As Reddit Crushes Protests, Its User Traffic Returns to Normal
As Reddit Crushes Protests, Its User Traffic Returns to Normal
User visits and time spent on the social media platform normalize after traffic to Reddit briefly dipped last week during the blackout, according to SimilarWeb.
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That's fine. I'm sure the passive masses will show back up.
The real problem is content creators and such are or have already left. And well, I'm here, as are all of you!
Passive consumers are a massive force, and will go where the wind blows. But they actively do little. And, about them... Who cares?
I don't think the content creators really left significantly, but the sentiment to users has certainly changed. This was never going to kill reddit, and was never gonna be a long term problem for them - for that the former mod and activist for r/jailbait was correct. But it creates negative user sentiment, which will make it easier to move people, or even make people just less excited to use the platform in the long term.
I don't think this applies to just people who support the protest either. People who just wanted to see their content and got mad at mods for shutting down subs now have more negative sentiment to the moderators and the users who may or may not support the protests.
This is a W in my books, as I never liked corporate ownership of people having conversations, which is expressly Reddit's sole product. Maybe a few hundred people will use the site less this week than last. Maybe an additional few hundred come the API changes, but the next controversy Reddit has will move more. And it'll snowball, just like Twitter's seen, and the content will change to reflect the worst who decide to stay and support reddit through it all.
But it creates negative user sentiment, which will make it easier to move people, or even make people just less excited to use the platform in the long term.
To add, it's not nothing that lemmy and kbin have grown as much as they have. This has introduced many to the concept of the fediverse at all, or at least to those two names, and they're more likely to switch after they've heard about it a couple times, or after it grows a bit more, or once reddit pisses them off even by just some toxic mod doing dumb shit and making them say "fuck this site, I'm going to that alternative I heard about."
I guess what I'm getting at is this is effective marketing even if we don't make the sale today. Like Hank during Grillstraveganza, you provide quality information and let the customer make up their own mind, and your sales will come in at the end of the month. We don't need all those fancy Jo-Jack tricks to make an immediate sale, we can bide our time like Hank.