Reddit and Twitter are filled to the brim with spambots and remain successful.

Just because it’s where all the users already are. You couldn’t start Reddit today, it’d immediately get spammed by AI bots and no one would stick around.

Hell, Reddit’s API changes had a noticeable impact on most text-only subreddits I was a part of, and then the AI content just made a lot of the remaining ones die off. No one’s rushing to Lemmy to fill those niches. They’re just not participating in them online, instead.

Yeah. There’s been reports of silicon wafers being hoarded too…

According to a Stack Overflow survey from 2025, 84 percent of developers now use or plan to use AI tools, up from 76 percent a year earlier. This rapid adoption partly explains the decline in forum activity.

As someone who participated in the survey, I’d recommend everyone take anything regarding SO’s recent surveys with a truckfull of salt. The recent surveys have been unbelievably biased with tons of leading questions that force you to answer in specific ways. They’re basically completely worthless in terms of statistics.

Maybe I’m just dumb, but I always thought half of GitLab’s features were unavailable to self-hosted instances. It’s why I just self-host Gitea and Woodpecker instead.