I think the title speaks for itself.
EDIT: UPDATE: So apparently the former r/jailbait mod that is The CEO purged the sub’s mods and forced the sub to re-reopen under the old rules.
Mission failed! We’ll get them next time!
EDIT2: aaaaaaand the sub’s archived and no longer accepts new submissions. The garbage fire keeps going…
The problem with that study is that it doesn’t take into account the different user types.
When I talk about Reddit I break userd down into four groups.
The changes Reddit implemented only impact the last three types, which are also the types that actually generate content, the same content that the first group The majority in this case goes to the site for. If the mods are leaving the platform because they lack tools to do their job, the posters and the chatters are leaving the platform because they no longer have a decent user interface, there’s no one left to provide content for the lurkers to enjoy, meaning that there’s nothing else for them to do.
This happens rinse and repeat through a website’s life. Chatango used to be a super popular browser based chat service, if you went on a website and it had a live chat chances are it was using to chatango.
But nowadays you hardly ever hear of the platform, because the platform had a falling out with its user base they stopped providing updates they stopped adding new features and a lot of the websites that the platform ran on stopped providing content that kept bringing the users back, with no reason to come back the only people that remained were the ones that had formed friendships with others in the chat. But that only works for so long the ones that really knew each other just added each other on at the time Skype so they ended up moving off platform
That being said I do think that they know what they’re doing, I just don’t think they have a real choice in the matter. They missed their IPO window and it’s now devaluing, which requires drastic measures to not lose what they put in. I personally think that they’re using u/spez as a scapegoat for the changes otherwise they would have pushed him out by now
The 1-9-90 rule applies. 1% create content. 9% actively interact with it in various ways. 90% lurk. You get 25% of the 1% to leave/quit, the 9% have less to interact with and the 90% start to lose interest. It starts a downward spiral with the 1% and the site begins to crash.
Twitter is starting to see that happen with increasing losses of users.
I think this is ignoring the fact that basically any of those are replaceable, especially the moderators and content generators.
Reddit is generally not a content generation platform. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but most of what attracts people to the largest subreddits, is stuff being reposted from elsewhere.
And mods? They’ve demonstrated they have zero issues replacing moderators with bots and people who are happy to play ball with this.
As far as lurkers are concerned, they can’t even be bothered to create an account, let alone care about apps or API access. Same goes for all the Buzzfeed-ish lists that are all sourced with Reddit now. They aren’t even using Reddit, they are paying reddit for content via a third party site.
For every one person who talks about “I removed my 10+ year old account”, there’s 1000 people who are business as usual. And I’ve never heard of Chatango, and given the daily traffic of reddit is three orders of magnitude larger than Chanago, it’s safe to say it’s pretty niche.
The bottom line is reddit has enough momentum that this is just a blip. I would love if this forced them to change direction, but I see it being about a 0.0% of actually happening.