Reddit traffic returning normal, sort of.

Basically the protests are still working. Even the John Oliver ones - reddit has to pay expenses to handle the traffic but are getting fewer revenue in response.

Keep up the good work people!

So is the traffic useful traffic, or is it people lurking on 3rd party apps while those work, commenting about alternatives and popping over to crosspost Reddit's stuff?

This notes a chunk of the increase is the protest posts. What does interaction look like when you take away those and all the bots? Did they make a few more to make up the loss of several hundred thousands of their most invested users? Because bots can't click ads.

I know nobody new is going to join reddit after seeing the headlines and, having joined, the progressively shitty atmosphere makes them less likely to stay

Ad-buying traffic is roughly half of what it was pre-blackout? That's huge, and IMO should have been in the article's headline.

Reddit declined to comment on the traffic analysis from Similarweb.

Of course lol, keep up the good fight!

Let’s understand that Reddit has spent over a decade enjoying its status as a world-leading platform while kicking the ‘we’ll figure out how to monetize later’ can down the road. Along the way, some important social questions have arrived and Reddit is still failing to show leadership in this matter. Let me explain:

Those that say Reddit ‘will continue on’ aren’t looking at the situation through the lens of history. At its core, ‘Reddit is a rare social product that has seemed to become more relevant over time, as a growing user base comes to appreciate its distinctive, human-centered approach to digital conversations.’ A digital third place, built on mutually-shared beliefs and principals of digital altruism – Reddit existed to Give People Voices – aiming to create a safe space for all viewpoints.

So that’s what Reddit is supposed to do as a ‘platform.’ What about Reddit as a ‘company?’ Sadly, boardroom shenanigans have pursued Reddit throughout its entire lifecycle. Reddit lost the public-spirited people like Aaron Swartz, and gained trolls, hate groups, and the soap opera that was the Ellen Pao debacle. As Will Durant said: ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.’

Actions this year by Reddit have pushed it much farther down the path of ‘less user-oriented.’ Worse, public statements and private actions by the company leave nothing to doubt when it comes to their intentions. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Steve Huffman the CEO of Reddit, wrote in a recent AMA.

Spez' decisions have ripped the guts out of Reddit's understood social identity and community intent. Those public statements and private actions by the company I mentioned earlier? They aren’t there to make Reddit a more human-centered place. Monetizing API use won’t increase Reddit’s stature as a ‘a safe space for all viewpoints.’ Like when managers decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle, “the concerns about the O-rings that ultimately led to the explosion were buried in a vast sea of thousands of other decisions … leading up to the ill-fated launch.”

Risks don’t rely on your perspective for existence. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” as Philip K. Dick famously said. This recent Reddit move to monetize APIs creates major cracks in its foundations of digital altruism and human-centered behavior. As I said last year with Twitter: “Twitter has every chance to prove to us that it can be a safe, responsible place for us to interact with our readers if they want to. In the meantime, it’s getting too weird around here. I’m mustering at the life boat station now, in case we must abandon ship.”

Originally posted here

Wait until after the proposed changes took effect. A portion of that traffic is due to content creators saving multiple years' worth of their posts before pulling them from the site permanently, and once that's done and they close their accounts, this type of traffic will die. The same applies to redditors trying to save as much content as possible from other people while they still CAN access the site, as a last minute tactic to not lose access to guides, videos, advice etc.. Of course that leads to more interaction with the site - temporarily.

(For example, it took me 3 full days to save and then delete most of my posts and I'm still working through the comments. I currently definitely interact with reddit way more than usual, but this will stop once I'm done and disable my account)

I can not say how big that portion really is tho, but it IS something to keep in mind with the current situation. Not all current traffic is "business as usual".

Interesting.. not surprising the majority don't care. (Admittedly, i only put up with reddit until now because i wasn't aware of the alternatives which the latest foofaraw revealed).

i've fully migrated to kbin (replaced my reddit feeds with kbin rss feeds into miniflux for a completely transparent migration.. like nothing ever happened, except the noise went down along with toxicity and no intrusive ads).

Glad to be here with people who care about their discussion platform.

I never click on ads anyway. Is it okay for me to start using Reddit, at least a little, or should I continue not to give traffic to them?

Measure of traffic is not a good indicator, since unmoderated subreddits will be full of trolls and chaos, generating traffic.

There is nothing that'll make me want to go back. Spez burned that bridge, even if 3rd party apps are saved at this point. Fuck that place and fuck their IPO.