Reddit Users' Protest Causes Steep Decline in Engagement, Site Activity, and Ad Portal Traffic

Earlier this month, Reddit community moderators sparked controversy by taking a firm stance against the platform's decision to charge developers for accessing its valuable data. This protest had a significant impact on the platform, as users began to withdraw and ignore Reddit, often referred to as the "front page of the internet."

On June 12, moderators responsible for overseeing numerous subreddits decided to make their communities private and restricted in opposition to Reddit's API data charges. This blackout movement temporarily caused Reddit to go offline, resulting in a 7% decrease in daily traffic and a nearly 16% decrease in the time spent on the Reddit website between June 12 and 13, according to data from web traffic analysis firm Similarweb. Furthermore, the criticism from community moderators and users led to a decline in daily visits to Reddit's ad portal, impacting advertisers who rely on the platform for targeted campaigns.

During the protest, the average time spent on the Reddit website dropped to approximately 7.16 minutes on the first two days, down from an average of 8.40 minutes in preceding days. Web traffic also experienced a decline, with approximately 52 million visits on June 13 compared to the previous daily average of nearly 56 million.

Reddit's decision to charge developers for API access was announced in April, with the aim of limiting third-party access to Reddit data that could be utilized in text-generating machine learning models like OpenAI's GPT-4. While certain exceptions were made for developers building apps and bots that assist users or researchers studying the platform for noncommercial purposes, the charges proved challenging for third-party apps such as the popular Reddit client Apollo, prompting them to go offline. Subreddit moderators rallied in support of these developers and apps, fueling the protest against the API pricing decision.

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