They didn’t win, they just didn’t fail as badly some had hoped. What was accomplished was spreading out a fair portion of their user base. Maybe not a huge percentage of it, but enough that they don’t have the same level of monopoly. People are more aware of other options (and Reddit’s flaws), and more will depart in time.

Reddit assisted their competition. Lemmy use doubled.

It’s still a drop in the ocean for reddit and the people who left (or just spend less time on it) were never the target audience of this “new course”. Reddit will be just fine.

Haha dude, I was a MAJOR contributor on Reddit. I spent HOURS each day posting fresh new content for people to read on various subreddits.

Drop in an ocean or not, if all the content creators stop doing it, the content stops.

Imagine YouTube without LinusTechTips, or Hollywood without any actors. They are, as you say “a drop in the bucket”, a tiny percentage of overall YouTube users.

But that doesn’t matter because most people on Reddit and TV viewers, are passive consumers. The statistics showed that less than one half of users were actually logged in, and a third or less ever posted anything (non-comments).

Trust me, Reddit is hurting. They haven’t won. They think they’ve won but that’s just shock and adrenaline before it wears off.

The users are the content, and if they all leave, there’s nothing left. Digg and MySpace know this.