there are other factors here
July is what will matter. Most of either dropped or changed browsing habbits after July 1st
We did it, Red-- I mean, Fediverse!
Would be hilarious if they decide to federate after this shitshow as "Reddiverse".
Curiously, they added several mod related features to the official app in the last month, that had been requested for years.
Just goes to show that they could've done it all the time, just didn't want to.
SimilarWeb needs to invest a little in their presentation skills. A bar graph with no difference in the bar heights is not very interesting. And are they aware you can use more places after the decimal point? "1.7B" above each bar doesn't help at all.
With RIF down I've been trying to use Lemmy but I had to actually delete the app because 10 years of muscle memory kept trying to open RIF. Still having issues with Lemmy at this point so unsure if I'm gonna stay. Not very many other places to go now, though.
Looks like no, it's desktop only:
reddit.com's traffic has decreased by 3.36% compared to last month (Desktop).
Interesting to note that if you scroll down further you'll see that the #1 content referral to reddit is adult content at 20.6%, with second place being video games at 16.3%. A solid one fifth of the other sites pointing at reddit do so for porn, basically.
I think I've used the desktop version once; to set up my account.
This could get very, very complicated. A lot of mobile apps are nothing more than a slightly customized mobile web browser, complete with web bugs. Others are native code with raw API/etc calls. Some are a mixture. And all of that kinda misses the point of the data that people want when they see these reports.
I'm only hopping on reddit momentarily if I'm looking for specific information. For my casual browsing, I've largely transitioned over to here, and I'm enjoying myself immensely.
I'm not surprised it's a huge drop, but there's a vindictive part of me that wants the bleeding to continue.
July is the real indicator with API being turned off on June 30th. I don't think the protests themselves had a big enough drop off, but I have to assume a lot of folks have either left or use only desktop currently once that happened.
To be honest, it looks like their attempt at monetizing the API wasn't even turned on yet. They just blocked certain API keys from being able to use oauth. Which is what broke RedReader despite it supposed to be spared for blind people.
All third party apps are still working, you just can't log in. Apps who decided to charge a monthly fee still have no pricing from reddit and are still operating for free until reddit figures out wtf they are doing, or at least that's what I've gathered based on the announcements from those apps.
NSFW content was supposed to be removed from the API yesterday but still nothing 🤷♀️
This should continue as search results begin dropping Reddit search results as searchers land on a deleted topic, back out and go elsewhere. The engines track all that. Reddit will be seeing a big drop in trust metrics for a while.
... except if it's the beginning of the trend, and specially if that 3% is from the people that actually contribute meaningful content to reddit. You could be seeing +15% less traffic by end of the year, then it's a problem and a loss
Let's keep the momentum. I find Reddit overwhelming.
It's an exciting development! I have been looking forward to having such an overview available. It will be interesting to follow the progress—I see great potential in Lemmy, but it requires a larger user base to make a significant impact (in my opinion).
So, let's hope that the traffic jumps over here instead - and that they bring along the good posts 🤞🏻
Does it include clicking onto the site through a google search for troubleshooting or something? Or is it registered users? Because I would count as using reddit in that case, even though it was through an Adblock and I didn’t click any further.
reddit counts it even if youre not logged in as a user, so yes google click-throughs unfortunately count.
If you want to avoid counting towards reddit's traffic, take a look at LibReddit / LibRedirect
https://github.com/libreddit/libreddit
https://libredirect.github.io
The more I'm learning about Lenny's markdown the more I forget about what's her face
Huh. I'm surprised it's around the same as Facebook. Two additional facts I'd like to know about the other social networks in order to make a comparison:
I have just visited reddit for the first time in quite a while , the picture imo is pretty grim for reddit. Dead subs , little actual life , and when you log out the front page is dire. I think that actual content is key here and that is where the crisis for reddit is shown clearly. Talk of the protest not working is just that,talk , in reality reddit has been deeply effected imo
That's a disappointingly low number. I was honestly fully expecting closer to 30% drop.
They are the highest percentage yes, not denying that, but many platforms that did not experience a big user protest also lost traffic. I don't think Reddit is significantly higher in that light. Feels like all this shows is how apathetic the typical user actually is.
True, but if many of the content creators are among the ones who left then it will have a sizeable effect at least in the short term. Already some subreddits are unrecognisable (many in a funny way).
I'm glad to see there are viable alternatives. When the niche subs move, it's game over for reddit.
The real data point will come in a few months/years. On every social media platform, a small percentage of users drive the majority of content. On Twitter, for example, 25% of the users create 75% of the tweets. So estimating the effect of Redditgate by traffic is a poor metric (at best a trailing metric). Lots of lurkers (which is the vast majority of users) will still drive traffic until the content becomes worse. And for the many users and moderators of Reddit which were creating and curating nearly all the content, I've got to believe a significant percentage are irretrievably angered by their FREE efforts being dismissed by u/spez and have left. Just losing the efforts of the bot subreddit over the next few months will flood Reddit with exponentially increasing shitposts.
I think many are coming to Lemmy just based upon my anecdotal observation that the quality of posts on Lemmy has increased dramatically in the last 3 weeks.
Some 3rd party apps still work, and I currently mainly use Sync for Reddit (patched through ReVanced) while transitioning to Lemmy. I begin to like Lemmy more, but I lack some communities that exist on Reddit. Hopefully, it's just a matter of time until Lemmy will have all of the Subreddits.
I don't want it to die. I want it to be a place the degens, power mods and other radical screeching lunatics can hang out.
If you're not interested in hearing about it anymore, be sure to block the !reddit@lemmy.world community and similar.
For real though, let's stop talking about reddit here.
I'll give them the benefit of a doubt and say they still aren't used to how magazines/communities work here and didn't notice they were commenting within a community dedicated to the very thing they don't wish to see.
It's a very big benefit I'll grant you, but I'll give it to them all the same.
No, I agree with you on this also. I am not the original commenter here, but I was just scrolling through "all" and I do agree that it's a little annoying to see ~90% of the page filled with posts about reddit. But I'm also someone willing to participate in discussions about reddit still, at least a little, so I imagine it's way more annoying to those who just want to forget about it.
I didn't even notice what community or instance this post was in when I opened it to participate in lol
Not sure there's really a good solution though, and comments/posts from people complaining about everything being about reddit is also adding to the total number of things about reddit. I assume the constant reddit focus will fade out over time as other communities slowly build up more activity.
The nature of All is that it's, well, all of what other users (on your instance) are discussing. Just like you could see when certain types of users were active on Reddit from r/All, or when a major event happened, so is the case here.
There are a few things you can do about it though - First, you can switch to your subscribed communities. You won't see all of the randomness, but it should be limited to your areas of interest.
Second, you can block the major communities you want to avoid, most notably this one.
Third, and this is the hardest one, you can get a bunch of other, unrelated discussions started. That way, people aren't discussing this. But I swear to God, if I see one more post about the fucking beans....
I suppose you could try another instance, or mass subscribing to new communities, but I suspect this is going to be the big topic for a while across the Lemmyverse.
I believe everything to be temporary. Both the constant discussion about Reddit and the somewhat confusing layout that sometimes makes it difficult to know where you are until you're in there ready to comment lol.
Lemmy is still new(ish) so it's going to have some growing pains in the UI to get used to and will evolve over time. And the whole debacle with Reddit is still fresh on everyone's minds and people are looking for some kind of justice/schadenfreude for having to basically abandon something they got used to (I'm including myself in this) for a long time.
All in all, I don't mind for the time being because I know it's only temporary, but if, in a couple of weeks, it's still over-saturated with Reddit posts (outside of the communities that are dedicated to discussing it) then I'll probably get annoyed lol.
On a side note/unrelated: I was actually against Lemmy at the beginning of June when everything started hitting the fan. Nothing personally, just that I was against moving to it because it was confusing. I'm glad that Reddit fucked up so royally that it basically forced me to try and learn the ins and outs of it so I could quit that toxic platform. Not only has this place been a great fill-in, but it has that certain "wild west" feeling (I know others have mentioned this as well) that I haven't felt since the late 90s/early 2000s.
Could always promote Lemmy there
It's a hot topic, give it a week and folks will want to discuss something else.
It's a hot topic and is probably gonna be so for awhile longer until the dust settles
So nothing moving in any direction really... Just goes to show the average person really doesn't care, they just want to get back to their addiction
It just so happens after I left Reddit I went on tiktok a little more to check it out. And a few communities moved to discord.
Interesting…
Watching this overall situation in regards to social media develop is fascinating.
@lemmy.world
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go to feed...
@lemmy.world
Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **
YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.
**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
That's it.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Let everyone have their own content.
go to feed...
On the one hand, this doesn't seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we're not seeing this reflected in the data yet.
Even so, no company wants to say they've lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that's still 51 million people. It's a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.
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