As of Q4 of 2023, reddit claimed 36.4 million logged-in 'daily active' users. An increase from Q3 of 2023 with a count of 34.7 million. Not sure of the accuracy of user counts for lemmy, but good estimate is about 450,000 total users over it's entire lifespan, if every single one of those was a reddit convert, we'd still be a minor blip. I don't know if we have 2024 numbers that are comparable, but most stats indicate that reddit is likely still growing.
Spez predicted what would happen in that protest with almost 100% accuracy and most mods involved didn't follow through and backed down. Some are trying to build something new and that's worth pursuing but we lost that fight.
I do have to wonder how many of those millions of users are bots. Browsing /r/all, you can find plenty of weird pseudopornographic subreddits like /r/ReallyGorgeous, which are populated by literally thousands of bots upvoting and commenting on fake selfies posted by the most obviously stolen accounts. Report these accounts all you want, the admins don't care.
Probably a big number, but also probably not that many in terms of user count when compared to the overall count.
I don't think we have good data on reddit, but a lot of fairly smart people have been trying to figure that out with twitter/x. Key you have to remember is that the average user only consumes content, they don't contribute in any fashion. So, you can have 10 or so bot accounts being more visible than 10,000 'active' users and still be posting things at a rate that would seem reasonable for an average human. They'll just come across as a highly engaged user until someone looks closer.
Oh it's really simple. You will have been removed as a moderator for defacing Reddit content. Reddit will then ban you. Aunt reinstate their authority and make sure that their user base has full access to their content . Remember next time to not be a pesky little shit . How dare you try to block spaz and his followers from accessing content that you created but they own . /S Ask me how I know
Despite it seemingly not having a significant impact on the "user" numbers the overall quality has gotten considerably and quite noticeably worse so it's not unreasonable to think that bot activity has been continually increasing.