Link: https://www.marketbeat.com/articles/reddits-us-user-decline-raises-a-bigger-question-after-its-earnings-beat

Article from August of this year (not too cancerous once you get through the first two splash screens).

Reddit shares DROPPED despite increase revenue. Why? Objective signs of enshittification:

• declining active user base
• massive increases in revenue.

People are leaving so the ones that remain must be more heavily monetized, which leads to more people leaving--the enshittification death spiral.

Reddit will no longer be reporting logged-in users as a separate metric lol

Seems like you forgot to link the article?

Ah, I did link it, but then went to the text tab like a n00b.

Corrected. Thanks..

did you not read the whole article?

the number of global daily active unique users (DAUq) grew to 130.3 million, representing YOY growth of 18%.

it was us users specifically

130.3 million users is still 130.2 million more than lemmy

Reddit got so bad that I came here. Just.. pure junk and bots.

Yes, US users specifically. I'll correct the title.

Huh. My problem was I was getting shadowbanned and suspended left and right, whereas as I had been an active daily participant for YEARS with absolutely no problem.

You could avoid the bots and junk pretty easily be sticking to niche subs, but the banning and suspensions were unavoidable while commenting.

If OP is referring to full screen ads when they say "splash screen" then the URL fragment #google_vignette at the end of the link might be the culprit

Oh, maybe. I thought I cleaned that up. It's gone now, thanks.

Yeah that too, the modabuse has just been reaching insane levels lately.

Mod abuse with the blessing of reddit admin.

I got so tired of engagement bots pinging me with inane questions every time I posted I comment I left and came here.

To be fair reddit users used to do that before the bots as well. Just pointless bad-faith pretending to engage without actually wanting to hear your opinion, just exhaust you for disagreeing with them.

Fuck /u/Spez

Amen

Reddit disables...

• APIs that many popular apps use to help users view Reddit and for users that hate the new interface
• disables .compact and .mobile views which pockets of users like that hate the new interface
• bans users on VPN
• forces "old.reddit" to require a login which alienates users that hate the new interface

Reddit: "Why are people leaving?"

Fuck the system that requires enshittification. Fuck capitalism.

And most recently: blocks even read access without a login (sporadic).

This I couldn't believe - on my phone you get three scrolls to view the site and then are told. "To view more content download the app". Seriously fuck that.

No way there's that many humans. The number is diluted by bots and misreported.

Yeah, i don't know whats up; sometimes i get force-asked to log in even on desktop web. But only sometimes.

If people would just stop using reddit, but alas people will not "just" anything.

Who knew if you actively enshittified a product less people would use it?

Although 100k lemmings generate more genuine human interaction than ten billion redditors would do, so stuff them.

I bet they will go log in only next and really kill their product. The draw of reddit, for me anyway, is that it's anonymous.

I mean people are still on fucking Facebook for Christ's sake

Greedy little pigboy

Same, didn't even know about the fediverse until like a month ago. Thank reddit for that!

Agreed. Don't know why reddit corp doesn't understand this.

"Everyone that was young, left. The changes kept coming in without asking their users what they wanted. They should have held focus groups or product testing. I think when you focus on the money, you lose sight of where you’re going."

Seems like apt critcism, eh? Except that quote isn't from an article on Reddit, its about Facebook. What confuses me most about Reddit corp's restrictions over the past couple of years is we already have a walled garden social media that requires login to consume. Its called Facebook, and audiences are leaving that one even faster. Why would Reddit look at that declining user base and say "yes, thats what we want"?

I pop on occasionally and it's a cesspool. I don't even see many of my friends in my feed, just rage bait posts from outrage groups.

Literally all those changes where strictly because reddit is only valuable for Ai training data.

It started when google bought access to said data, and we where forced to stop using third party apps.

Google dropped out of the deal and no one wants reddit. Reddit is full of bots, and pro palastine "hate speech" so in order to be valuable for Ai training data it has to use ai to moderate and kick out anyone who doesn't produce valuable data, or is potentially a bot. They only want verified I'D users who don't bring up issues that show up on googles front page.

Google dropped reddit as a source for Ai training data so they are trying to "clean up" to be sellable again.

Same here, after years of use with no problems, AI mods and overzealous human mods started banning users all over the place.

What were you suspended over? Did it even make sense? What were you discussing otherwise?

Good luck to anybody trying to find clean data in this day and age.

You don't need clean data just numbers on a chart with blank promises for improvements.

Oh, wow, this from the month before this article:

https://www.ibtimes.com/reddit-reportedly-not-renewing-ai-deal-google-its-stock-sinking-3805616

That would explain the sink in stock price. My article was probably ironically written by an AI without updated training data.

I voiced my displeasure at the Americans current government, and they kept saying I was breaking Reddits rules. This was crazy as I saw worse comments than mine constantly.

I think this is a big aspect, to actually interaction instead of shadow down votes for not having a popular curated opinion.

Yeah, I noticed the same. I'm wondering if you crossed a certain line. I can easily imagine a political group monitoring certain accounts and reporting anything even remotely reportable. Like, in my case, I strongly suspect that being anti-Zionist put me on a list.

The old reddit login part was my last straw.

I never fully remember the source, or I might sometimes get the fact slightly wrong but generally speaking everything I say is backed up by a real source that I'm too lazy to even begin to think about looking up again.

I'm the same way, but with the bible, so unless you were talking to God, I win.

Same happened to me

It would do more to stop it if you deleted your account. It was honestly probably one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health

FWIW you can avoid this, and still get old reddit without logging in via a Firefox (and probably other browsers) extension that automatically makes reddit links old.reddit

I keep it since family occasionally uses it to arrange gatherings, but I'm otherwise on it 2-3 times a year. I'm just not interested.

The bizarre bans is what made me leave recently. Banned from a default sub i had been in for years for posting a link. There was no rules against links and the reason given was "we don't like the link" then told "we don't have to give warnings" when I asked why I would be permanently banned for doing something that isn't against the rules. Then that same thing happened in another sub the next day. I don't know what's going on there but it's almost like they want to cull the users who aren't conforming to the way they want the content to be ingested.

ALso AI is scraping reddit less and less, because of the lack of users because so many USERS with multiple accounts were being banned. now its overtaken by AI just posting , and reposting.

with AI/ and new filtering tools is actually alot worst now.

it coincides the fact that google is limiting accoutnts per device now too.