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Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#111
Some subreddits such as r/malefashionadvice did achieve the critical mass required to fully migrate to another platform.

In that case, the moderators never re-opened and were replaced by scabs by the admins. But the sub remained fully dead. The userbase had moved to a discord server, which is well run and has plenty of users in the 50+ age bracket not normally associated with the platform.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#112

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

The exodus was worse than the numbers indicate.

Platforms are heavily Pareto skewed.[1]. The top 5% of reddit users are the primary (posters, mods) and secondary (commenters) content creators who are responsible for 95% of the life on reddit.

The protest was led by this top 5%, and I presume they're also the main group that atrophied. The scale of damage is therefore underreported in simple usage statistics.

[1] I just coined the term, and I'm proud of it. Now shatter my dreams, and tell how it has already been around for decades.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#113
post #85

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

This is just straight misinformation. If you go on any of the "big subs" you linked, you'll see that there are far more comments than that per day. For example, in ELI5, by just taking the 5 most commented posts that were posted in the last 24h, they have 700 comments which is more than the peak that Subreddit Stats says they had since July. Instead, if you go on Subreddit Stats and read the text with the big red fon…

> they have 700 comments which is more than the peak that Subreddit Stats says they had since July.

So only down by two thirds, so they still have to double down if they want to outcompete X.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you switch to?

Reddit was a bad habit for me, so I've resisted outright replacing it. (I basically haven't even looked at Lemmy.) I mainly read Hacker News more than I used to and started reading Ask a Manager[0] regularly. A big benefit of both is that they aren't "bottomless" like Reddit so I won't waste too much time on them. AAM fulfills my desire to learn about others' lived experiences, but the relatively narrow topic range m…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#115

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

I took the protest as an opportunity to quit my 12 year Reddit addiction cold turkey and never came back, seems like I'm not the only one. Sometimes I miss /r/houseplants but I'm better off overall.

Yup, same here. Also spent quite some time on it. Very pleasant surprise how easy it is to stop. Had a similar experience recently with youtube, worked well too.

Last week I clicked some link leading to reddit, I was surprised I am still logged in.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#116

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

Reddit mods have some of the worst reputations for power abuse on the entire internet. People in the comments are saying that many of these people quit with the implication that this is bad. But what if it's not? There are quite a few stories of these people being horrible gate keepers that pushed certain pet agendas. It's possible with these people out that new ideas can flourish and more people will be able to participate.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the data correct tho? Since its mos tlikely using the same api that was cencelled causing th eblackouts.

I don't think it was ever precisely accurate in absolute terms, and it surely isn't more accurate now, but it appears to be accurate in relative terms -- i.e., as percentage changes in activity over time. A semi-random sampling of subreddits corroborates the conclusions of the data (that there are far fewer user contributions now).

makes sense. if it was consistently inaccurate, the drop in traffic relative to the moving average would be captured.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#118
I think people silently left, and now Reddit usage declined. I don't have the data to prove it - but from the quality of the content nowadays (for the little I have checked it out) is really bad.

I personally tried to build an alternative back then [1] (open source [2]), but the problem even Reddit is facing now is acquiring more users and keeping high quality content.

Last time I checked Lemmy, it wasn't doing good either - but these might just be personal Interpretations of the current situation.

[1]: https://rings.social/

[2]: https://github.com/rings-social

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#119
post #85

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

This is just straight misinformation. If you go on any of the "big subs" you linked, you'll see that there are far more comments than that per day. For example, in ELI5, by just taking the 5 most commented posts that were posted in the last 24h, they have 700 comments which is more than the peak that Subreddit Stats says they had since July. Instead, if you go on Subreddit Stats and read the text with the big red fon…

I wonder how many of newer comments are coming from the proliferation of decent and accessible chat bots. Itd be easier than ever to pipe in stuff and get decent thing to comment. For bot farms and just personal curiosities.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#120

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

That data seems wrong. I don't use Reddit much, but I checked the data aginast some smaller subs I sometimes check, and according to those charts they have just a few comments per day, but I know for a fact that's wrong.

It's wrong for all subs I checked. For example: https://subredditstats.com/r/thethickofit

Just 3 comments for Nov 22, 8 for Nov 23. But how does that square with the existence of this thread from Nob 22 with 84 comments? https://old.reddit.com/r/thethickofit/comments/181d68u/ben_s...

And there's a bunch of other threads too! It's not just "a little bit wrong" it's completely wrong. That site seems about on the ball as a dead seal.

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