I’ve been pondering this for some time and would like to hear everyone’s opinions. Do you recall the turmoil when Reddit modified its API policies a couple of years ago? There was a lot of frustration and outrage, with many users declaring they were leaving Reddit for good.
Now that some time has gone by, I’m interested to know if any of those users actually left. Did the API changes truly result in a large number of users exiting the platform, or did most stick around, despite their frustrations? I understand some third-party applications ceased operations due to this issue, but I’m curious about the broader user experience.
Has anyone seen any differences in their preferred communities or overall engagement? I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts on what the long-term impact has been.
The API changes created a weird split in how users behaved - I saw it happen in real time. Sure, the vocal minority made noise about leaving, but what actually went down was more quality degradation than mass exodus. I moderate a couple smaller communities and watched our most active contributors either cut way back or vanish completely. These weren’t people making dramatic goodbye posts - they were the ones answering questions daily, organizing events, and keeping the subreddit’s culture alive. Subscriber counts stayed pretty stable, but meaningful engagement tanked. We went from regular discussions with dozens of thoughtful replies to posts getting maybe five or six lazy comments. Reddit survived the numbers game, but tons of communities lost their soul.
From what I saw in my usual communities, yeah there was an exodus but not nearly as dramatic as all the angry posts made it seem. The power users and mods who lived on third-party apps got hit hard, and we definitely lost some good contributors. But Reddit’s huge casual userbase? They mostly didn’t care since they were already using the official app. The real damage was more subtle - some niche subs lost their key people, and moderation got worse without the proper tools. Traffic probably bounced back fast, but losing those engaged longtime users who actually created quality content? That’s way harder to track with numbers.
tbh, i think many who said they were out are still lurking around. a few did head to lemmy, but reddit is just hard to quit. engagement dipped a lil, but overall its pretty much the same, imo.
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