Reddit’s average daily traffic fell during the blackout, according to third-party data
When more than 8,000 subreddits went dark for 48 hours earlier this week to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes, there were signs that the action had an immediate effect on the platform. On the morning of the first day of the protest, Reddit suffered a “major power outage” that affected desktop and mobile sites, as well as mobile apps. Days later, the company’s CEO Steve Huffman went on a media offensive in which he sought to cast aggrieved users and moderators, many of whom give countless hours of their free time to make Reddit the vibrant platform it is today, as unreasonable. “These people who are angry, they̵[ads1]7;re angry because they used to get something for free and now it’s not going to be free,” he said in an interview with The Verge.
But beyond these signs, it was difficult to say how much of a practical effect the protest had on traffic to the website. Now we have a better idea. According to data provided to Engadget by internet analytics firm Similarweb, the impact was small but noticeable. 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 visits were below 55 million. Then, at the end of June 13, Similarweb recorded fewer than 53 million daily visits to Reddit. Compared to the site’s average daily volume over the past month, the 52,121,649 visits Reddit saw on June 13 represented a 6.6 percent drop.
During the same time period, Similarweb recorded a more dramatic decline in the time Reddit users spent on the platform. The day before the protest began, an average session on the site was about eight minutes and 31 seconds long. A day later, that tally dropped to seven minutes and 17 seconds, or the lowest the statistic has been in the past three years. Reddit did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
Looking ahead, a temporary drop in daily traffic is unlikely to affect Reddit’s future prospects. But as many subreddits continue to protest the company’s plans and management considers policy changes that could change its relationship with moderators, the platform could see a slow but gradual decline in daily active users. That hardly bodes well for Reddit before the planned IPO and beyond.
