Reddit Protest Lowers User Engagement the Reddit online community made a daring step earlier this month that resulted in a significant amount of public uproar. They took a stand against the contentious move made by the platform to charge some developers in order to acquire access to its valuable data, and they did so by taking a position against it.
The fallout was clear to see as users withdrew their participation and began to neglect the platform, which is commonly referred to as the “front page of the internet.” On June 12, moderators who were responsible for administering thousands of subreddits (communities on the platform) staged a protest against Reddit’s decision to charge developers for accessing data through its application programming interface (API). They demonstrated their resistance by making their enclaves exclusive and closed off to outsiders.
According to the data that was supplied by a company that specializes in the study of online traffic, the ‘blackout’ movement that led Reddit to go down for a short period of time resulted in a reduction of daily traffic of approximately 7% and a reduction of the amount of time users spent on the Reddit website of approximately 16% between June 12 and June 13. Reddit’s ad platform, which is used by advertisers to target their audience and generate promotional campaigns for Redditors, saw a decline in the number of daily visitors as a direct result of the criticism that was posted by certain community moderators and members.
According to information provided to TechCrunch by a company with headquarters in Israel, the amount of time spent on the Reddit website decreased to approximately 7.16 minutes on the first two days of the protest. This is a decrease from the usual amount of approximately 8.40 minutes spent on the website on other days preceding that time period. The platform’s web traffic also decreased, reaching approximately 52 million on June 13, compared with an average of nearly 56 million in the days leading up to that day.
Related;Reddit CEO lashes out on protests, moderators and third-party apps
Reddit made public in April its intention to begin charging developers to access data through its application programming interface (API). The move was a no-brainer; it was intended to prevent third parties from obtaining Reddit data, which can be used in the construction of text-generating machine learning models like OpenAI’s GPT 4.
There were, however, a few notable exceptions to this rule, including programmers creating apps and bots to aid Reddit users and researchers interested in analyzing the network for purposes other than economic gain. However, as a consequence of this, third-party applications such as the famous Reddit client Apollo were unable to pay for such expenses and so opted to discontinue their services.
A number of prominent moderators from various subreddits stepped forward to show their support for the aforementioned apps and developers and to begin protesting the API fee change.
According to more recent figures, the adverse effects that the downturn had initially had on the daily traffic to Reddit and the average amount of time spent there had improved, showing that the decline was only transitory. According to the data provided by Similarweb, there were close to 55 million unique visitors to the platform on June 23, and users spent an average of 8.37 minutes on the platform.
However, over the period of June 13–23, the number of average daily visits to Reddit’s advertising site (ads.reddit.com) declined by almost 20%, from 16,009 visits to 12,874 visits, as reported by Similarweb. This change occurred during the period of June 13–23.
According to David F. Carr, senior insights manager for Similarweb, who spoke with TechCrunch about the matter, the decrease in traffic to Reddit’s ad gateway shows that advertisers were less inclined to do business with the platform while the demonstrations were taking place.
A similar pattern can be seen in the data that was provided by Sensor Tower, a market research company based in San Francisco. On June 12, the number of subreddits that went black as a result of the platform’s decision to charge for accessing its API caused the daily average amount of time spent on the official Reddit mobile app to drop by 17% when compared to the previous day. Similarly, the number of sessions on the app plummeted by seven percent on the very first day of the protest that began a week ago.
A similar pattern can be seen in the data that was provided by Sensor Tower, a market research company based in San Francisco. On June 12, the number of subreddits that went black as a result of the platform’s decision to charge for accessing its API caused the daily average amount of time spent on the official Reddit mobile app to drop by 17% when compared to the previous day. Similarly, the number of sessions on the app plummeted by seven percent on the very first day of the protest that began a week ago.
When compared to the prior week’s average (June 5–11) for both metrics, the time spent on average and the number of sessions experienced a decline of 14% and 8%, respectively, between the 12th and 14th of June. During these three days, access to a great number of well-known subreddits on the network was restricted.
Related;Hackers Have Threatened To Release 80GB Of Sensitive Reddit Data.
In recent days, a number of subreddits have begun to reopen, while others have taken the decision to remain inactive indefinitely. The data collected by Sensor Tower reveals that the average amount of time spent on the Reddit app and the number of sessions during the week of June 15–21 were still lower by 6% and 4%, respectively, when compared to the averages before the protest. The company did, however, observe that the average amount of time spent and number of sessions increased by 8% and 4%, respectively, throughout the course of these seven days in comparison to the averages for both measures during the initial period that took place between June 12–14.
“Despite a slight inflection in user engagement with the organized protest largely concluding on June 14, some popular subreddits still remain dark, which is likely weighing on a return for user time spent and sessions to pre-protest levels,” said Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst for finance at Sensor Tower. “This is likely weighing on a return for user time spent and sessions to pre-protest levels.”
It appears from the insights provided by Sensor Tower that some users have also openly aired their disagreement with the platform for charging for granting access to its data, in addition to the moderators who have protested against Reddit’s move.
The data that was supplied with TechCrunch reveals that during the initial phase of the protest, which took place between June 12 and 14, around 91% of Reddit’s U.S. iOS reviews held a rating of one star. This number compares to approximately 53% in the two months leading up to May.
According to the data provided by Sensor Tower, there has been some progress made in terms of rating improvements recently. Between June 15 and June 26, the percentage of reviews for the Reddit U.S. iOS app that were rated only one star reduced to approximately 86%.
According to Yousef, “despite a slight easing up in 1-star reviews, the percentage of 1-star reviews out of total reviews in the post [the initial] protest period is still significantly higher compared to the average of 53% examined in the previous two months.” This was said by Yousef.
The data that was released by Sensor Tower also shows that the keywords “apollo,” “third party,” and “3rd party” were among the top three most discussed terms in all of the Reddit U.S. iOS reviews, which suggests that users were bombing review ratings in light of the new API shift.
In a similar vein, the company notes that downloads of the Apollo app have skyrocketed since May 31 to an average of over 9,000 downloads per day. This number compares to 3,000 downloads per day in the 60 days before to May 31. This comes after a number of stories that suggested that the official Reddit app might be discontinued. However, on June 8 the app itself made the announcement that it would be discontinued.
When compared to the day before, the number of average daily active users that Reddit sees across the globe on its mobile app experienced a little decline of about 2% during the beginning of the protest between June 12–14. However, according to the company, the number of average daily active users has substantially restored to the levels it had before the protest in the most recent few days.
A request for comment from Reddit regarding the third-party metrics was not greeted with a response.
It is unclear to industry professionals if the ongoing protest will have a substantial impact on Reddit or whether it will merely be another contentious episode in the annals of the platform’s history.
A request for comment from Reddit regarding the third-party metrics was not greeted with a response.
It is unclear to industry professionals if the ongoing protest will have a substantial impact on Reddit or whether it will merely be another contentious episode in the annals of the platform’s history.
“In general, I think the impact [of the protest] will depend on how long the mutiny lasts and what the final result is,” James Angel, an associated professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said in an interview with TechCrunch.
The platform, which was established in 2005 and is now 18 years old, is planning to submit an application for an initial public offering. Although it was valued at $10 billion at its most recent funding round in August 2021, the company is currently having trouble keeping competitive within the industry. This is despite the fact that the funding round took place in August 2021. At the same time, the rise of GPT and other generative AI-powered models has caused Reddit, along with other social networks, to be treated as a data farm by these companies in order to cultivate their products and services.
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