I don’t think we need to blame that sale. The same steady decline had been going since 2016. Itms clearly there in the graph, but everyone trumpeting the ChatGPT angle conveniently ignores the preceding 5+ years of continual decline.
replyThe sale is relevant. The spike in activity right before the sale already shows the management hand and how they actively ran the org to optimize for this sale. The rebound right after is hard, and it was (right) before chatgpt
replyThey accelerated the downfall with this and then chatgpt came over
Are we talking about the large Covid spike in early 2020? I don’t think that has anything to do with the sale.
replySo you think its mostly just coincidence that 4 years after AI is introduced stack overflow is dead?
replyNo, of course not coincidence. It's just that people didn't have an alternative until 2021-ish. Users hated SO for many years prior, but had nowhere to go other than small niche communities. When LLMs came into play, it was just the obvious choice.
replyIn an alternate universe, where LLMs didn't exist, I bet you SO would be equally dead by this decade. Someone better, with healthier values and a more welcoming community, would come up and steal their lunch.
If stack overflow was universally loved, AI would still kill it.
replyPeople here seem to be so emotionally invested in hating stack overflow that they seem to think AI was like ~10% of the reason it died, when it was 95%.
Both things can be true. SO was universally hated because they let (or actively incentivized) bullying run rampant and destroy the culture.
replyAnd yes, it's possible AI would have killed it anyway, despite its best efforts. But in this version of parallel universes, AI was only a catalyst. Its fate was sealed well before 2020.
Everyone trumpeting the "bad SO moderation" angle is delusional. Stack Overflow was far better than conventional forums. Without LLMs, SO would have stayed popular, there is no doubt about it. The massive decline was clearly and obviously caused mainly by LLMs.
replyDo you mean that curious growth spike in mid 2020? If so, can you think of anything else significant that happened in mid 2020...?
replyThis is the more valuable take. AI simply accelerated an existing condition.
replyI didn't know that. Good to see they cashed out in time.
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