Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
But, using reduced posting as an indicator of reduced active users presumes users have any say in what is promoted in a subreddit. And that’s obviously wrong. Reddit is compromised through and through. Worse than Digg ever was.
I fully agree with this because the events affected older and fairly active users (the ones most likely to be a mod, and to use a 3PA) way, way more than the rest, and yet they run the place. So if you got 50~70% of everyone leaving, you probably got [eyeballing] 90% of those leaving.