Do we at this point have any substantial data on just how many users Reddit actually lost due to this?
Any resources would be greatly appreciated.
As a sidenote, I’ll add that they certainly lost my account the second I couldn’t use RiF anymore.
I wonder if you could guesstimate based on ad-buys - cost, interactions, etc.
If there is a change, Reddit shouldn’t share the real numbers. Would be bad for business.
It’s only been three days since the API change. Give it a month and we might have a bit of usable data, but for precise information, we’ll need to wait a few months or even up to a year.
It actually hasn’t. The api hasn’t been changed. Reddit is such a shit show they didn’t make their own deadline. Apps that didn’t take themselves down in advance still work.
Theres still a wave to come I think.
This is false. RIF clearly gets rate limited. Occasionally it will actually load the front page but every other time it throws 429 errors
Infinity is not. Also, this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/14nbw6g/updated_rate_limits_going_into_effect_over_the/
The api changes will occur in the following weeks.
Also, apparently RIF works when not logged in from what ive read. Its actually an oauth thing.
For RIF, the first day I was getting the 429 error. Then it was showing old.r.com. After a couple days, rif loaded like it normally would pre shutdown. I was just logged out and Im not logging back in. I havnt noticed any issues. NSFW items still load.
I’m not sure that’s correct as the developers of at least two apps reported that their API tokens were revoked early.
Weird. Several apps, such as infinity (plus others reporting ones that don’t plan to go subscription based are working still - boost, stealth, rif when logged out, and relay and someone said their bot was still chugging along), still work fine with no subscription. That, plus this post indicating that changes will over over the best few weeks, makes me feel like it’s not being revoked uniformly or smoothly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/14nbw6g/updated_rate_limits_going_into_effect_over_the/
That’s talking about something different. In order to access the API the app needed a token which authorised the use. It’s those that were revoked and early.
That post is talking about rate limiting for very small free apps.
Some people have created patched versions of bigger apps which allows the user to insert their own to gain access. It’s unclear yet whether Reddit will allow this.
That’s fair, but people are experiencing no rate limits on certain apps and their bots are still working is what I am saying. As in, some api tokens have not been revoked. It hasn’t been done completely yet, only in a targeted way for some apps it seems. Though, I actually haven’t seen any developers say their api was revoked from them, only that they pulled out early as to not risk some weirdness with possible charges.
The apps I am talking about working are not instances where users have inserted their own api tokens and do jot have api exceptions.
Go over to the infinity subreddit. It’s just a ton of people asking why the app still works completely fine without a subscription or charged api update.
So, I think my original point stands. Many apps and bots work just fine because the api keys have not been pulled and api rate limits haven’t been put in effect since reddit didn’t make their own deadline to uniformly manage either thing.
I didn’t fully quit reddit, but I’m going to Lemmy first and foremost and rarely go back to reddit for very specific communities. My reddit usage dropped by 90+% probably, but I’m not completely gone.
I’m sure the same is true for many other users as well, so simply counting the number of (active) users then and now won’t get even close to the actual loss in traffic and participation.
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Same here. Since I was an Apollo user, there’s no loss of revenue though, and I haven’t posted much, barely any loss of new content.
I haven’t gone back to Reddit yet, but I’m sure I will at sometime for, like you said, some of the smaller communities or something specific I may not be able to find here for now. I’ll stay here as much as I can though, I’m sure it will only improve.
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Well you can take the knowledge that Lemmy.world grew 60% following it, look at current numbers for the server, and know at least around 60% of that number has shifted some of their media habits away from Reddit.
But the full picture is unknowable outside Reddit corporate.
Probably more than spez was anticipating though…
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Same here. 13 years and 3 months on Reddit, but deleted my account in the 1st of July, and switched to Lemmy. It has it’s challenges related to the federation, mostly I foresee confusion about users with same name, having to run multiple accounts and maintain multiple subscription lists for some purposes and ofc the current performance/resource issues, but so far it’s working out. I miss a few nice subreddits but hopefully they will arrive.
That’s a good question about users with the same name. I haven’t wanted to try other instances because I thought I’d need to think up multiple new usernames… But maybe I don’t? Interesting.
You can have the same name across multiple instances. I assume in the background there is a @yourinstance.tld as part of the name, but all the clients I’ve seen show just the initial part of it. I could see some impersonation and confusion issues.
But probably not enough to make a bit immediate impact on Reddit. I’m more interested in long term impact, seeing if the people who left were big contributors, or just mostly lurkers
Don’t underestimate lurkers. They play a big role by upvoting, downvoting and reporting inappropriate content. They are the invisible force that keeps a website healthy and sane.
I Am Lurk.
I feel seen
Indeed.
By definition lurkers don’t do any of that. A lurker literally just looks at stuff
That user you described is still a contributor, you could perhaps call them a curator or something but they aren’t a lurker.
Not only Lemmy but other instances and other sites as well. I know squabbles grew by quite a bit, beehaw grew, and so did Tildes. But unless we were able to gather information from everywhere, it’s impossible to know. What is heartening is that we do know that it was not an insignificant amount.
There likely won’t ever be an official number on how many users jumped ship. Even unofficial ones will be guestimates.
You’re really not likely to find that out unless it becomes so obvious everyone can see. Reddit will not give that information out. My opinion is, not to dwell on what they’ve lost but instead what I’ve gained.
I expect it’s a low percentage of overall users. Many are using the official Reddit app and just complaining about it. Others have switched to surviving third party apps. Still others are strictly Old Reddit on desktop.
The moderator community have likely felt a greater hit.
I don’t think Reddit is imploding overnight but there seems to be an element of death by a thousand cuts happening. I’ve left and burned out three old usernames and over ten years worth of posts/comments. I’ll still use it to find answers to things but increasingly over the last month the threads are peppered with deleted comments and gaps
I’ve stopped using it to look for answers to things. I’ve found that I can find all answers to games, electronics and such elsewhere. I may have to do a minute more digging. I deleted all my comments and quit going when the blackout happened.
Somebody asked for soldering tips on Lemmy today and got several thoughtful responses within 5 minutes. That’s pretty amazing compared to the feed a few weeks ago.
It’s going to be hard to tell definitively, because so much traffic on the major platforms like Reddit are bots. As a percentage of overall traffic, the reduction may only be a few percentage points.
But all that traffic that is leaving are from Actual Humans. Humans who cared enough about their interactions to have preferences about how they engaged with Reddit. In a few years, Reddit will just be a bunch of bots talking to each other.
One of the founders of Reddit mentioned in an interview a while back that it was all bots when it started, to give the illusion of being populated when it was too new to have any users except the people who worked on it. From bots it came, and to bots it will return. The circle of life.
I certainly stopped once RiF stopped working.
Yeah RIF was my go-to for years. Reddit is just not the same experience anymore, so I’m basically done with reddit going forward. Alternative or bust
I quit reddit on my phone, and I’m never looking back. I’m still browsing Reddit with RES on my PCs though. So a drastic reduction in use.
Reddit feels like different now compared to a week ago. Browsing a new fresh site opened my eyes to how shit r/all are. Even with blocked subreddits a new hate fueled subreddit emerges every week.
I‘m still using Reddit a tiny bit to search for some stuff with Google and I noticed an increase in deleted and overwritten comments in my results. Will be interesting to see how many that truly is, but I have a hunch it‘s the active users who commented and posted who were more likely to leave, so even if the total percentage is small, the percentage of original content has been hit hard.
Same thing. I knew people were doing it, but figured “what’s the chance it will happen to my searches?” turns out, a pretty reasonable chance.
They’ve been training bots to post for years
https://the-federation.info/platform/73
The numbers do speak for themselves.
While it’s not huge, compared to reddits numbers, it’s a massive boost to lemmy. A lot of those leaving are more likely more active users. It’s bootstrapped Lemmy into a viable platform. It now has a critical mass of users to generate content.
The Active Users Ratio graph is not filling me with hope - if I’m reading it correctly there isn’t increased activity, just increased sign ups.
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“Fuck you, I will do no such thing” he said. Cunningly marking his first post on the new platform.
That is utterly ridiculous! Your first post shouldn’t be created to squabble. This is not reddit!
/S
I’m not hating what I’ve accidentally caused here
Total users have sky rocketed and iirc like 90% of users/people who log in to say vote, save and subscribe to communities are lurkers. Hell, I’ve been “lurking” since I’ve signed up.
Since there’s such a spike in users, and prior to the Reddit death, most users were power users. I’m surprised that the active user ratio didn’t decrease. (My 90% lurker figure would give a 0.1 ratio). The fact it near increased by .05 instead is wild.
I want to comment and submit content, I just feel like I don’t have anything of value to share. That tends to be why I lurk. Not sure if that’s the case for most other lurkers.
I was mostly a lurker on reddit, but as others have inspired me to do, I comment and have made a couple of posts to help generate content.
Yeah we’d need to know post rate % or avg posts per posting user to understand what’s up.
Maybe 40% of reddit is lurkers? Maybe 5%?
yea i feel the same way. heck, the only reason I’m leaving this comment is just to prove your point
Most definitely the case for a lot of lurkers.
That’s certainly the reason I mainly lurk, I don’t have anything of value to add at the moment. When I do I definitely plan to create some content.
…and my axe!
And my sax! (We need a good soundtrack)
Thanks for this. Those numbers indeed speak for themselves.
From a personal point of view the more I use Lemmy the more I like it. There are a lot of QoL features I really think is better here. Like this built in reply window, for instance.
Welp, I’m here. Not sure what that means but here I am.
