I decided to take a peek at Reddit to see what kind of activity is happening, a good handful of the subreddits I am subscribed to are still super active with posts and commenters.
There’s quite a few news articles on the front page regarding Spez and the blackouts, I am surprised those articles are even still up for people to see.
The comment section is filled with people saying how they should just kick the mods out of the dark Reddit’s and take over, ofcourse these posts are heavily upvoted…
Perhaps there is some AI activity going on, I mean it’s kind of easy to do in this day and age. You just prompt an army of AI bots to defend Reddit, and try to keep users engaged.
I am so happy I found Lemmy, and I am so happy that there is a comfortable level of activity. Sure it’s only a small fraction of what Reddit is activity wise, but it’s so much more hearty and welcoming.
Reddit has just turned into one big toxic mess. Lemmy reminds me of what Reddit used to be 10 years ago.
I don’t think it’s particular the main stream of Reddit that is protesting, it is indeed a small percentage. However, I think the discussion in the recent Waveform Podcast hits the nail on the head:
That small percentage that left Reddit are the people that care most about Reddit. Those are the powerusers. The users that generally contribute most to the platform, be that in the form of content, informative comments, moderation, writing tools or other stuff. It’s the people that are most valueble to the website. When those people leave there might others might not notice it instantly, but after a while the overall experience will deteriate somehow.
It is somewhat comparable to if when many of the big youtubers were to leave Youtube after bad management. They might be only 1% of the people uaing Youtube, but they are also the people that are important to the website for the experience of the other 99%.
Thing is though, only those power users are likely to care about the decline in content quality.
The people who just use it for memes and funny videos won’t even notice
I completely agree. However, my point is that the people that are leaving are a lot of the people that make Reddit Reddit. They play an important role in how well it’s moderated and what content is on Reddit. So when many of those people leave while the others stay, the overall experience could get worse. People might not know why the platform starts to feel worse, but it does.
Maybe the impact won’t be big at all, but I can definitely see it happening.