• 2 Posts
  • 128 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • a) a lot of accounts are bots, and depending on how they are implemented, a LOT of these have remained (or even were created) after the API changes - remember, it’s easy to spin up 1000s of these to each provide small traffic so as to not run up against the API limits. Overall, I suspect a ton more bots are there now, b/c the bot defense effort was suspended, b/c unlike a single bot, that one needs to look at ALL traffic (I suppose it could be re-written from scratch in a decentralized manner but… the developers did not choose to do that).

    b) a lot of people who remain on Reddit, including myself, offer it WAY less traffic than before. I used to be a mod of a small sub, which I quit, so I went from checking it almost literally hourly, so at most once a day, and most days I do not even comment at all. Also, I used to browse r/all (actually, “popular”), but now I never do, instead preferring Lemmy/Kbin for that. My personal traffic dropped off a cliff just like this image shows, in fact probably a lot more so. Although I still do visit that small gaming sub, b/c while there is a version of it here, instead of like 5 posts a day we get at most 1 per week, which less than a handful interact with. So that is not an “exodus of users” so much as a (vast) reduction of interaction, which still impacts their advertising revenue and thus the continuity of Reddit as a corporate entity.

    c) as people are saying, not everyone came to Lemmy/Kbin. Some went to Mastodon, others just stopped going online as much, and like myself I comment now a lot less than I used to, though I read just as much (here, not there). So just b/c the traffic did not come “here”, does not mean that it did not leave “there”. i.e., think of the shock of the event as making people regress more to lurking and not feel as comfortable interacting, especially given the lack of ability of smaller magazines (what are those called on Lemmy again?) here. Thus, even if they did not “go outside”, they still may not be interacting on Reddit.



  • 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.


  • Fwiw, I believe that happened bc you dared to comment on a post that was since removed by a mod from a magazine hosted on another instance. Now, that whole post is “gone”, so Notifications cannot reach it, but it is “not gone” in the sense that Notifications cannot properly realize that it’s gone. And it has poisoned your whole notifications system, to the point that you cannot even read other notifications from other posts.

    The good news is that it only affects one “page” of your Notifications, so as you continue to operate, it will eventually fall behind to page 2, and thereby still prevent you from seeing any Notification from that whole entire page, but from then on at least you will get new notifications from page 1. Until it happens again, ofc, and the cycle continues. I have ceased recommending anyone to come to KBin as a result of this extremely frustrating bug, along with the other highly frustrating ones like constantly logging you out, and barely being able to type out a comment on mobile. Hopefully it gets better.:-|



  • You could test out your idea by spinning up an instance that offers curated ads, or probably better yet go entirely ad-free and have a subscription service. Some people may be interested in sustainability, especially if you speak in a language that resonates with them, like explain the value-added benefits of being on a sustainable server vs. a “free” one. e.g. the devs get a salary there and also contribute to the overall Lemmy codebase, beyond that instance so that it benefits the entire Fediverse. But it would be up to you to be the change that you want to see in the world, and make it happen. Also, I am guessing those kinds of discussions won’t happen so much on the Fediverse itself, but rather in Matrix or Discord (or Slack?) servers were the actual developers of the Fediverse hang out.



  • Relevant post: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/451896/Is-Kbin-dying-I-wanted-to-address-the-deleted-thread, attempting to explain why contributions weren’t being merged in and deployed.

    Posts by Ernst since mention lots of bots and ads, and some outright DDOS.

    The latest word: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/544021/So-what-s-the-status-on-the-update-edit-ernest-responded.

    TLDR: Ernst has had a lot of unexpected personal issues to deal with, had to take on a temporary job, and has not been able to give full dedication to this project. What efforts were originally planned - e.g. an official API - seemed to instead have gotten redirected against maintenance vs. outside attacks rather than improvements to the underlying codebase. Back when he was not keeping up with contributors’ proffered changes, he even planned to step down if he could not catch up, for which he gave himself a 1-month deadline, but he seems to have decided that he has met the basic minimum to not do that.

    Looking forward, several months from now Kbin may be significantly better. Or barely better. Or not at all, who knows. But right now it is what it is, which is far behind Lemmy in terms of pure software features at least. I think Kbin’s main selling point was that it was not built off of the original Lemmy contributors, and it does have a very nice interface (sort of, on desktop at least). Not that it matters: account migration doesn’t exist on the Fediverse - even on Lemmy, right? - so those of us who migrated and asked all of our friends to do likewise are kinda stuck with our initial choices, good or bad, unless we make a clean break from our entire history.

    Note I have nothing to do with Kbin, I just wanted to offer those helpful resources if you want to read them. I am glad that you found something that works well for you. I halfway wonder if I should make an alt somewhere even if just to more readily read posts from a mobile, b/c the mobile browser experience for Kbin is horrible (reading is mostly fine, but commenting is absolutely horrendous).






  • There is nothing new under the sun…we are the same monkeys that we have always been. Technology / circumstances have changed though, somewhat. Nature + Nurture, with the former unchanged and the latter altered might produce something different? But people thought that the internet would solve all the world’s problems, and if you replace “internet” with anything else at all, repeat as nauseum, you get life… so no, it both “changed everything”, while also changing nothing.

    Strong societies beget weak children, who produce vulnerable societies, which after (as?) they fall apart beget strong children. That is what I see anyway, right or wrong. That is why it is important to ask questions as you are doing. Entropic decay can only be overcome with effort. You can’t solve the world’s problems, only your own - and those who are willing to listen. As an example, we cannot fix Reddit, only make a new place to be better, but that takes WORK.


  • You look good! It’s more about attitude - be professional, willing to please, think about others e.g. how they will see you, all of which you are already doing right here and now, so I think you got this! (I hope you can tell I’m not just saying that either - you really do!)

    Just remember as you start to feel nervous: those feelings are a good thing, bc you care about the outcome, just don’t let your nerves get in the way of showing them who you are. Plan ahead: a calming meal, get there way early or at least be nearby so you can’t be delayed by any kind of travel issues at all.

    If it helps: no matter what you will come out ahead, bc experience in interviewing is a learned skill that requires practice, and this you are being offered!

    Good luck my dude!:-)