There were signs that the move had an immediate effect on the platform, when more than 8,000 subreddits went dark for 48 hours earlier this week to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes. On the first morning of the protest, Reddit experienced a “major outage” that affected its desktop and mobile websites and mobile apps. A few days later, the company’s CEO Steve Huffman went on a media rampage where he tried to send aggrieved users and moderators, many of whom have devoted countless hours to making Reddit the vibrant platform it is today, as unfair. “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they’re getting something for free, and now it’s not free,” he said. Interview with on the edge.
But beyond those symptoms, it’s hard to say how much of a practical effect the protest had on the website’s traffic. Now we have a good idea. According to data provided to Engadget by Internet Analytics Similar web, the impact is small but noticeable. On the day before the blackout began on June 12, SimilarWeb recorded more than 57 million daily visits to Reddit across desktop and mobile web clients. By the end of the first day of the protest, daily attendance was less than 55 million. Then, by the end of June 13, Reddit had recorded just under 53 million daily visits. The 52,121,649 visits Reddit saw on June 13 represented a 6.6 percent decline compared to the website’s average daily volume over the past month.
During the same period, Similarweb recorded the most dramatic drop in the amount of time Reddit users spent on the platform. The day before the protest, the average session on the website was eight minutes and 31 seconds long. A day later, that reading dropped to seven minutes and 17 seconds, or the lowest point in three years. Reddit did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
Looking forward, a temporary dip in daily traffic is unlikely to affect Reddit’s near-term prospects. But many subreddits They continue to oppose the company’s plans As its leadership contemplates policy changes that could alter its relationship with moderators, the site has seen a slow but gradual decline in daily active users. Reddit is unlikely to fare well through its planned IPO and beyond.
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