• assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    On the one hand, this doesn’t seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we’re not seeing this reflected in the data yet.

    Even so, no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that’s still 51 million people. It’s a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.

    • Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      2 years ago

      I used Apollo right up until it shut down, and I haven’t touched Reddit since. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.

      • richard_wagner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        I was also an enthusiastic Apollo user.

        Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.

        • justhach@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          Thats why its up to all of us to start participating.

          Protip: If you really want to start a conversation/get engagement, follow Cunningham’s Law:

          the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.

          So, fill those empty posts with confidently incorrect statements and watch that comment section fill up as people rush in to correct you.

          • goforliftoff@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            2 years ago

            Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.

    • Pyr@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Even if 3% is a low number, I guarantee that 3% were reddits more active users and content creators.

      If most of the quality content slows to a trickle users will continue to leave and look for more viable platforms.

      • rbhfd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        It’s not 3% of users, it’s 3% of traffic. This could be caused by 0.1% of power users leaving.

    • JasSmith@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      I agree. The real change will be from 1 July onwards since none of us can use our apps anymore.

    • geissi@feddit.deEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers

      Reddit doesn’t see users as customers.
      They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.

      • jarfil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        No company wants to say they’ve lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.

        They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don’t realize the product has turned to shit.

  • Champange Equinox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    I see a lot of people saying, “I can’t believe it was only a 3% drop,” and I’d like to offer some context as to why there’s not enough data here to really tell a story, yet. It could go a few different ways.

    The Reddit protests in June were a big deal, not just on Reddit or Lemmy, but to the media at-large. Traffic surely saw a huge influx of people wanting to look at the dumpster fire. I know that I myself used Reddit a lot leading up to the blackouts, since it was, in a sense, the last hurrah of Reddit as we knew it. The Spez AMA would have driven traffic. The NSFW sub protests would have driven traffic. All those news articles linked to Reddit directly, and they would have also driven traffic.

    Even with all that, there’s still a decrease in traffic. As others have said, July will be a better metric for the actual damage done, since the media has largely moved on and aren’t driving as many visits, and 3PAs are toast.

    These numbers would have been more representative if we could have had more than a quarter to look at. What was the QoQ trajectory before this? For all we know, this could have indicated business as usual, or it could have indicated something much bigger, depending on what the traffic metrics over the past 12-24 months could show us.

    I also would have liked to see the history for unique sessions and unique visitors. If there was a huge influx of unique visitors compared to the past few months, but traffic was still decreased overall, then that would indicate it came from news clicks or bots.

    Basically what I’m saying is that the data doesn’t paint any kind of real picture right at this moment. That doesn’t mean there was no impact though. Time will tell.

    • Rusticus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      More importantly, traffic is a trailing indicator. The protests and anger were from content creators and moderators. As they leave, the quality on Reddit will decrease significantly but that will take months/years. And the traffic will decrease but will follow the drop in quality content and moderation. Based upon the increased quality of posts on lemmy just in the last 3 weeks, many of the content creators have moved to the fediverse.

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      There’s also the rapid influx of bots, since admins were using GPT bots to astroturf on their behalf.

  • SulaymanF@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.

    Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn’t that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.

    • patachu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I’ve already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten … weird.

      Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there’s no voice of reason to hold them back.

      And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) … it’s a very strange place now.

      • Rannoch@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Same! I went to check it out earlier and the frontpage had a couple of subreddits I recognized but am not interested in, and the rest were all subreddits I had never heard of before. I also thought the scores seemed weirdly low, but not 100% sure about that since I dont usually pay super close attention. At least the weird vibe was pretty helpful in getting me to hop off, versus getting sucked in to browsing around more.

      • catastrophicblues@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        There was an r/Apple thread were people were going off about simplicity and just how hard it is to get into and use Lemmy… I am so glad I left lol

        • BillyZane@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I didn’t make an account for awhile because so many people on Reddit were saying that. Once I finally did, I laughed how easy it was.

    • Hunter2@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.

      Back in the day, I discovered Reddit because people in the comments on 9gag would say a certain post was stolen from reddit.

      I was a sucker for rage comics, so r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu (aka f7u12) was my gateway drug.

  • srwax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I was a heavy user before, for sure. I used to scroll Reddit for hours a day. I uninstalled my app when the blackouts started. If I do a google search where the answer is on reddit, i’ll still look at that answer. But for the most part, I am gone. Seems like a lot of people are all bark no bite though.

    • mrgreyeyes@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Did the same thing and deleted my account. My muscle memory can’t find the app and my battery last a full day.

      • srwax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I open all of my apps by usings iOS search feature, i’ll occasionally still type “apollo” and be like, “oh yeah, i dont have this anymore”. It isn’t as often now though, compared to the first few weeks.

  • drturtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    This is for June. Third party apps were still working, and personally I didn’t change my Reddit browsing habit much during June. Now that third party apps are officially dead, I’ve been on Reddit a lot less, and been spending more time on Lemmy. Curious to see what the numbers look like for July.

    • zepheriths@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      A large number of people joined Lemmy before July. The user based for Lemmy jumped by 1600% if I remember right before July 1st

  • Doodoocaca@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    If only people would actually stop using Reddit instead of doing these useless “protests” like they do in /r/videos. They’re still using the site, that’s what Reddit wants…

  • candyman337@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    That may sound like not a lot, but Facebook as been hemorraging users for a few years now, if they’re losing users at about the same rate as Facebook, that’s a big oof.

    • doggle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      115·
      2 years ago

      I think the big deal will be if it’s sustained. Losing a bunch of users for a month isn’t a big deal if they come back, or at least stop leaving. If Reddit loses 3% of its users every month for a year then things will be pretty dire for them.

      Can’t say I’ve got much sympathy for Reddit, though.

      • lagomorphlecture@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I would expect July to be higher since 3rd party apps were still functioning in June. That was the first wave, the second wave would have been after the apps actually shut down and will continue for a while as people see lower quality and people talking about other sites.

        • intelati@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Precisely. “We’re” (I hate doing this, but I’m a part of the ‘oh crap I need an alternative ‘doomscroller’’ group) the early movers.

          The real test is when the official app is the only game in town… from others it seems like it’s bad and will drive the traffic down even further…

  • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    It will be much more interesting to see a year from now, after most of the actual content posters and decent mods have left. 🍿

    • LeberechtReinhold@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      I don’t think that many content posters will leave. Sure, in tech oriented communities they will, as they are the ones most receptive to fediverse or other alternatives.

      But painters, photographers, historians, chefs… etc are a large part of what make reddit great. And plenty of those don’t really give a fuck about the platform. They will just use the official app and move on.

      • DeanFogg@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        No they’ll find alternatives too if they don’t like what’s going on. There’s really no need for reddit anymore

  • areefer82@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Just found out about Lemmy for the first time, joined, and am loving the layout/website/app so far. Probably going to switch over to just this over time.

  • PotjiePig@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I didn’t think I would cut it completely, but once Sync died I tried to use the browser and it just forces that app on you. The app is unusable and very unenjoyable. Cold Turkey it is.

    I imagined the numbers would be a touch higher but 3% feels shruggable.

    I think the real question that these numbers don’t tell you though is the quality of the content. When I have popped on just out in f curiosity and not logged in, the new ‘front page of the internet’ appears to be whitepeople twitter and memes. Doesn’t look inviting enough for me to log in at all.

    • serenai@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      Reddit started with nothing but sock puppet accounts created by the devs, so I could definitely see them doing the same thing to show “activity”.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      2 years ago

      There are soooo many GPT comments and threads on Reddit, at least when I left on the first. I imagine it’s going to get worse and worse now.

  • unwinagainstable@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Is this common for this time of year? I know I’m online less in the summer. Reddit is going/has gone to hell, but it seems like there are other factors here

  • megane-kun@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Looking at the pages for lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, kbin.social, as well as lemm.ee paints an interesting, if expected, picture.

    For one thing, lemmy.ml is categorized as “Games > Games - Other (In United States)” which made me scratch my head to the point of hurting my scalp. The rest are uncategorized (which is better than being miscategorized, imo).

    Now, for the stats:

    Instance Total Visits for June 2023 % Change from May 2023 Bounce Rate Pages per Visit Average Visit Duration #1 Incoming Traffic Source (from social media)
    reddit.com¹ 1.7B -3.36% 37.98% 6.21 8:24 Youtube (52.48%)
    lemmy.world 3.5M n/a² 38.12% 6.62 8:44 Reddit (97.29%)
    kbin.social 2.9M +5000% 26.24% 11.2 9:18 Reddit (93.92%)
    lemmy.ml 1.5M +1716% 51.79% 5.55 3:54 Reddit (98.86%)
    feddit.de 791.7K +5000% 55.88% 2.76 3:57 Reddit (98.31%)
    beehaw.org 790.1K +5000% 35.48% 4.50 5:44 Reddit (96.24%)
    lemmy.ca 186.4K +1615% 69.14% 2.45 1:05 Reddit (100%)
    lemm.ee 167.5K +5000% 29.58% 6.73 5:18 Reddit (86.81%)
    • ¹ – reddit.com is included as a point of comparison
    • ² – lemmy.world didn’t exist yet in May 2023

    We can see that the larger instances are already performing well in comparison to reddit when it comes to “interaction” statistics. It’s a surprise, however that kbin.social trounces everyone else it was compared to–even comparing favorably with lemmy.world in visit numbers. In comparison, lemmy.ml performed quite badly especially in bounce rate and average visit duration. Someone who’s better equipped than me in analyzing these figures can perhaps do a better anaylsis, but from what I can see, we’re not doing that bad here.

    I’ve also added lemm.ee into the mix just for good measure (and perhaps as a proxy for smaller-ish instances), and it’s doing quite good as well.

    EDITS: