I feel like at that number Reddit is in the goldilocks zone for being a useful social media platform -- big enough that there is tons of engagement, but small enough to not drown out anyone. If I want to, I can make a post about a hobby project on Reddit and (if it's actually something interesting) it'll get quite a bit of attention. If I post the same thing on twitter, it'll be lucky to get a tenth of the attention.
I do wonder how much of this is due to the lack of emphasis on a poster's "credentials" though. Reddit seems to be the last online platform where anyone can contribute to a discussion without being judged for how "popular" someone is.
Absolutely not true at all that you'll get attention if it's "interesting". There's tons of people jostling for eyes on their posts in medium-to-large hobby subreddits, oftentimes posting things to multiple ones. Makes it even harder because one can't self-promote their own stuff. Bots/burner astroturfing accounts are also a massive problem on reddit.
I'm just speaking from my own experience, but I guess I've just been lucky. The subreddits I've posted projects to are in the ~20-50K subscriber range and have always responded well to whatever project I'm announcing, unless it was something that clearly didn't take me very long.
Keep in mind the size of the subreddit. A subreddit with a few thousand followers is more likely to see your post than, say, /r/funny’s followers would
Wow that's.. tiny. I was also surprised to learn that Twitter has just 187M daily users, even smaller than Snap (249M), which in my mind was only an app used by American teenagers.
Similar to Reddit or HackerNews, it depends on what communities you're in. You have to go to Twitter if you want to follow journalists, comic artists, or TV writers. I'm sure there's a lot more communities I'm not interested in where Twitter is the primary source of information, like celebrities or K-Pop.
Lots of high-profile actors are on twitter (tech influencers and politicans for 2 more examples) because it's such a direct, relatively clutter free way to get out information and have it seen.
Most politicians are still only technically on Twitter, continuing the Obama-era style of very careful and boring tweets. The only three I can think of that are 100% live tweeting like humans (regardless if they're humans you like) are AOC, Ted Cruz, and of course Trump.
Can confirm this didn't just happen to thedonald subreddit, several default subreddits (i.e. country-specific subreddits, apolicital subreddits, etc) became extremely left leaning, banning different opinions, forcing people to leave, essencially.
do you have any evidence that they aren't people? if so, i'd like to see it. actually, i'd like to see any methods of determining if a reddit user is a bot or not.
I do wonder how much of this is due to the lack of emphasis on a poster's "credentials" though. Reddit seems to be the last online platform where anyone can contribute to a discussion without being judged for how "popular" someone is.