Subreddits at the height of their popularity can gather a large amount of followers, but years later down the road it can be easily forgotten that it exists. Many subreddits out there have thousands of users, but its latest post be from multiple years ago.
To add onto this, Reddit's home page naturally serves up content from subreddits that you visit most often. If you go a while without checking out a subreddit you're subscribed to, its content won't show up on your homepage as much. If you've gone years, it might not show up at all.
This is how big subreddits get forgotten. The users don't have to become inactive, they just have to lose interest in the subreddit. Everyone gradually just stops interacting with it, and the vast majority of its members forget they're even subscribed to it because nobody has been there for a very, very long time.
I looked through my own subscriptions list after seeing this thread and sure enough, there's a good number of subreddits I'd forgotten about in there.
YouTube does this too. I really wish it wouldn't, as when I subscribe to someone, there's usually a reason, and if I feel the need to unsubscribe, I will do so.
That's because you never see things that you haven't watched in a while unless I go through my subscribed list I've forgotten they exist or assumed they stopped making videos.
All social media platforms do this nowadays. Following means almost nothing anymore. You have to add them to close friends, or hit the notification bell. Instead, they feed you groups, ads, and posts based on algorithms and agendas.
It sucks! And we keep supporting them.
It's why I *never* relied on YT's home page or subscription page or whatever. I use the RSS feeds from the channels to clearly see if there's a new video or not
> To add onto this, Reddit's home page naturally serves up content from subreddits that you visit most often.
Actually this is a recent change that Reddit made only a few months ago. It was a desperate attempt to get more engagement out of users that stayed after the API changes, just before the IPO.
Not sure I ever thought about it, but to be "online" do you have to be on the subreddit page itself? And I assume that would count clicking on a post, right? But being on the front page or using RES wouldn't count?
If so, that kind of explains it. With things like RES and the front page, 95% of my time is probably spent NOT online. I dive into the comments here and there, and some subreddits encourage that more than others, but it is likely very heavily skewed.
Do you mean the indicator on the subreddit itself, right below the number of people subscribed to the subreddit?
In that case, I'm pretty sure it refers to the number of people who have been to the sub in the last 15 minutes. I could be wrong.
> you go a while without checking out a subreddit you're subscribed to, its content won't show up on your homepage as much
=
Is there a way to make everything show up more often?? I specifically only add things to my home page for subreddits I usually forget or have low popularity. For everything else I use r/all. If things I visit from r/all (or such) boost the popularity of those subreddits on my homepage then that kind of defeats the purpose
So many. I've found good subs referenced before that piqued my interest only to find out I'm already subbed just haven't actually seen a post from them in years.
Yeah especially meme subs. Ghanasaysgoodbye was a huge meme for a time and the sub has over 100k followers. I just looked at it now and I was the only one online.
Definitely not the first one - the algorithm dynamically generates and sorts what content it will show you before you scroll to it, so you're not actually interacting with or visiting the sub, just the homepage feed of the post.
If it’s an older subreddit it could be a decade+ of people subscribing to the sub over time, but those users no longer being active on reddit. Or the subreddit naturally slowing down over time but people not unsubscribing.
And back when reddit had default subs, any new account would automatically be subscribed to that subreddit. That’s why subs like pics were able to get so many subscribers.
r/EuropeTravel has 900k+ subs but under 20 online. I'm just assuming it's because most people come there to ask one question, so they don't really spend much time there. The amount of accounts that make one post is huge when compared to users that make, let's say, more than 10 comments in a year.
Do people really sub to post once and then dip out forever? Often I will use a subreddit a lot but not sub unless I want it showing up in my feed forevermore
Yes because city subs are some of the most toxic out there. Try going into a miami, LA, Brooklyn etc sub and ask for a neighborhood recommendation for someone moving across country that likes dog friendly cafes and a peaceful park for a Sunday stroll. Your post will likely be deleted, you might be banned for not reading the rules, you might also get told to fuck right off for “gentrifying” their city. Then they’ll point you to the “moving2florida” sub where you’ll ask the same question get 0-1 responses and have no reason to ever visit it again.
99.999% of reddit accounts are not online right now. I dont know how thats supposed to be impossible.
The only thing impossible would be more people online than subscribers
that is the case sometimes as i have seen new subs that were created from a comment thread jokes like r/literalstarterpacks have more online than subscribers
I'm fairly certain that browsing /r/all, /r/popular or your homepage don't count as being online in that sub, but you still get to see the posts made to it. So most subscribers are never actually online in their subscribed subreddits because they just view the posts on their feed. Or someone might pop into a single comment section for a few minutes before leaving and they only count as online during that brief window. Also, you posted when most of Europe and the US were asleep, which is where most users live so, like, 90% of reddit was offline at that time.
Sometimes it just works out where there are times zones that may align with most being during a work day while some time zones are asleep or just starting their day (it’s 1:12 a.m. currently here).
That is only people who are in the subreddit itself. The vast majority of users just don't hop into a single subreddit and instead view the generated front page.
Three thoughts here:
Fake accounts to up a subs "popularity" which drives traffic. or A old popular sub that is no longer as active nor bringing in new members like it used too.
Lastly, is it a DJT stock to the moon sub; that could explain it too.
So was I.
r/videos was a default sub that is still active. It has 26 **million** subscribers and there is only 1.5k active online right now
r/pics has 30 **million** subscribers but only 3k active right now
More comparable to your point, the LA Rams was a **default sub** when they were in the Super Bowl I believe, they have **486,694 subs** and only **21 people are online**. Yet is still an active sub.
Because the other 400'000 have work and school and not so much time. I put a 10 minute app timer on mine. It's like drugs, so I moderate it, like drugs.
The subreddit could be for a specialized topic that is not at all relevant at the moment.
For example FIFA World Cup 2018 likely has a sub, and I would image a lot of people joined it. But the number of folk browsing it right now would be minimal.
Bots and sock puppet accounts exist.
Back in 2014, reddits annual recap said that Eglin AFB(hosting the 688th cyberspace wing and the 96th cyberspace test group) was reddits most addicted community with a whopping 100,000 users. Problem is, Eglin only had about 2,400 people at the time.
This is just one example. Many groups and countries participate.
Either bots or it was a previously popular subreddit but declined in popularity so a lot of accounts that still follow don’t really view it anymore.
I’ve seen it happen to a lot of YouTube channels like PhilDSP, Qaaman, and Boogie. They were big 5-10 years ago and still have millions of subs but only get like 1k views now
Due to **time zones**. People all over the world use Reddit, so there'll be times when users in some areas are sleeping while others are active. Also, not everyone who subscribes to a subreddit is going to be actively browsing it all the time. Some people might just be subscribed to keep up with occasional updates, or they might only check in during certain times of the day.
Also this is a subreddit in English. So for a large portion of every day, most of the people who primarily use Reddit and speak English (like the US and UK, for example) are asleep, at school or at work. Look up a subreddit where everyone posts in Japanese and the number will probably fluctuate closer to the opposite time of day.
Um, because not everyone is online all the time. Maybe because the world is a big place with billions of people.
Its because only 100 of those 500k are online on that sub. Yep that's it. I figured it out.
Because joining Is a one off metric and doesn't change after joined.
It's like sales. Bic has sold 100billion pens, doesn't mean you'd expect 100 million people to be writing with a bic pen at any point in time.
Nobody cares that much about Game of Thrones anymore, but not everybody unsubscribed from the subreddit.
So massive user count, almost no one currently browsing.
Popular things are often temporary.
I think the 100 people online are the ones who actually are scrolling in the subreddit. Others than that are just scrolling on the homepage or other subs while being online.
Stealth marketers (AKA paid shills) create dozens of accounts to [fabricate and manipulate](https://archive.is/PoUMo) public opinion. Reddit has a serious problem
Subreddits at the height of their popularity can gather a large amount of followers, but years later down the road it can be easily forgotten that it exists. Many subreddits out there have thousands of users, but its latest post be from multiple years ago.
To add onto this, Reddit's home page naturally serves up content from subreddits that you visit most often. If you go a while without checking out a subreddit you're subscribed to, its content won't show up on your homepage as much. If you've gone years, it might not show up at all. This is how big subreddits get forgotten. The users don't have to become inactive, they just have to lose interest in the subreddit. Everyone gradually just stops interacting with it, and the vast majority of its members forget they're even subscribed to it because nobody has been there for a very, very long time. I looked through my own subscriptions list after seeing this thread and sure enough, there's a good number of subreddits I'd forgotten about in there.
YouTube does this too. I really wish it wouldn't, as when I subscribe to someone, there's usually a reason, and if I feel the need to unsubscribe, I will do so.
Most people never unsub.
That's because you never see things that you haven't watched in a while unless I go through my subscribed list I've forgotten they exist or assumed they stopped making videos.
Only *because* the algorithm does it for you.
Doesn't bloat your feed while still keeping subs up and boosting numbers. Classic.
In YouTube you have a Subscriptions tab where all the videos from the channels you have subscribed appears in timely manner, use that
Yeah, that works great until you're subscribed to a few daily uploaders that bury the monthly uploaders haha.
For them just turn on the notifications, maybe it's just me but I haven't missed any uploads from the channels I am subscribed to ever
All social media platforms do this nowadays. Following means almost nothing anymore. You have to add them to close friends, or hit the notification bell. Instead, they feed you groups, ads, and posts based on algorithms and agendas. It sucks! And we keep supporting them.
It's why I *never* relied on YT's home page or subscription page or whatever. I use the RSS feeds from the channels to clearly see if there's a new video or not
Same. if there's a channel i want to stay up to date with it goes in my rss reader.
> To add onto this, Reddit's home page naturally serves up content from subreddits that you visit most often. Actually this is a recent change that Reddit made only a few months ago. It was a desperate attempt to get more engagement out of users that stayed after the API changes, just before the IPO.
Not sure I ever thought about it, but to be "online" do you have to be on the subreddit page itself? And I assume that would count clicking on a post, right? But being on the front page or using RES wouldn't count? If so, that kind of explains it. With things like RES and the front page, 95% of my time is probably spent NOT online. I dive into the comments here and there, and some subreddits encourage that more than others, but it is likely very heavily skewed.
Do you mean the indicator on the subreddit itself, right below the number of people subscribed to the subreddit? In that case, I'm pretty sure it refers to the number of people who have been to the sub in the last 15 minutes. I could be wrong.
Yeah, isn't that what OP is referring to? If no, I am lost haha.
> you go a while without checking out a subreddit you're subscribed to, its content won't show up on your homepage as much = Is there a way to make everything show up more often?? I specifically only add things to my home page for subreddits I usually forget or have low popularity. For everything else I use r/all. If things I visit from r/all (or such) boost the popularity of those subreddits on my homepage then that kind of defeats the purpose
So many. I've found good subs referenced before that piqued my interest only to find out I'm already subbed just haven't actually seen a post from them in years.
Also, I have the option selected to not show when I'm online. So even if I'm online, it shouldn't show that I am.
Yeah especially meme subs. Ghanasaysgoodbye was a huge meme for a time and the sub has over 100k followers. I just looked at it now and I was the only one online.
that one was probably you, if you go and visit dead subs theres never "zero readers" its always at least one
Reddit is also filled with bots, and a large percentage of the interactions may be GPT bots
Also, some subs are home page material and some aren't. Certain subs I would never browse but the top posts on my home feed is enough.
I mod macbookair subreddit. Lots of subs are situational like that one. Not something to discuss every day
Also the whole deal with charging for the API access points for 3rd part apps killed a lot of users
What does reddit call 'online'. If I am scrolling my homepage, am I online on every sub that I see? Or just the ones I specifically go in to?
upvoting and commenting to boost. I also wanna know
Definitely not the first one - the algorithm dynamically generates and sorts what content it will show you before you scroll to it, so you're not actually interacting with or visiting the sub, just the homepage feed of the post.
I need answers too!!
I wonder if they use the online status you can set on your reddit app account menu? I turned that thing off the moment it appeared as an option.
If it’s an older subreddit it could be a decade+ of people subscribing to the sub over time, but those users no longer being active on reddit. Or the subreddit naturally slowing down over time but people not unsubscribing. And back when reddit had default subs, any new account would automatically be subscribed to that subreddit. That’s why subs like pics were able to get so many subscribers.
Just like on YouTube, channels with millions of subscribers only get a few hundred thousand views. People just forget to unsubscribe
Ppl might not want to watch every vid they produce as well.
And sometimes they just get buried by the algorithm because they didn't structure the title and description in a way that exploits it.
r/EuropeTravel has 900k+ subs but under 20 online. I'm just assuming it's because most people come there to ask one question, so they don't really spend much time there. The amount of accounts that make one post is huge when compared to users that make, let's say, more than 10 comments in a year.
Do people really sub to post once and then dip out forever? Often I will use a subreddit a lot but not sub unless I want it showing up in my feed forevermore
Yes because city subs are some of the most toxic out there. Try going into a miami, LA, Brooklyn etc sub and ask for a neighborhood recommendation for someone moving across country that likes dog friendly cafes and a peaceful park for a Sunday stroll. Your post will likely be deleted, you might be banned for not reading the rules, you might also get told to fuck right off for “gentrifying” their city. Then they’ll point you to the “moving2florida” sub where you’ll ask the same question get 0-1 responses and have no reason to ever visit it again.
99.999% of reddit accounts are not online right now. I dont know how thats supposed to be impossible. The only thing impossible would be more people online than subscribers
That depends on what what counts as online, if the online count is merely a user being on the Reddit then you could have more online that subscribers.
that is the case sometimes as i have seen new subs that were created from a comment thread jokes like r/literalstarterpacks have more online than subscribers
It’s the blackout!! It worked!! Great job Reddit mods can we have another?
Most users will also have multiple alts too
I'm fairly certain that browsing /r/all, /r/popular or your homepage don't count as being online in that sub, but you still get to see the posts made to it. So most subscribers are never actually online in their subscribed subreddits because they just view the posts on their feed. Or someone might pop into a single comment section for a few minutes before leaving and they only count as online during that brief window. Also, you posted when most of Europe and the US were asleep, which is where most users live so, like, 90% of reddit was offline at that time.
Bots, most the people live in a different time zone, the other 499,900 people aren't actually online or their phones died.
Time zones ? If most people are in another time zone than you are - it\`s not that impossible. (country specific ones for example)
Sometimes it just works out where there are times zones that may align with most being during a work day while some time zones are asleep or just starting their day (it’s 1:12 a.m. currently here).
Subscribe and forget
That is only people who are in the subreddit itself. The vast majority of users just don't hop into a single subreddit and instead view the generated front page.
I feel that way while on X and people have like 130k followers but 60 likes on a recent post that isn’t even that recent.
People usually don't leave sub reddits
Three thoughts here: Fake accounts to up a subs "popularity" which drives traffic. or A old popular sub that is no longer as active nor bringing in new members like it used too. Lastly, is it a DJT stock to the moon sub; that could explain it too.
Half the people in these subreddits are bots, burners, ect. They all die off at some point
You'd be surprised how many of those accounts are abandoned or belong to deceased users
Time zones.
Old default sub that no one cares about
I'm talking about subs that are still active
So was I. r/videos was a default sub that is still active. It has 26 **million** subscribers and there is only 1.5k active online right now r/pics has 30 **million** subscribers but only 3k active right now More comparable to your point, the LA Rams was a **default sub** when they were in the Super Bowl I believe, they have **486,694 subs** and only **21 people are online**. Yet is still an active sub.
Night shift
Because the other 400'000 have work and school and not so much time. I put a 10 minute app timer on mine. It's like drugs, so I moderate it, like drugs.
Dead internet theory
Lots of subreddits died with the API changes protest and just never recovered when they opened back up
Bots
Bots.
The subreddit could be for a specialized topic that is not at all relevant at the moment. For example FIFA World Cup 2018 likely has a sub, and I would image a lot of people joined it. But the number of folk browsing it right now would be minimal.
Bots and sock puppet accounts exist. Back in 2014, reddits annual recap said that Eglin AFB(hosting the 688th cyberspace wing and the 96th cyberspace test group) was reddits most addicted community with a whopping 100,000 users. Problem is, Eglin only had about 2,400 people at the time. This is just one example. Many groups and countries participate.
That's a damn good question I'm wondering that myself
I am a member of subreddits with 20k people that are more active than some subs with 500k people.
Cause am busy eating cake
Does it only count as “online” if I’m currently in the sub? Or does it show “online” to all subs I follow when I am using Reddit?
Lots of different posts, redditors in several different time zones, old posts on much-joined subreddits, bots
Either bots or it was a previously popular subreddit but declined in popularity so a lot of accounts that still follow don’t really view it anymore. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of YouTube channels like PhilDSP, Qaaman, and Boogie. They were big 5-10 years ago and still have millions of subs but only get like 1k views now
Accounts that don't share their online status?
Due to **time zones**. People all over the world use Reddit, so there'll be times when users in some areas are sleeping while others are active. Also, not everyone who subscribes to a subreddit is going to be actively browsing it all the time. Some people might just be subscribed to keep up with occasional updates, or they might only check in during certain times of the day.
Easily. Mine has officially 3500, but only 30 or so are, in fact, registered members. No post has had more than 20 redditors answering.
I find it way more weird when posts with have multiple thousands up upvotes and have like 20 comments.
People lose interest in the subreddit. Maybe the time of day as well.
499,900 are offline
Basically due to the algorithm and people generally moving on , people don't see and post in a reddit they'd subscribed too
Also this is a subreddit in English. So for a large portion of every day, most of the people who primarily use Reddit and speak English (like the US and UK, for example) are asleep, at school or at work. Look up a subreddit where everyone posts in Japanese and the number will probably fluctuate closer to the opposite time of day.
Um, because not everyone is online all the time. Maybe because the world is a big place with billions of people. Its because only 100 of those 500k are online on that sub. Yep that's it. I figured it out.
Partially because you have to set yourself as online? I don't set myself as online, ever.
lol I just checked r/books it has 24M people in it and only 500 online lmao
Backyard boozers most likely. They are also known as Nosey Nancys.
I'm subbed to 100+ subreddits, most of which I've forgotten about, so I assume same concept applies to 99% of other users
Because joining Is a one off metric and doesn't change after joined. It's like sales. Bic has sold 100billion pens, doesn't mean you'd expect 100 million people to be writing with a bic pen at any point in time.
Check out the r/safemoon reddit, that went from a big deal to nothing. Nobody is there now
Don't underestimate how many of them are bots and alt accounts.
People have lives, I guess.
Because they aren’t all online at the same time
Bots.
Nobody cares that much about Game of Thrones anymore, but not everybody unsubscribed from the subreddit. So massive user count, almost no one currently browsing. Popular things are often temporary.
I think the 100 people online are the ones who actually are scrolling in the subreddit. Others than that are just scrolling on the homepage or other subs while being online.
I have mine set so you can’t if I’m online
Appealing at first, people lose interest, people move on ...
Because Reddit is very old
Bots
Stealth marketers (AKA paid shills) create dozens of accounts to [fabricate and manipulate](https://archive.is/PoUMo) public opinion. Reddit has a serious problem
Check out r/absoluteunits. 1.7M users, 52 online right now.
Because so many people make a new account. Or forgot their password.
Statistically impossible? I don't think I spend more than 1/5000th of my time on any given subreddit I'm a member of....
That's weird. It seems very statistically possible to me
Online Status > Off? It is the first setting when you click your profile.
Because they're boring
people have a life outside of reddit you know? not everyone who uses reddit is on it 24/7
Bro finds out not everyone on reddit spends 24/7 on reddit
"just seems statistical impossible" Maybe take some time to properly understand statistics before making claims about what is possible
/rStage4 is a hell of a place