What did happen to reddit though?
Everything seems to continue as it always has. I was using Joey for Reddit to browse it, ant that still works as far as I know
The impacts on Reddit are going to be more long term than anything. The technically literate base that attracted people to Reddit is gone. Right now, attaching Reddit to the end of a search is a good idea to get the answers you want. All the open source people are gone now, Google results are already hurting. The most attractive part of Reddit is already starting to disappear. It'll be a slow decline as users can't find the content they want.
Objectively, Reddit will do well as it's just a generational change. TikTok and Instagram got all and about zilch to offer if one is looking for factual statements or level-headed discussion of topics and they are doing phenomenally. Instant gratification is way more marketable and exploitable, so it's best for Reddit to take the small loss in engagement from the technical crowd and be just another meme spewing zombie consumer pleaser.
The people who really suffer are the ones that were relying on the niche knowledge some subreddits provided or who were using them as a learning/studying aid. AKA the folks that left and the lurkers that relied upon them.
In a way it's a return to form. The technical comminuty side of reddit was just a modern message board. Lemmy will return the power to the communities instead of relying on one company.
No and they started computing it differently at some point so it got a sudden jump from max 6 to 8k upvotes on the most popular posts to having 13ks in the front page frequently
But I took that into account, my account is 13 years old on there, when stuff barely ever went in the thousands it already made me switch from 9gag to reddit
Some third party apps still work because the official app isn't ADA compatible. That being said, most third party apps left are working on monetization to pay for the API, either by ads or subscription. Regardless, all third party apps have been cut off from sexually explicit material.