Taps Coogan – March 2nd, 2021

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A handful of months before the Covid pandemic erupted onto the world stage, Larry Sanger, internet pioneer and co-founder-turned-critic of Wikipedia, wrote an article on his blog titled Big Tech in Decline.

In the article, the tech pioneer observed a curious development: many ‘Big Tech’ websites, particularly the ones ‘going woke’ and/or abusing privacy, were sliding in the rankings of the most visited sites online.

At the time of the article, September 30th, 2019, Twitter had slid from the 11th to 26th most visited website according to the web traffic analytics service Alexa (bought by Amazon). Facebook had slid from third to fifth. Wikipedia had sunk from fifth to ninth. Quora had plunged from 82nd to 235th. Instagram had slid from 13th to 23th. Pinterest had dropped from 71st to 111th.

Since all those stats were published, we’ve had a year of rolling global lockdowns forcing much of the world to conduct more and more of its activity online. While that has undoubtedly sent traffic on many of these sites soaring (it’s certainly sent their share prices soaring), a curious thing has happened. All but one has fallen further in the Alexa rankings.

Twitter has fell from 26th at the time of Larry Sanger’s article to 44th today.

Facebook has fallen from 5th to 7th.

Wikipedia has fallen from 9th to 13th.

Quora has fallen from 235th to 377th.

Instagram has held steady at 23rd.

Pinterest has fallen from 111th to 145th.

Taking their places, has mostly been rising Chinese and Russian websites (Tmall, Baidu, Qq, etc…). There are a few exceptions. Yahoo has somehow clawed its way back to 11th place. Zoom has rocketed into 15th place. Esty has risen to 65th.

Farther down in the rankings, privacy focused Google alternative DuckDuckGo has risen to 153rd. Fox News has inched up to 212th. The Epoch Times has soared to 307th (higher than the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg), YouTube alternative Rumble has breached the 1000 threshold, as had free-speech Twitter alternative Parler until it was taken offline (it’s back online). Other big tech alternative sites are rapidly climbing up the rankings, though only Rumble and Parler have breeched the 1000 threshold.

The tide is turning against the illiberal Big-Tech woke-mob.

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