Just in case anyone here was wondering how Reddit’s numbers are looking these days…
Data and visuals from https://subredditstats.com/r/askreddit
Did the actual comments fall or did the tool get hit by the API change?
That depends on how it’s written. The fact that it’s not showing zero completely makes me think they’d been iterating over threads counting comments, and they’re hitting API limits. But that’s just a blind guess without having looked at their source code.
If that were the case, itd be a pretty sharp ceiling not a noisy one
If they’re only able to get the comment counts for a smaller number of threads, those individual numbers would be noisy but lower.
For example, before they got 100 threads with counts ranging from 0-100. Now they only get 10 threads with the same range of counts.
Yes but then what? When you hit the API limit you’re fucking done… There should be big gaps every time this scenario triggers unless what, they have api keys for each sub or something lol
As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for those eligible for free access usage of our Data API. The limits are:
If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute (QPM) per OAuth client id If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 QPMQPM limits will be an average over a time window (currently 10 minutes) to support bursting requests.
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875092-Reddit-Data-API-Wiki
so maybe it’s not that bad, depending on what the scheduler looks like but that would slow the entire tool down considerably if they have to wait many minutes each time after hitting a rate limit, which as you say wouldn’t take long with bigger comment sections
There is a big fat warning at the top of the page saying that the data is out of date, or innacurate due to the api changes
Yes, a big factor, many users gradually left the site after the API changed. Also the sub mods have become increasingly ban-happy in the recent years.
While you may be correct, I think op was referring to the the tool that counts the comments for this chart.
It maybe used the APIs to count comments and that’s why the sudden drop in the comments count. It just can’t count them as reliably anymore.
But it’s just a guess.
Funny enough, if it is an API problem, then this is one of the scenarios that a scrapper could easily solve the issue and grant accurate results again. A playwright script written by ChatGTP could do it.
I read reddit with a client that uses a scrapper now. The fuck is reddit gonna do, block Chromium? They said they wanted to stop this, well, congrats, they started it instead.
ReVanced can patch most of the popular apps with your own private (free to use) API key.
Step by step guide if you’re interested
I’m sure Reddit is seeing private key usage sky rocketing on their end since ReVanced released these patches. Whether or not Reddit chooses to do anything about it remains to be seen, but I can’t help but wonder how long it will last.
Nowadays I still stick with Lemmy for general scrolling and only go to Reddit for my niche subreddits that don’t have active equivalents here.
A bit of both I imagine.
Subredditstats logs about 1/4 of the comments posted on a given subreddit. Pick any small subreddit and check its comments to verify for yourself. Takes about a minute. 25 comments/page. Old.reddit.com/r/____/comments
I find it very interesting that this is reportedly one of the top subs on all of Reddit: “Comments Per Day” ranks it #1, by Subscribers or Posts Per Day it is #2, Growth (Day) and Growth (Month) are both #5, Growth (Month) and Growth (Year) are both #4, etc.
Not only that, it is by far the top sub by this “Comments Per Day” metric: it shows 15828 Comments reported in a recent 24-hr period of time, whereas the next highest sub is r/worldnews with a mere 5153 Comments Per Day, then r/AmItheAsshole and r/nfl also ~5k, then others rapidly falling further like r/NoStupidQuestions and r/AITAH each ~3k, etc.
To reiterate: this is the #1 sub over all of Reddit, with >3x more comments per day than any other sub, and like more comments than the next 3 subs all combined… and it still has fallen off a cliff, even by this same exact metric.
I do not know how reliable subredditstats.com is overall, but even if it were not so good lately, so long as all the stats are more or less evenly biased across all the subs, we should still be able to learn something from these comparisons? (please add a correction if you know of some evidence that this is not true) One caveat is that it might be harder to compare now vs. pre-API changes? But if it can be believed, the numbers fell from a peak of >100k in June 2023, to a more average ~75k, then dropped like a rock in July to ~15k and has remained hovering around that area ever since…
I do not visit popular subs on Reddit anymore, just one that has refused to migrate to Lemmy/Kbin, but this sounds entirely believable to me. If you click the links to the top posts, the very title titles of the posts and top comments to them also showcase the change: like the #2 top post to that sub is “Now that Reddit are killing 3rd party apps on July 1st what are great alternatives to Reddit?” w/ 78.1k upvotes, and has the top comment w/ 5.2k upvotes of “I might get back into reading books after over a decade.” (and other comments likewise, pointing to Reddit alternatives, and angry exclamations about the 3rd party apps going away)
In short, THIS seems to be the evidence that we have been waiting for all this time, about just how far Reddit has fallen / died off?
Although comments on Lemmy/Kbin I do not think have risen by +~50k or so per day, so I wonder where all that Reddit traffic went? Possibly as the aforementioned comment said, it went offline, basically nowhere.
Edit: I nominated this post to m/BestOf.
Possibly as the aforementioned comment said, it went offline, basically nowhere.
Probably depends on the audience. Discord for some, a bit of Lemmy, people maybe went back to old school forums too.
Yes exactly, much of the people who left leddit have scattered across a multitude of social media / content aggregators.
tiktok/insta/lemmy/kbin/bluesky/etc. there are so many, it blows my mind when people say “why then has lemmy not exploded?” without recognizing there are many many lemmy instances and many many MORE alternatives. It’s not just a reddit or lemmy decision lol
And even with Lemmy being the vast majority of my replacement, I’m commenting less. The amount and depth of quality here isn’t the same, and that prompts less discussion.
I don’t know, I find that in Lemmy I can have better discussions than on Reddit. It isn’t the same as Reddit ~5-6 years ago but it’s definitely better than post-apicalypse Reddit, or maybe even post-covid years.
there is another site what the Reddit is Fun creator is gonna port their app for
If you read the subreddit stats website, you’ll see a massive disclaimer at the top that the data is inaccurate after the API change because the site owner didn’t want to pay the new rates. I think a lot of people here are overstating how much reddit has changed since the API shutoff.
The satisfaction of seeing this is hard to describe. Internet 1 : 0 Reddit
I clicked on an AskReddit link in google earlier today and wow the posts that receive engagement there now… From the little I’ve seen since leaving, reddit in general has dropped off a fuckin cliff in regards to content quality
I seen that too. It has become especially apparent on a small sub I still view as it didn’t really migrate.
It went from people in their 20s discussing shared experiences with a medical condition, with the occasional high schooler dropping by to ask something. To babys first experiences, with condition. Absolutely filled to the brim with 13-17 year olds.
I’m fine with them being there and asking questions and talking, but not when every post and comment is just more teenage drama.
I seen a similar thing on another sub, while that has always screwed younger then the first, it definitely feels like it dropped like 5 years in average age.
I do visit Reddit on occasion (with Adblock) but I haven’t made one comment or one post since I lost Apollo. Why? I deleted all history then deleted the accounts. I can’t even upvote and that’s my little protest still in full swing.
Same. It’s unavoidable to use it when it turns up in Google searches or for niche content, but I’ve 100% stopped contributing.
The corporate world undervalues goodwill, both from their customers and their employees.
That’s bound to go away on its own as people stop contributing and Google devalues it in favor of newer content.
I’m actually quite surprised by this, but satisfied nonetheless.
I was commenting regularly. Now I comment here, sorry y’all.
I think that’s what has surprised me the most. When I moved here after the API shutdown, things seemed pretty slow. But now it seems activity is really picking up. I would be very interested to see the fediverse growth rate vs. Reddit’s when it first started. I’m just surprised to see how quickly things are changing here.
The momentum is strong. It’s rather exciting to see and be part of. We are the change we wanted.
Wow I didn’t know it dropped off a cliff like that in July
Has the community changed much during that time?
Yes. Drastically. It is almost as big of a difference as when Reddit flipped, overnight, from pro Bernie to pro Clinton in the 2016 election.
Comments and post quality took a nose dive. And I don’t mean the typical summer change, I mean drastic and significant change.
Reddit’s content has taken an absolute nose dive, I still lurk, but every time I think about posting, I close out the tab and leave now. The site has also become an ad filled dumpster fire.
To me it also feels like the ratio of low content posts or reposts VS original content has changed considerably. At least when browsing /r/all.
I figured the highest engagement users would leave because they’d care the most about the api changes but wow, I checked a few subs and they all had harsh engagement drops just like askreddit.
Does that mean askreddit is good again?
Do you do the sex? What’s the saddest song ever? What’s the sexiest sex ever? Sad song? Sex?
Your forgetting “What’s the saddest sex song to have sex to when you’re depressed (sad)?”
Maybe the bots are Isabella Rossellini fans?
The Saddest Music in the World https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366996
No joke, the two posts I saw in the related section under some fuckin question i found from google was along the lines of ‘have you had sex with a disabled person? how was it?’ and the other was ‘women of reddit, what do you think during doggy style’
like what the fuck?? Who engages with this trash (aside from all the bots)
Jeez lemmy is full of prudes.
There is SO MUCH WRONG with AskReddit…the reposts, the bots, the memes, the hivemind responses…
And you pick “ewww sex” as the reason it’s trash?
i don’t think people care so much that the qeustions are about sex, but rather that the content is lazy and poorly thought out. most of the time i see a post like that it reads like it was written by a 14 year old who didn’t bother to look at the dozens of prior threads asking basically the same thing.
Nope. It just means there are bots left chatting amongst themselves ;)
And it’s not just r/askreddit all subreddits I tried show a similar drop, including the ones that still seem relatively active.
What the hell happened in the second half of 2020?
George Floyd was murdered on May 25. COVID was ravaging the world. The presidential election cycle was in full swing. And I’m sure much more.
Anna I’m sure much more.
Hello fellow Gboard user. I would have also noticed “abs” in place of “and”.
Covid.
That was my immediate guess, but Covid blew up in March, and the Reddit graph doesn’t go crazy until a few months later. It is hard to see what else could possibly explain it though; I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s just an error in the axis labelling or something.
George Floyd was the end of May, then the protests and the election over the summer.
US election spam
Bored people from the Coronavirus + US Election, if I were to hazard a guess?
I would guess bot activity related to covid or any other american political thing
This is most pleasing
Ouch
Yeah, but I’m sure if you extend the graph to 0 it will… … … Ouch!
