The bad, although expected news is that according to Similarweb via Gizmodo Reddit traffic is back to pre-protest levels. The caveat is that some of the traffic might still indicate protests, (i.e. John Oliver pics). Most interesting:
However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.>>>
They can stick their api up their ass, i want them to burn.
That’s my position too now. Until a week ago or so, I was holding out hope that reddit would change course and work something out with the app developers, now I hope reddit burns and turns into a complete shit heap.
Thanks to /u/Spez for opening his mouth, and to the admins for how they “handled” the protests.
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!
However: Getting through with their API changes will earn them more money/reduce costs in the long run, so it will return profitable for them anyway.
One of the reasons they are doing this is because of the large language models being implemented. These companies are using Reddit to train the models. The reason is because of the voting on replies. Where else can you get millions of questions being answered with actual humans saying how good a response is?
The big boys in the current AI space will definitely pay for the API. They’ll likely pay a lot for it as well.
There are apps going to pay, also providing an API has been cost intensive for Reddit. It’s not as simple as you make it seem I‘m afraid.
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
increase is the protest posts
Posts are posts, clicks are clicks, all grist for the mill. From the article:
“traffic is up in subreddits expressing their discontent with photos of Oliver. Traffic to r/pics, for example, is up 564% compared with last month, while traffic to r/Aww is up 152%”
The question now becomes, what does traffic look like once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?
once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?
Dunno, but doubt users currently posting & clicking maymays of the now will get bored & come up with a new forms of ‘protest’ (which, you guessed it, will also involve posting, scrooling & clicking on reddit).
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!