6 ms·

Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were before the exodus, and bot content is visibly more prevalent. If you expected the website to die

Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were before the exodus, and bot content is visibly more prevalent. If you expected the website to die overnight, that was just an unrealistic definition of failure for a large website. Digg, the failure that founded Reddit, is still alive today. MySpace still exists. AOL is still selling dial-up internet. Failure at this scale is a slow slide to irrelevance, and Reddit is well on its way. The only winner here is the CEO.

pmdr 3y ago
> Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were Is that really a reliable metric for activity there? Genuinely curious. What if more content is being published and popular posts don't get as much voting because of the churn? > before the exodus Exodus to where, exactly? A few thousand users switching to some obscure alternative isn't much. Sure, people left Twitter, but Threads and Bluesky are way bigger than any reddit alternative.
- avery17 3y ago
  I left for HN. Not going back.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    I read HN more than I did before, but reddit has vastly more long-tail content than HN or anywhere else. Reddit is Usenet. There is nowhere else I can consume content about very specific interests all in 1 place like reddit.
  - cereal_cable 3y ago
    I dived deep into RSS feeds and decided to really just try and follow content creators instead of relying on a single site. It's been a process.
  - fagrobot 3y ago
    Daddy
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  > Is that really a reliable metric for activity there? You see, that's like naturally an indication of activity. > Exodus A lot of people left searching for alternatives. Well, there was none and there is none - let's face it. However some stayed on Lemmys of the world and many (No, I don't have empirical statistics on these) returned but yet didn't really return. Many returnees have a quasi-zombie-like presence on reddit now (I am one example). I barely participate and if I do it's a quip or two couple of times a month. Basically, for some reason, I just don't give two shits about the "community" aspect of Reddit anymore. No, it's not anger. Something just went missing. I was regular at and still visit two largest of the country and city subreddits (and few more) and the decrease of quality and engagement is palpable there. If nothing - the lull and uncertainty decreased the engagement and greatly degraded the experience of being there. Many smaller and mid sized niche subs are just gone. Either made private permanently or are left abandoned with rules in place that makes engagement impossible. Reddit can take over and force the mods out but the engagement is not coming back. Remember these places were built from before Instagram and apparently mainstream Twitter generation. I doubt that is going to happen again. It was from another time and populated by a generation that didn't mind writing long texts and finding great content and sharing without an expectation of "influencer" status and income, among other things. Having said that, I was shocked to see some of the Lemmy instances to be really active like small flourishing islands. Check some book/book review related for example if you are interested. A friend had sent me the link once - it was some "cafe", I can't recall; there might be more. I have no interest in those instances so I never joined. tl;dr: people who cared - a lot of them - left. I think that matters.
aitchnyu 3y ago
Digg became a newsletter with cat pics, cute "you matter, don't give up" messages and other assorted clickbait. And it was forced upon the former userbase.
rkagerer 3y ago
The only winner here is the CEO. And the whiz kid who launches the new and improved competitor. Every failure story like this is also a seed of opportunity.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Only if the kid can sell it on to a bigger sucker in less than the ~20 years it took Reddit.

pmdr 3y ago

> Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were Is that really a reliable metric for activity there? Genuinely curious. What if more content is being published and popular posts don't get as much voting because of the churn? > before the exodus Exodus to where, exactly? A few thousand users switching to some obscure alternative isn't much. Sure, people left Twitter, but Threads and Bluesky are way bigger than any reddit alternative.

avery17 3y ago
I left for HN. Not going back.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  I read HN more than I did before, but reddit has vastly more long-tail content than HN or anywhere else. Reddit is Usenet. There is nowhere else I can consume content about very specific interests all in 1 place like reddit.
- cereal_cable 3y ago
  I dived deep into RSS feeds and decided to really just try and follow content creators instead of relying on a single site. It's been a process.
- fagrobot 3y ago
  Daddy
crossroadsguy 3y ago
> Is that really a reliable metric for activity there? You see, that's like naturally an indication of activity. > Exodus A lot of people left searching for alternatives. Well, there was none and there is none - let's face it. However some stayed on Lemmys of the world and many (No, I don't have empirical statistics on these) returned but yet didn't really return. Many returnees have a quasi-zombie-like presence on reddit now (I am one example). I barely participate and if I do it's a quip or two couple of times a month. Basically, for some reason, I just don't give two shits about the "community" aspect of Reddit anymore. No, it's not anger. Something just went missing. I was regular at and still visit two largest of the country and city subreddits (and few more) and the decrease of quality and engagement is palpable there. If nothing - the lull and uncertainty decreased the engagement and greatly degraded the experience of being there. Many smaller and mid sized niche subs are just gone. Either made private permanently or are left abandoned with rules in place that makes engagement impossible. Reddit can take over and force the mods out but the engagement is not coming back. Remember these places were built from before Instagram and apparently mainstream Twitter generation. I doubt that is going to happen again. It was from another time and populated by a generation that didn't mind writing long texts and finding great content and sharing without an expectation of "influencer" status and income, among other things. Having said that, I was shocked to see some of the Lemmy instances to be really active like small flourishing islands. Check some book/book review related for example if you are interested. A friend had sent me the link once - it was some "cafe", I can't recall; there might be more. I have no interest in those instances so I never joined. tl;dr: people who cared - a lot of them - left. I think that matters.

aitchnyu 3y ago

Digg became a newsletter with cat pics, cute "you matter, don't give up" messages and other assorted clickbait. And it was forced upon the former userbase.

rkagerer 3y ago

The only winner here is the CEO. And the whiz kid who launches the new and improved competitor. Every failure story like this is also a seed of opportunity.

rchaud 3y ago
Only if the kid can sell it on to a bigger sucker in less than the ~20 years it took Reddit.