It was when reddit killed (or tried to kill) 3rd party apps.

Lots of folks, me included, couldn’t be bothered with the official reddit app which was pretty poorly done compared to other mature apps.

Edit: As to why it’s smaller now - I have no real evidence but I’d guess he is saying people migrated back to reddit.

Mint was going to be my suggestion too! It’s a great distro for a lot of users. Easy to navigate and hard(ish) to break.