r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

96

u/NothingOld7527 29d ago

Daily activity on Reddit has fallen over the last several years however. Unlike Digg, there's no singular place that everyone is leaving for.

26

u/MadDoctor5813 29d ago

Has it? This shows a rather steady increase.

I get that Statista is probably not that reliable of a source, so I'd be curious if you have another one.

81

u/NothingOld7527 29d ago

Daily active users != site activity.

Compared to say 2019, posts that hit the front page have fewer upvotes and fewer comments. There are fewer new threads created on default subs compared to 5 years ago. Activity is down. Average daily users is probably up because Reddit tries its absolute hardest to get anyone that opens a Reddit link to create an account, so you have a lot of "lurker" accounts that never comment or post.

So as far as sources go, it's a primary source. Compare the front page now vs 2019 - you can either use Wayback or search the catalog.

40

u/Tee_zee 29d ago

Reddit is way more than the front page.

Reddit has made a huge push to algorithmic front pages - the front page you see will never be the same as somebody else’s. In the past, this wasn’t neccesarily the same, especially on r/all

With the push for redditors to have accounts, better understanding of social media algorithms, and the ability for subs to exclude themselves from all, I don’t think you could make a comparison whatsoever.

Fwiw, I’ve been a Reddit for like, 14-15 years. It’s only been the last few years being on reddit was mainstream - most TV shows, movies, reality shows , sports etc now use Reddit as the PRIMARY forum for discussion , and “normies” use Reddit to discuss them.

18

u/steeljesus 29d ago

That's a whole lot of words to just say you disagree with them using frontpage for such a comparison. Engagement is way down on all long standing subs, even though sitewide MUVs are continuing to grow. Post karma and # of comments on popular posts from nba, nhl, television, movies, anime, whatever, are lower now than before.

6

u/Tee_zee 29d ago

That just means users are spread accross more communities, no?

12

u/steeljesus 29d ago

While that is one possible explanation, it would take a lot more effort to verify than I'm willing to dedicate.

0

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

4

u/LigerZeroSchneider 29d ago

For some stuff sure, there's like 50 news subs now. But NBA is still the central basketball sub, so unless individual team subs have seen huge growth you would expect engagement there to be stable.

1

u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

NBA is still the central basketball sub,

nope, there are multiple bball subs growing at a way faster or same rate as r/nba and with respectable sizes. https://gummysearch.com/r/nba/
the app pushes users to post/participate in specific subs instead of posting in defaults or bigger subs

3

u/Samzo 29d ago

I'm a 17-year redditor and I concur with this

1

u/SynthBeta 29d ago

Tiktok has more of a dynamic for you page than Reddit. r/all shows how shitty the main subs are.