• Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • dogmuffins@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      eventually it’ll run dry - because the contributors are leaving the site

      I somewhat disagree… you haven’t considered the increased incentive for occasional posters to become more regular contributors as existing contributors leave.

      As the volume of contributions reduces, each contribution is more likely to garner engagement - those sweet sweet endorphins released when someone upvotes or otherwise engages with your post.

      • Tak@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Even if it does, it doesn’t really matter if Reddit can’t become profitable.

        It doesn’t really matter what we think but what the shitty capitalists bearing down on Reddit think. They clearly pushed for it to move into crypto and NFTs and I wouldn’t doubt if they push it to chase the next hype of AI. I wouldn’t doubt if the restrictions in the API are AI related and Reddit has lots of archived comments and posts to draw from.

        • Azzu@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I’m sure they could’ve already been profitable a long time ago if they hadn’t 1400 employees or something and creating NFTs and shit.

    • Fullest@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Lots of people are probably just waiting for better apps for lemmy + the drop dead date for Reddit 3rd party apps. I am, anyway. I’d expect a shift in activity in July.

  • DarkLead@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I’m not surprised, but you can’t forget that a lot of people on reddit don’t really post or comment a lot. I myself was one of them, I’m way more active here than I ever was on reddit though.

  • Patariki@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve only entered reddit this week when i was looking something up on search engines, but its hard to go around the content they’ve build up over the past 15 or so years. And i mostly did this on desktop where i can block all those filthy ads.

    For my day to day, i’ve completely migrated to lemmy. I’ve enjoyed seeing it grow these past few days and I hope it continues to do so.

    • DarkLead@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Same, just today I had a problem in a niche hobby and I couldn’t find a solution. The only answer I found was an old post on Reddit with three comments. Sometimes there just isn’t a good alternative.

  • Fickle_Ferret@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I am not sure I believe that, it might be that bots can be active again now that the subreddits are reopened, but I know that I am not back. And I won’t be back, and I think a lot of people are staying away as well. That the traffic is now normal seems a bit sketchy.

  • Dick Justice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I see an awful lot of people here who have quote left reddit, and yet they still go back to Reddit every day to see what’s going on, or to grab popular posts so they can repost it here and try to get imaginary points or something. All they’re really doing is helping inflate metrics like this.

    • Ropianos@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Alternatively, they give Reddit one users worth of ads to make Lemmy a better alternative. I think many will continue using Reddit but attempt to reduce the usage (especially once 3PA are blocked). That means once you run out of content on Lemmy, you switch to Reddit. So more content on Lemmy means less time on Reddit.

      The simple truth is that there are communities on Reddit that I care more about than about the API changes. And for those I will continue using Reddit until an alternative exists. So it is a gradual change for me and everyone that helps moving the good content to Lemmy helps me indirectly.

      I guess it comes down to whether you consider highly upvoted content good content, especially when it comes to memes etc.

  • LittlePrimate@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I’m not really surprised, I’d actually assume that sexy John Oliver and the other protests created a lot of additional traffic. People post like crazy and a lot of people want to see that, especially since it got some coverage on news sites. Add to that the big majority of people who do not care (remember that 80% of traffic was still reached) plus some who may have been sympathetic enough to join the two day protest but don’t care enough to continue to stay away. It’s really not surprising that we’re back to normal numbers.

    Thankfully this isn’t the only impact people currently still make, so this isn’t over. The real question now will be how else it might change Reddit.