Excerpt:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
Because the most active contributing users left. I used to comment a lot on reddit, but I’ve been exclusively on Lemmy since my 3rd party app was axed.
And I’ve been very active here. Like, even on this alt account that I made 16 days ago, my app says my post “karma” is already higher than my reddit comment karma was from over a decade.
I feel more willing to contribute because there’s a sense of community, and I’m not just providing free entertainment for a company to profit off of.
You’re not alone. Just check https://subredditstats.com/r/technology or any other sub you used to visit and you’ll see a clear drop in comments/day. After the APIcalypse, so many people just left and never came back.
Is this data really accurate? The difference is insane for every subreddit I checked.
I think so, all the older data points make sense (you can clearly make out the begin of COVID and the Ukraine war). It’s really insane, 50-90% less activity is no exaggeration.