this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place, but I see Reddit developments as Tech news right now.

Wanted to share a website that is tracking Subreddits that have/will be going dark. It even has a sound notification for when they change their status.

Edit: Adding the stream https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247

Double Edit: Data visualization https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

blackout.photon-reddit.com

Damn. That is only a tiny little dip in the post/comment rate so far relative to the historical cycle. What, maybe 5%, assuming the vertical axis crosses at zero? Not terribly encouraging....

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’ve continued to tell people: This won’t kill Reddit in the sense of outright turning it into a ghost town. If your only goal is to make Reddit collapse overnight, you’re going to be disappointed. The quality content that many people here enjoy is not what makes up the frontpage of r/all or what a huge amount of passive users consume. Reddit has more than enough low quality trash to backfill the frontpage and keep users occupied.

Anybody migrating should focus on porting quality content. Let reddit live long and be a dumping ground.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see this less as a damage to Reddit, and more as an opportunity to diversify, make people aware of the threat of centralised corporate-run platforms, and to build the federated internet alternatives a bit more, to give them momentum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yep! Although it is too bad that when you sesrch for reddit alternstives, that lemmy doesn't come up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's more about reaching a tipping point where adding a new user to something else (fingers crossed for Fediverse) makes it a palatable alternative for more than one redditor. The network effect is a thing, so it exists, and if enough people get kicked off of an app they like it's not impossible to hit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My partner is a casual reddit user; the experience change was immediately apparent. She got bored and switched to facebook because all of the niche communities that the larger subreddits repost from went silent.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This should be bumped.

The smaller/niche communities is what made Reddit interesting.

When those eventually decide to pack and the only vibrant communities are the meme subreddits etc then you would probably see a drop in usage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My GF is also a pretty casual reddit user and she was pretty pissed about her favorite subs being closed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The large subs and front page just consist of bots reposting the same old content. The bots are easy to tell apart from real people just by eye, so I'm sure that reddit either has no problem with that or that they made these bots themselves to hide the fact that actual users are becoming less and less.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I was negatively surprised as well. Almost 60% of all big SFW subreddits closed, and still only a small percentage less posts and comments.

[–] a_statistician 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit may also be astroturfing their own site to make it look like there's not much effect of the blackout.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I wonder how much the stats were boosted by all those people asking where their subreddits have gone. Today seems to dip lower than yesterday, probably because everyone by now knows what happened.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing (hoping) the difference at peak will be larger. All we can do now is wait and see, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I saw that too - hopefully the changes will show in the next “up” cycle. Apparently the bots are out to play as well.