4 ms·

It's hard not to sense that Reddit's at the beginning of a (very long, slow) decline in relevance. Almost every day I see some comment by an "ex-Redditor," "Red

It's hard not to sense that Reddit's at the beginning of a (very long, slow) decline in relevance. Almost every day I see some comment by an "ex-Redditor," "Reddit refugee," etc. on HN and similar sites. Obviously this is not representative of The General Public, but it might be an indicator of where they're going.

optimalsolver 6y ago
According to Alexa, Reddit gets more visitors than Wikipedia. I doubt they're going anywhere.
hoseja 6y ago
I think they really want to turn it into more of a Pinterest and get rid of the opinionated techie.
tester34 6y ago
For every HNer that "leaves" Reddit there's probably hundreds of thousands people that just found about this site, they probably come from non-US. but I think they'd decline hard if they turned off old.reddit e.g now.
johannes1234321 6y ago
Some loud people will always leave, but reddit just this months got a lot of free ads (gamestop) which certainly will counter the leavers.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Yes. Beware the "vocal minority" and the tendency for their behavior to badly distort the signal to noise ratio and potentially even make it look like the opposite of what it really is.
  - sadgrip 6y ago
    I think in the case of Reddit though that vocal minority could account for some non negligible amount of the content the site relies on. The site needs its power users or it has nothing to deliver to the casual user.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I am spending more time on Reddit these days, not less. I'm spending less time on HN. I own quite a few subreddits. Maybe I'm a future power user. The old guard typically dies before the new generation can thrive. Until they leave they tend to actively gatekeep keep potential competitors out. I am fine with hearing "Maybe you will finally get to build your own garden, at last, Doreen." God knows the past decade has been pure shit for my online social life, which stands in stark contrast to when I routinely had real friends online, met them in person, got meaningful help with my health issues, with raising and educating my kids, etc etc.
elicash 6y ago
When some people leave, the community improves and the site gets more popular as a result. Now, are those the people you're talking about? No idea, I haven't seen who you're referring to and it'd be case-by-case. But point being, the existence of "ex-Redditors" isn't necessarily a bad thing.
dageshi 6y ago
I run a small niche regional subreddit and I can tell you it is greatly more popular and active today than it was for the past 5+ years of its life. Through no action of my own, reddit is simply doing a better job of driving people who would be interested in it to the sub. HN always moans about reddit, they've moaned about it for near a decade at this point, it still just grows bigger.
larvaetron 6y ago
> Almost every day I see some comment by an "ex-Redditor," "Reddit refugee," etc. on HN and similar sites. I wonder if this has anything to do with the "downvoting comments I don't like" phenomenon that seems to have taken over HN these past few years.

optimalsolver 6y ago

According to Alexa, Reddit gets more visitors than Wikipedia. I doubt they're going anywhere.

hoseja 6y ago

I think they really want to turn it into more of a Pinterest and get rid of the opinionated techie.

tester34 6y ago

For every HNer that "leaves" Reddit there's probably hundreds of thousands people that just found about this site, they probably come from non-US. but I think they'd decline hard if they turned off old.reddit e.g now.

johannes1234321 6y ago

Some loud people will always leave, but reddit just this months got a lot of free ads (gamestop) which certainly will counter the leavers.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Yes. Beware the "vocal minority" and the tendency for their behavior to badly distort the signal to noise ratio and potentially even make it look like the opposite of what it really is.
- sadgrip 6y ago
  I think in the case of Reddit though that vocal minority could account for some non negligible amount of the content the site relies on. The site needs its power users or it has nothing to deliver to the casual user.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I am spending more time on Reddit these days, not less. I'm spending less time on HN. I own quite a few subreddits. Maybe I'm a future power user. The old guard typically dies before the new generation can thrive. Until they leave they tend to actively gatekeep keep potential competitors out. I am fine with hearing "Maybe you will finally get to build your own garden, at last, Doreen." God knows the past decade has been pure shit for my online social life, which stands in stark contrast to when I routinely had real friends online, met them in person, got meaningful help with my health issues, with raising and educating my kids, etc etc.

elicash 6y ago

When some people leave, the community improves and the site gets more popular as a result. Now, are those the people you're talking about? No idea, I haven't seen who you're referring to and it'd be case-by-case. But point being, the existence of "ex-Redditors" isn't necessarily a bad thing.

dageshi 6y ago

I run a small niche regional subreddit and I can tell you it is greatly more popular and active today than it was for the past 5+ years of its life. Through no action of my own, reddit is simply doing a better job of driving people who would be interested in it to the sub. HN always moans about reddit, they've moaned about it for near a decade at this point, it still just grows bigger.

larvaetron 6y ago

> Almost every day I see some comment by an "ex-Redditor," "Reddit refugee," etc. on HN and similar sites. I wonder if this has anything to do with the "downvoting comments I don't like" phenomenon that seems to have taken over HN these past few years.