alt Hacker News> young people are definitely not getting on Facebook
but Reddit is mostly relevant "in the west" where most countries have an inverted age pyramid and most old people are not on Reddit, but on Facebook
and reddit relevance outside of the US is often far less then people think, to a point where many people not even know what it is. It doesn't has a network effect pulling in "friends and family".
and a lot of people "around 30" are still on Facebook due to network effect and active enough to count as active users (which doesn't mean much to be fair)
And in the US around ~18% of US users where in the age group 18-24 in 2025. Idk. how but somehow Facebook still manages to convince surprisingly many "just adults" to join it. And if they aren't on Facebook then they are on WhatsApp and maybe Instagram.
Now all of this doesn't really fully show how relevant reddit is because checking some minor memes once a week makes you show up as active user but also means it's pretty much irrelevant for you.
And if I look at people I interact with or where I can see a bit how they interact (i.e. _very highly biased by social environment_) then thinks look far worse for it. Reddit seems relevant in the US, mainly for people "around" 30. But outside of it, it seems to be more like a footnote. Used, but something most people would not care if it's randomly gone.
I don’t know why you are commenting in two different places with roughly the same points but I’m just going to stick to this thread if that’s alright.
You are making some assumptions and guesses when all of these numbers are generally searchable - I don’t disagree with your point largely speaking, but the magnitude(s) is what seem off to me. Over 50% of Reddit traffic is international, about 75% of Facebook’s is. Yes clearly Reddit biases “the west” but a couple of y’all keep trying to paint these incredibly stark pictures.
Reddit and Facebook are both massive. They both have significant influence on culture and discourse worldwide. You’re also disputing Reddit’s traffic but again a search will confirm it is the 7th most visited site in the world. We can argue with the significance of that is given their demographic distribution, but then we would have to do the same thing to Facebook and I just don’t think that’s a particularly useful conversation without some concrete data at our fingertips. If you have some I am legitimately interested to see it.
Either way: Yes facebook is more international. Yes it is larger. But the gap isn’t 1000x. It’s not even 100x. They both have mainstream appeal, they both have shortcomings that keep them from being “truly” representative. It doesn’t help that Facebook hides their DAU’s among their other offerings to obscure the stall (perhaps it’s now even in decline) they have experienced. That’s not a good look I’ll say that much.