
The Growth of Reddit - saternius
https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-growth-over-time/
======
propogandist
Reddit was great, many years ago, although there are many sub-reddits that are
still excellent today. Moves they've made in the recent years, like hiding
vote counts, were to improve growth, but it has also enabled more astroturfing
and censorship (widespread).

More recently, they started injected tracking into outbound link clicks and
introduced the terrible redesign to help with growth/monetization also. As
they've grown, the quality of the content within sub-reddits and discussions
within those communities, have fallen dramatically.

~~~
naravara
it never occurred to me before, but seeing it in a chart like this it really
seems like Reddit has basically just turned into Gamers and their side
interests, politics, and a few vestiges of old Reddit, like AskReddit, which
at this point might as well be their own separate site for what all they have
to do with the main demographic.

The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs
are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about
building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a
lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The
Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect
a gaming forum to focus on.

The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits
in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one
day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the
face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I
wouldn't have believed you.

Just look at this joke post [https://external-
preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH...](https://external-
preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriHsSYajwIJ6fAu-
Vh8.png?auto=webp&s=c4d42004c487dd362c7b54e60a933e0bafcb66d3) from 6 years
ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.

~~~
bspammer
Strange that you say the dedicated meme parts of reddit are gone. In my mind
they're more active than ever, between /r/me_irl, /r/prequelmemes,
/r/deepfriedmemes, and if you really want the old fashioned stuff
/r/adviceanimals is still surprisingly active.

~~~
wilsonnb3
/r/dankmemes, /r/bikinibottomtwitter, /r/teenagers are also meme heavy and
make it to the top of /r/all regularly, not to mention the variety of spin off
meme subreddits (lotrmemes, dankchristianmemes, etc.)

------
chrisco255
In many ways, Reddit reminds me more of the "old internet" than Facebook or
Twitter. There seems to be better discussions, more variety, and even quite a
bit of experimentation going on within certain subreddits. It feels like a
freer place and that much I like. I still don't like that people get into
their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and
ideological differences, but it certainly feels more exploratory than the
other two.

~~~
rigged-system
When it's gone, the "old internet" will be gone

~~~
mario0b1
Well, it might not be "normie compatible", but there still is 4chan, which is
a lot "old internet". I can understand that people do not like it and why it
is that way though. But the point is: There are still sites out there which
are like the old internet. They are obviously just not mainstream. They never
were really (except reddit maybe). You just gotta find your little niche place
and maybe look around every now and then, but they still exist.

Edit: No, i don't talk about /pol/. No one likes the right-wing /pol/-scum.
That's not 4chan.

~~~
jquery
/pol/ may be the most salient and influential political forum on the internet
(a recent study showed /pol/ produces the most reposted content seen elsewhere
online). To describe it as “right wing” is like saying YouTube comments are
right wing. It’s unmoderated, not right wing, there’s a big difference (see
/r/the_donald if you want right wing). That said, these days it’s full of
shills shilling shills. I prefer to hang out on the other, more apolitical and
better moderated 4chan forums like g, tv, and o.

Addendum: to say /pol/ isn’t 4chan is both true and false but it’s kind of
weird and unfortunate you felt obligated to apologize for using 4chan because
/pol/ exists. Just because /pol/ tolerates witches doesn’t mean 4chan’s a
witch site for witches populated entirely by witches.

~~~
beaconstudios
the_donald is mostly shitposting. If you want an example of right wing you'd
be better off with
[https://www.reddit.com/r/conservative](https://www.reddit.com/r/conservative).

------
dmode
It is interesting that the #1 story in HN is decline in FB and the #3 is
growth in Reddit. Personal anecdote, I have shifted all my FB screen time to
Reddit. Not out of any agenda, but perhaps to interact with a more diverse
group of people. Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon

~~~
ProAm
For me I've moved from Reddit back to Digg, Reddit seems to be the worst parts
of Facebook combined with the worst parts of Twitter. The redesign is
horrendously busy, the comments are trite or vicious, and the v.reddit videos
either autoplay or never play when you click on them.

~~~
beatgammit
I'm in the same boat, but I didn't go to digging, but came back here. The new
redesign, coupled with the realization that I spent far too much time with the
same arguments showed me that Reddit is broken now.

Why can't I just have a nice link aggregator with decent discussion? HN is
great, but it doesn't have as much content as other platforms. I just want to
discuss politics, hobbies, and lifestyles with the same level of discussion we
have here, why is that too much to ask?

~~~
ux-app
> "...why is that too much to ask? "

because it's bloody hard to create civil, thoughtful communities. HN is
interesting since the general user base seems to have learned to self-
moderate, buuuut, it has made HN a pretty dry place (boring maybe?).

I have found some absolute hilarious gems on Reddit. The wit and humor of some
users really catches me off guard sometimes, but the issue with Reddit is that
there is just so much low effort garbage to sift through to find anything
interesting/funny. Reddit seems to have converged on to a low effort meme-fest
for the most part. I've gone to the effort to customise my sub-reddits to
match my interests, but each community seems to very quickly become a
repetitive echo chamber, so there are not many new/unique POV to explore. For
example I sub to /r/Australia and it's basically the same content re hashed
over and over (NBN sucks, Libs suck, House prices suck, magpies are annoying,
here's a picture of a Kookaburra etc.)

So Reddit isn't really for me any more and I spend little time there. Maybe
I'm just getting old, but I find that I get more out of just sitting in the
sun and letting my mind wander.

------
cwkoss
Reddit has a number of systemic issues (poor tools for moderators, hard to get
rid of bad moderators, huge amounts of astroturfing)

It's a shame that they are 'good enough' to prevent much growth in the
competitors, leading the cool tech made by competitors to often become
exclusively filled with content that would be banned on reddit.

------
trynewideas
Some pretty poor categorization of some subreddits in there. gamesofthrones,
mylittlepony, thewalkingdead, and BigBrother are in sports (asoiaf is in
entertainment). sysadmin and techsupport are in hobbies/occupations while
buildapc is in tech section. tumblrinaction, kotakuinaction, and
blackpeopletwitter are in entertainment. DebateReligion is in news/politics,
not discussion (with other debate subreddits) or lifestyle (with other
religion subreddits).

The hierarchy is on GitHub: [https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-
Skeleton/blo...](https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-
Skeleton/blob/master/subreddits.txt)

But it's not in a structured format and tough to verify. There's no
methodology for the current organization, and it doesn't look like it matches
the actual graph.

~~~
saternius
The base classification structure was borrowed from r/listofsubreddits sub
directory:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubredd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubreddits).
However it was modified a bit in order to even out the clusters, size wise.
Keeping it unchanged would make more than half of the subs entertainment. That
being said, some hiccups were made during the formatting, and the purpose of
the repo is to fix/enhance any mistakes people spot.

~~~
crazypyro
It would be interesting to see them classified by subreddits where the a
significant amount of comments are driven from live events (thinking of the
big sporting subreddits and some of the e-sport/gaming ones) vs subreddits
that are almost completely based off non-live events (i.e. AskReddit, Sex).

------
wufufufu
I get a lot of auto completes for "site:reddit.com" when I search for anything
in the Chrome search bar or just in Google Search. I find reddit answers to be
less likely to be advertisements or affiliate marketing. Honestly not sure
where I would find information otherwise.

------
ben_jones
I use reddit on my mobile browser without logging into to an account. Recently
when clicking links or images in the mobile view a pop-under will appear
freezing the site until I select the prominent first option (to download the
Reddit mobile app) or the second option to continue using my mobile browser.
Because I am unauthenticated this preference does not carry over to page
reloads for things like jumping to a different subreddit, leading me to
experience this pop-under over and over again.

Needless to say it's cut heavily into my reddit usage. I genuinely believe
they raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of engineers and managers,
convinced the C-levels a re-design was necessary, and then implemented a
subpar re-design with a giant middle finger to users all in the name of ads.
Glorious, world improving, ads.

~~~
minieggs
It's incredibly annoying. I've built out my own mobile website for interfacing
with Reddit because of it. Update after update the mobile.reddit.com keeps
becoming harder to use.

------
iblaine
Over the past few years, both Twitter and Reddit have seen a huge growth of
bot accounts. I'd put an asterisk next to any growth* figure by either
company.

------
css
t_d at its peak was almost as big as politics, now that was not something I
expected. Before SandersForPresident was archived when he lost the nomination
it was about the same size as t_d.

Would be really neat to select a single sub or group of subs and generate a
line chart of the same data.

~~~
edaemon
It's interesting that it peaked at 1.5m comments/mo in late 2016 and it's
shrunk to 820k comments/mo. That's a huge drop. It sort of makes sense, seeing
as the election ended, but that activity decrease is far larger than any other
subreddit, even political ones.

~~~
Perceval
r/the_Donald was "quarantined" by the admins, so it cannot be discovered by
users in the same way as other subreddits. That cut off a lot of the organic
growth that you would normally see, and it cut off users who might normally
see r/the_Donald on the r/all or r/popular wander in to comment/argue. People
who are not already subscribers just no longer even see anything at all from
r/the_Donald.

~~~
edaemon
Where did you see that it was quarantined? As far as I know their sticky posts
can't appear in /r/all anymore and it was excluded from /r/popular.

~~~
Karunamon
I think he’s using “quarantine” in the practical sense rather than the Reddit-
specific terminology sense.

The only distinction at this point is that the subreddit doesn’t have the
yellow banner or verified email on account requirement. It is quarantined in
the ways that count, such as inability to hit the front page regardless of
popularity.

------
avar
Number of comments seems like a bad metric. A lot of these are informal
subreddits where the most common comments are going to be "lol" or users
collaborating to complete a sentence one letter at a time as part of some
meme.

~~~
saternius
Totally agree. This skewed metric is why r/AskOuija is massively
overrepresented.

------
lettergram
For those interested, I've done a similar (far less pretty) analysis on Hacker
News:

[https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-
gr...](https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-growth-
community/)

------
rchaud
Reddit for me is an acceptable middle point between the community-specific
vBulletin forums of the 2000s (largely deserted now), and modern social media.
You can explore a wide variety of topics (like on social media sites) while
keeping anonymity and a sense of community (in dedicated subreddits).

When people say Reddit is 4chan-lite, I see where they're coming from. They're
not signed in, so all they see is r/all, which has about the same quality
level as the front page of Youtube.

The trick to it is to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension
and start blocking the subs that frequently post low-quality/hate speech/just
plain irritating content. Block a sub from your home page once, it never comes
back.

Wish I could say the same for Youtube. I swear, you watch ONE Bill Burr
standup clip, and your recs are suddenly full of "feminist gets pwned by
redpill logic" and other "viral" garbage videos, each of which has to be
manually set to "Not Interested".

------
b1r6
The day they force the new design (remove old.reddit.com preference) is the
last day I use Reddit.

~~~
randycupertino
I had a pretty strong reddit addiction and the redesign was fantastic for me-
it completely cured my addiction! The redesign is just so awful and I hate
using it so much that all I had to do was opt-in to using it and viola... 3
hours a day back in my life which I now use for the gym and to clean the
house. It was an awesome change for me personally. No more reddit timesink!

------
Hypx
I wonder if Reddit has surpassed Twitter, Snapchat, etc, for the title of most
popular non-Facebook social network. You rarely see anyone do any kind of
comparison of them.

~~~
chrisco255
Is Reddit really considered a social network and not just a discussion forum?

~~~
beatgammit
It has:

\- user accounts and profiles (users have their own "subreddit") \- friends
list (and block list) \- live chat \- personalizable feed \- communities

So yeah, it's a social network that looks a lot like a message board, and it
has been getting more and more social features.

That's the reason I'm leaving Reddit. I liked how it was a while ago, but the
recent changes and the culture just aren't my cup of tea anymore. Discussion
is still mostly okay, but there's just far too much noise.

------
jancsika
Sometimes when I lurk on Reddit it appears that "the internet" is giving
helpful and respectful comments to someone who, say, alleges that her husband
had been sexually assaulting her.

When I start digging down into the lower quality comments those comments are
obviously lower quality. But here's the thing-- within the lower quality
comments is the OP responding to the low quality comments!

In other words, an OP (probably like many OPs) has a limited amount of time to
get feedback on Reddit about a pressing problem. And mods/downvoters cannot
react quickly enough in that period of time to appropriately moderate the
responses.

Imagine OP's "Reddit time" (let's say an hour) as a rectangle in a video game
that starts at 100% and drains to 0%. Let's say those dregs comments drained
15% of the OP's total time or energy participating on Reddit.

Now, suppose a lurker reads the thread later when the mods/downvoters have
caught up with all their work. The lurker's default view is only the quality
comments. This misleads the lurker by hiding the 15% time-or-energy hit the OP
had from interacting with the dregs. The lurker likely assumes that
participating on Reddit requires less time or energy that it does in reality.

Now the lurker tries out posting for the first time and starts to experience
the 15% time-or-energy hit from the dregs comments. The more impatient OP is
about reading comments, the more likely OP is to increase that wasted time-or-
energy by interacting with the dregs.

Worse, that 15% time-or-energy hit includes content that would be beyond the
pale for in-person social interactions-- it's mindless trolling or misanthropy
which nearly no one would utter face to face. Some of it-- like accusations
that the OP is an imposter-- is unique to social media.

Worst of all, that poster probably started as a lurker. So their decision to
post in the first place was based on a view of Reddit that radically downplays
the costs of interacting. I mean, I don't see any clear warnings on first post
that let the poster know "shit will roll in" faster than the mods can flush
it.

The obvious solution is to throttle all posting activity so that participating
on Reddit slows to a level approaching those tree people from Lord of the
Rings. (The larger time slices would actually get rid of whole class of
problems, like the internet sleuthing BS that happened after the Boston
bombing.) But I'm sure Reddit wants to encourage OPs to increase their # of
responses for maximum buzz, so I don't really see any non-manipulative
practical solution to this problem.

~~~
debacle
These days it feels more and more like <50% of the downvoted comments are
trolls/jerks, and the majority are just people who might disagree with the
hivemind.

~~~
jancsika
That could be, and the same logic applies.

The upshot of my comment was something like this: lurkers likely interpret a
post as the OP being on some sort of mountaintop. In this view the moderators
and voters are spread out along the mountainside, helping some hikers reach
the top and hindering others from getting there. Thus, it looks to the lurkers
like the mountaintop is a place where "unwanted" commenters have been stopped
from climbing up and only "desirable" discussion occurs. (For whatever
definition of "unwanted"\-- it doesn't matter and we'll come back to that.)

To the OP, however, the experience is much more like a parking lot where
anyone who wants to can walk up and interact with OP. _Later_ the mods and
voters come in and "clean up" the lot so that it appears to onlookers that
there were no "unwanted" interactions with OP-- only "desirable" discussion.

Now, let's assume 100% of downvoted comments are actually good faith actors
who happen not to agree with what you call the "hivemind."

Because of the manipulative design of Reddit, here's what will happen:

* people who agree with the hivemind point of view and don't want dissenting opinions will _overestimate_ how good Reddit is at facilitating "desirable" discussion. They will do this because the OP's interaction with dissidents is hidden from them.

* people who disagree with the hivemind point of view will _underestimate_ how much interaction OP had with dissident points of view. They will do this because OP's interaction with dissenting opinions is hidden from them.

Hivemind peeps lose because they want OP to have what they consider a pleasant
discussion when in reality OP is expending considerable energy having what
they would consider an unpleasant discussion.

Non-hivemind peeps lose because they develop an exaggerated sense of the
problem of dissidents not being heard. They were heard by the OP, but the non-
hivemind peeps don't see that interaction.

OP loses because the hivemind peeps consider the discussion a success and
overlook the problem of OP (and many others) expending energy on the more
adversarial interactions. But OP loses again because OP's adversaries don't
credit OP for interacting with dissidents!

------
zmmmmm
I feel like reddit is one of the most underestimated internet properties in
existence. It gets almost no attention except when specific incidents that
explicitly involve it occur. But by and large it is completely ignored by the
mainstream media, celebrities, politicians, just about everybody. I think it's
role has been drastically underestimated in the 2016 election interference,
for example. Facebook and even Google have taken flak over that, but hardly
anybody really seriously interrogated how powerful TheDonald was both directly
and indirectly (through how it created a nexus and community to energize real
Trump supporters).

Reddit just exists, sitting there in the background, steadily growing over
time, but never seemingly even trying to raise its own profile. Yet (or
perhaps because of that) I certainly spend far more time there and get far
more value from it than any other social media site.

------
epa
One of the major reasons reddit became popular initially is because of Digg.
Digg had content that was 2-3 days older than reddit (many posts from Reddit
got reposted to Digg). Once people started figuring that out, combined with
the Digg censorshop scandal(1), reddit took off.

(1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy)

~~~
sys_64738
This. Was thinking that all the Reddit regulars of yester-decade were
originally from Digg myself.

------
11eleven
One of the hallmarks of recent Reddit growth has been its mobile redesign. It
aggressively nudges you to download their mobile app and it takes a few
seconds longer to open any page (used to be instant with the old design). I
presume they're doing this because their app has better user tracking (hard to
disable tracking inside an app) and far less people are using ad blockers that
work for apps too.

~~~
jplayer01
Thankfully, there are third party apps that are great.

------
trillic
Love watching the sports subreddits fluctuate throughout the year depending on
which sport is in season.

------
buboard
I'd like to say 'good job' on reddit, but they grew despite making a horrible
job, like the redesign. I 'm glad it's doing well anyway.

------
wpdev_63
The problem I have with reddit is that they are manipulating public opinions
through bolstering topics that further their agenda.

~~~
brokenmachine
In what way do "they" do that?

------
swampthinker
Very interesting to watch the sports subreddits fluctuate in size as their
respective leagues come in and out of season.

------
toephu2
What's reddit's DAU? They used to disclose that publicly but they took it down
years ago.

------
empath75
Just looking at the gaming section I wonder how much subreddit popularity
leads sales or vice versa.

~~~
saternius
There is another post about comparing subreddit growth
[https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-
trends/](https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/). One could compare this
to historical sales data.

------
nurino
Personally I wonder if Reddit can do something about the low quality of their
comments in the big subs. All comment sections are full of idiots making bad
puns. It's terrible, much much worse than youtube ever was or that twitter
currently is.

