Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests

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Excerpt:

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.

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353 comments

I never participated on Reddit, but I used it to check in on tech stuff and other various interests. I didn't spend a lotta time on it, but it was definitely the platform that I spent time on the most.
When all the third-party stuff started happening, I decided to take the principled stand and quit using it, but I was worried it was gonna be difficult.
I was wrong. It was super easy ditching it.
Even though it was the "social" platform I was spending the most time on, it also felt like the easiest to replace—mostly because that content could be found elsewhere. This kinda made me realize that Reddit doesn't have a moat, and it confirmed what I knew all along—the value of the platform is derived from its users. So when there's enough collective will to do something (in this case, fight against network effects), it's incredibly powerful.
So I used this free tool I built called Reddit Account Manager to gather all my subscriptions, bookmarks, etc., and then Power Delete Suite to delete all my accounts.
I noticed that my time spent online in general had also decreased.
10/10 would recommend.
- Regarding Power Delete Suite, this fork (from deestan) is recommended over j0be's (the one that you linked), if you're editing the content before/instead of removing it. That's because Reddit added a timer between comment editions (to be fair spammers were using it).
  
  Nice, thanks for sharing.
  
  Unless it’s changed PDS only grabs comments from your profile. But with a little know how you can delete EVERYTHING using your data-export as a map to all your comments.
  Eg. Google NightAuthor site:Reddit.com There are a few listings but none of the content is actually live anymore.
- I missed browsing reddit for about a week after almost a decade of using it multiple times a day. They made the decision to leave very easy for me with how they handled the protests.
  
  This might make some people mad, but I'm actually glad they didn't change anything. I don't like the enshittification of things, but I do like that the worse things get, the more motivated people are to organize, move, and enact change (like migrating to the Fediverse).
  Unfortunately, things often have to get much worse before they get better. Humans have a tendency to do that, oftentimes when it's too late. Of course with some things, it matters more than others.
- I've found there are still useful chunks of information on niche topics I follow only found on Reddit. I'll poke in see what I need to and drop out. No browsing, no posting, upvotes or account logins.
  I've got more time for other things since ditching reddit, Lemmy is cool and all but I've lost that itch. The memes are pretty stale here and the communities I can browse every couple of days and keep up-to-date.
  Overall it's been a good change for me, thanks reddit for shooting yourselves in the foot.

353 comments