Honestly, Reddit just kind of sat out the backlash and at least in the short term got their way. So it's one loss for wizards, one win for Reddit, I could say them rolling the dice on 50/50.
But they overestimated how locked in their customer base were and how much more resourced game developers were to challenge them on their shenanigans than third party Reddit app developers.
I've largely left Reddit since they backstabbed third-party apps and frontends, and seized subreddits and banned moderators protesting their decision. Checking https://subredditstats.com, many subreddits (ranging from smaller ones like CRTgaming, to larger ones like funny) have had comment volume drop off by 75-90% in July 2023 with no sign of recovering. So assuming Reddit isn't throttling/blocking subredditstats from viewing comments (and making itself look bad), I'd say people are leaving Reddit, but unfortunately I'm not sure if any of the community-run alternatives are as popular as Reddit is now (or was before the user exodus).
I was planning to ditch it originally, but with a huge chunk of power mods gone I've actually found there to be a noticeable improvement in discussion quality within the subreddits I care about. It's nothing amazing, but it's the return of a casual feel I had been missing for some time. This has made me hesitant to check out lemmy, since I presume that's where they have retreated too. Think I will probably stay until they finally kill old.reddit.com.
It's a conflicting feeling since I'm still pretty bummed out by the api changes, but also recognize that much of the power mods capabilities were fueled by it.
> I'm not sure if any of the community-run alternatives are as popular as Reddit is now (or was before the user exodus).
This is the key for Reddit - there are no good alternatives.
Specifically for entertainment. That subreddit about the book series you're reading, the show you're watching, the video game you play, and the sports team you cheer for is hard to replace.
There's Lemmy. Some of the Reddit third-party apps have converted to Lemmy apps - Sync for Lemmy and Boost for Lemmy notably. Sync was my to-go Reddit app, so I'm happy to see it resurrected.
lemmy.world is the instance I chose, and I'm having a fine time there. Things could be a bit more livelier, and I'm sure it'll happen with time.
I'm one of those left that also deleted their years long accounts, and if I have to visit Reddit for something (as in, via search results), it's with an adblocker on.
I think reddit is also inflating user numbers a lot. People that have been there longer mostly notice the drop in engagement. Could be that there are new subs that have distinct user bases that are buzzing along. But the perception of less content is more or less universal for users I know with few to no exceptions.
This was a process that already started before the policy changes around API access though.
Keep in mind that some reddit mods have said thar site has incorrect numbers since June. I don't know how they get their stats but the api throttling may have affected the data. That assumption may be to the contrary.
>, I'd say people are leaving Reddit, but unfortunately I'm not sure if any of the community-run alternatives are as popular as Reddit is now (or was before the user exodus).
Well, I'm here on HN :). There is no perfect community driven alternative, but between HN, Tildes, and various Discords I get most of what I wanted. Also keeping an eye in the long term on certain forming sites.
But there are a few niche subjects I use reddit for so it hasn't been a complete migration. Once I find any community talking about mobile gaming scene I should be fully set.
For Reddit the alternative is non-existent so people had no choice but to stay and Reddit knew this very well. It's also something that's tied into the human reward system and fosters a sort of addiction which makes any attempt to leave even harder.
Unity has none of those things. It's a stone cold tool designed to make money for game developers and there are clear alternatives in Unreal and Godot. Now sure there are people who've based their entire career around knowing Unity, but those skills are reasonably transferrable.
Eh, Lemmy is only Reddit in terms of its thread layout, but overall it's set up far more like Discord. Lots of loosely coupled small servers with no overall aggregation since federation is entirely optional. Reddit's main process of aggregation and subreddit discovery, i.e. the "front page", is afaik not a concept on Lemmy. HN is far more like Reddit than Lemmy, and probably has more users too.
They were unfortunately also caught completely unprepared at the time and fell flat on their face when it was time to scale up to accept Reddit's migratory mass. I'm still not sure if I actually have an account or not because the registration process was half broken. Time will tell how prepared Godot was, but at least they released the somewhat more stable 4.1 recently.
A lot of groups who defaulted to Reddit actually got off their ass and set up a Discourse or Discord. I consider Discord a huge step backward, but those who set up Discourse groups are now in a much better place.
So, a lot of the technical people who made Reddit the "go to" place for searching are now gone. As that half-life of the knowledge of those groups kicks in, the usefulness of Reddit is going to slide down.
I do wish more groups sought an actual alternative and not a closed down server. But I suppose for a mod (who would lead that charge) that closing down is a benefit. They don't necessarily want every random troll to pop in and ask the same rage bait question for the 1000th time. I guess that +popularity is why many moved there.
Still am hoping for a true replacement one day. Keeping eyes on what communities popped up when the next surge inevitably happens. The real issue is grabbing the right power user who will generate a bunch of content to engage with, and that's hard to do.
But they overestimated how locked in their customer base were and how much more resourced game developers were to challenge them on their shenanigans than third party Reddit app developers.