All of these platforms go through phases of decay. First the power users and top quality moderators leave. They do it for a variety of reasons. Many will be for philosophical reasons. Others will just want to find a platform that works before the changes roll out so they can get comfortable.

The second wave is mostly more power users. They move when the actual change rolls out. These are largely people who wanted to have their last hurrah and had already decided to leave. The majority though are just people who hadn’t heard about the change or who thought it wouldn’t impact them as much as it winds up doing. This wave will see an abrupt spike, and then a long swell as more people realize how the changes impact them.

The third wave is where we see the rank and file regular contributors move. This group stuck around because they just wanted to stay connected with their existing communities and for various reasons thought things would get better. Maybe they thought the platform would reverse course. Maybe they believed the platform owners promises that the changes would come with improvements later. Better first party moderation tools, accessibility improvements, better performance, better first party apps, whatever it is they were waiting for that ultimately never materializes.

The final wave is the lurkers / content consumers. These guys never cared. They just went where the content was. Now that all three prior groups are gone, wherever they went, that’s where this group goes. This was me when I realized everything on Stumbleupon was just from Reddit the previous day