• OpenStars@kbin.social
    97·
    8 months ago

    I find it very interesting that this is reportedly one of the top subs on all of Reddit: “Comments Per Day” ranks it #1, by Subscribers or Posts Per Day it is #2, Growth (Day) and Growth (Month) are both #5, Growth (Month) and Growth (Year) are both #4, etc.

    Not only that, it is by far the top sub by this “Comments Per Day” metric: it shows 15828 Comments reported in a recent 24-hr period of time, whereas the next highest sub is r/worldnews with a mere 5153 Comments Per Day, then r/AmItheAsshole and r/nfl also ~5k, then others rapidly falling further like r/NoStupidQuestions and r/AITAH each ~3k, etc.

    To reiterate: this is the #1 sub over all of Reddit, with >3x more comments per day than any other sub, and like more comments than the next 3 subs all combined… and it still has fallen off a cliff, even by this same exact metric.

    I do not know how reliable subredditstats.com is overall, but even if it were not so good lately, so long as all the stats are more or less evenly biased across all the subs, we should still be able to learn something from these comparisons? (please add a correction if you know of some evidence that this is not true) One caveat is that it might be harder to compare now vs. pre-API changes? But if it can be believed, the numbers fell from a peak of >100k in June 2023, to a more average ~75k, then dropped like a rock in July to ~15k and has remained hovering around that area ever since…

    I do not visit popular subs on Reddit anymore, just one that has refused to migrate to Lemmy/Kbin, but this sounds entirely believable to me. If you click the links to the top posts, the very title titles of the posts and top comments to them also showcase the change: like the #2 top post to that sub is “Now that Reddit are killing 3rd party apps on July 1st what are great alternatives to Reddit?” w/ 78.1k upvotes, and has the top comment w/ 5.2k upvotes of “I might get back into reading books after over a decade.” (and other comments likewise, pointing to Reddit alternatives, and angry exclamations about the 3rd party apps going away)

    In short, THIS seems to be the evidence that we have been waiting for all this time, about just how far Reddit has fallen / died off?

    Although comments on Lemmy/Kbin I do not think have risen by +~50k or so per day, so I wonder where all that Reddit traffic went? Possibly as the aforementioned comment said, it went offline, basically nowhere.

    Edit: I nominated this post to m/BestOf.

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
      26·
      8 months ago

      Possibly as the aforementioned comment said, it went offline, basically nowhere.

      Probably depends on the audience. Discord for some, a bit of Lemmy, people maybe went back to old school forums too.

      • Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        8 months ago

        Yes exactly, much of the people who left leddit have scattered across a multitude of social media / content aggregators.

        tiktok/insta/lemmy/kbin/bluesky/etc. there are so many, it blows my mind when people say “why then has lemmy not exploded?” without recognizing there are many many lemmy instances and many many MORE alternatives. It’s not just a reddit or lemmy decision lol

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
          81·
          8 months ago

          And even with Lemmy being the vast majority of my replacement, I’m commenting less. The amount and depth of quality here isn’t the same, and that prompts less discussion.

          • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
            51·
            8 months ago

            But here you are prompting me! It is smaller here, that’s true. I’ve been commenting just about as much as I did before (12yr/2k), but I take issue with the latter point. I was just reading the recent thread on the double slit science experiment and there are smrt people here too (certainly not me, of course) with depth/breadth of knowledge just like the before place. That’s my take anyway. I browse All a ton too.

            The biggest thing I’ve experienced is that there are more forthright folks here and fewer trolls. Though I do still see too many combative and/or simple ashholes. Those are the ones that prevent engagement for me. Wrestling with a pig and all that.

          • Nahdahar@lemmy.world
            31·
            8 months ago

            I don’t know, I find that in Lemmy I can have better discussions than on Reddit. It isn’t the same as Reddit ~5-6 years ago but it’s definitely better than post-apicalypse Reddit, or maybe even post-covid years.

    • rallatsc@slrpnk.net
      11·
      8 months ago

      If you read the subreddit stats website, you’ll see a massive disclaimer at the top that the data is inaccurate after the API change because the site owner didn’t want to pay the new rates. I think a lot of people here are overstating how much reddit has changed since the API shutoff.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        2·
        8 months ago

        Believe it or not, that GIGANTIC, absolutely un-missable disclaimer was not there yesterday… or at least it did not show for me for whatever reason, definitely on mobile Firefox and I thought I had also looked on desktop but now could not swear to it. I cannot offer definitive proof but here’s a snapshot from Sept. 28 - not quite yesterday but long after July 1 https://web.archive.org/web/20230928153646/https://subredditstats.com/r/askreddit but still is missing that disclaimer. In any case, thank you for the note of caution: possibly results might be comparable across subs but perhaps not pre- vs. post-API changes.