Traffic to Reddit appears to be returning to normal despite ongoing protests the social media platform has been trying to crush.
Internet traffic provider SimilarWeb tells PCMag that user visits and time spent on Reddit has “recovered to near-normal levels” since the initial protests began.
“It seems that users have either found new content or the content that they were seeking is available again after mods reopened some subreddits,” a SimilarWeb spokesperson says.
SimilarWeb also provided a spreadsheet that showed user visits to Reddit reached 56 million on June 18 and 19. That’s up from 52 million on June 13, which was the second day of the protest. In addition, the average time spent on Reddit now exceeds eight minutes, an increase from 7 minutes and 17 seconds during the first day of the protest.
SimilarWeb previously noticed a dip in user traffic and time spent on Reddit during the height of the protest. Back on June 12, over 8,400 subreddits went private for 48 hours, preventing users from accessing them or posting comments.
The ensuing “blackout” denied everyone access to numerous Reddit pages, which can also appear in Google search results. During this period, user traffic to the site was down about 7% while time spent dropped by about 16%, according to SimilarWeb.
Following the 48-hour blackout, numerous subreddits planned to continue protesting either by remaining private or coming up with new ways to fight back. This included permitting users to post nudes and other NSFW content in an effort to derail Reddit’s advertising revenue.
But since then, the social media platform has taken drastic steps to shut down the protests. The company has threatened subreddits and even resorted to removing entire teams of volunteer moderators for allowing NSFW content on their subreddits.
“It’s not OK to show people NSFW content when they don’t want to see it,” a Reddit spokesperson told PCMag yesterday. “In line with our Moderator Code of Conduct, we’ll remove moderators and restrict communities where moderators are engaging in malicious conduct, like allowing rule-violating behavior or encouraging the submission of sexually-explicit content in previously safe-for-work spaces.”
The protest occurs as Reddit is preparing to charge access to its API, which risks killing several third-party apps and tools, including Apollo. It hasn’t helped that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said he would respect the protests only to backtrack. In an interview with NBC News last week, he called the volunteer moderators behind the protesting subreddits the “landed gentry," and threatened to create new rules to boot them out.
Despite the crackdown, some subreddits and volunteer moderators continue to protest. Around 2,600 subreddits remain dark, according to one tracking service. Meanwhile, some moderators are exploring other forms of protest to annoy Reddit while staying within the platform's rules.