Excerpt:
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.
Other than Lemmy, where did users go?
Likely Discord, playing games, outside... a few perhaps to oldschool forums.
I know one of my friends is using dedicated forums like stack overflow now
Removed by mod
Private chat rooms has been my guess for a number of years. The internet got too public. Big boards aren't practical anymore.