Yeah they have grown because it's the only thing Google ever shows when you want people's opinions or search for something and want to see what people say. The only forum or community they ever show is reddit and nothing else, not even Twitter nor Instagram nor anything else.

People who aren’t logged in are still (very arguably) users, IMHO. They see ads, and make Reddit money with their eyeballs.

> Existing Reddit users aren’t affected by this regi wall UX because they’re already logged in.

I am an existing Reddit user, but don't want to be logged in everywhere and always. Sometimes I had a few free moments and wanted to kill some time, so until recently I could go to Old Reddit on my mobile phone and just see what the 'general human zeitgeist' was discussing: from something serious in /r/worldnews to some pop culture news story.

If you actually look at the content of Reddit it's obvious they're almost all bots.

In my experience, they keep aggressively logging me out. Maybe it's just me but not really worth time to figure out as of now.

What kind of users though? OnlyFans models, porn addicts, LLMs and child groomers... maybe. I could be ignorant because I'm not the target user for their brave new vision but no one I know uses reddit anymore. And with the locking of old.reddit and forcing sign-ups they probably lost the last few old timers who were still there for what was supposed to be an open forum to freely exchange ideas.