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.>>>
Lets see how things work after the 30th…
They can stick their api up their ass, i want them to burn.
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.
This is exactly my thought process. They chose every wrong way to handle this possible. I was there almost a decade, but now I’m trying to find my new “home.” There’s no going back anymore.
I want to raze it to the ground - preferable during the IPO. The shares of spez shall be no more worth then toilet paper.
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).
There’s probably some number of those users that 'll stop posting in a week when their apps stop working. I can only speak for me, but I probably won’t be bored of Mr. Oliver yet will definitely stop contributing to traffic.
stop posting in a week when their apps stop working
Don’t you need a paid version of Apollo to create threads (honestly don’t know, never used it)? Users of 3rd party apps don’t see reddit’s ads (neither do i, old.reddit & adblocker), so aren’t high value users for reddit. Will see how this plays out, here’s hoping this place keeps growing.
Users of 3rd party apps don’t see reddit’s ads …, so aren’t high value users for reddit
But they are. That is, in fact, the whole point around the API issue. These are high value, but un-monetized users, and Reddit wants to monetize them.
Wait until after the proposed changes took effect. A portion of that traffic is due to content creators saving multiple years’ worth of their posts before pulling them from the site permanently, and once that’s done and they close their accounts, this type of traffic will die. The same applies to redditors trying to save as much content as possible from other people while they still CAN access the site, as a last minute tactic to not lose access to guides, videos, advice etc… Of course that leads to more interaction with the site - temporarily.
(For example, it took me 3 full days to save and then delete most of my posts and I’m still working through the comments. I currently definitely interact with reddit way more than usual, but this will stop once I’m done and disable my account)
I can not say how big that portion really is tho, but it IS something to keep in mind with the current situation. Not all current traffic is “business as usual”.
EDIT / UPDATE: I’m done with the comments and closed my account. 31 pages worth of text saved and deleted today, and even after(!) reddit chose to display “there seems to be nothing here” in the comment section of my profile, shreddit.com still found 891 more comments of mine to delete. This means that my account alone was responsible for around 1k clicks today - just to put it into perspective how much traffic might be generated JUST by content creators saving their stuff before leaving permanently.
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!
Even if it doesn’t happen now will slowly happen if people keep moving over here and more content is posted and more involvement happens. Keep it up peoples
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.
Nobody is paying for their api… And reducing cost? How? People will either leave or use scrapers/RSS to get their stuff idk how thats going to work out… Also reddit app has 3.stars on Google play most people will not download a tree stars app to begin with.
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.
Can you actually backup that “There are apps going to pay”? Because I’ve seen users say they’d pay, but no apps say the same.
And lol, if you think the API is cost intensive, you don’t understand the costs inherent to alternatives to an API. It’s much more cost efficient to provide an API that you can effectively limit and use minimal resources to respond to a query vs web scraping which is objectively more resource intensive (with the webpage overhead the API doesn’t have) and doesn’t have nearly as good rate limiting or the protections an API has.
It’s much more cost efficient to provide an API
Apps using reddit’s API (e.g. Apollo) don’t display reddit’s ads. Imagine you run a bar & serve free beer. You can do this with this one simple trick: constantly spamming ads on every TV (display panel) in your bar. Advertisers pay for the beer & your overheads.
Along comes a guy with a garden hose, sticks it in your keg, and starts siphoning your beer to the bar he built across the street. His place is much better than yours, the alcoholics don’t have to watch ads to get drunk.
wat do?
web scraping which is objectively more resource intensive
Pretty sure app devs are not not_scraping out of concern for reddit. If they could, they would (I know I would).
I don’t think your analogy works, and here’s why.
In that analogy, Reddit provides the beer, but in reality it doesn’t.
It owns the building, but what the customers are consuming are other customer’s beers. It doesn’t have to serve the beer, people being some on their way in.
And in that analogy, yeah, the third-party apps are not on premises, so they can’t watch the ads that pay for the building…
But they brought more clients to the bar. They advertised the heck out of the bar, especially when it was growing, and they pump beer back in the bar. It costs Reddit in ad revenue and in facility maintenance (they built the pipes themselves), but they absolutely get back things through the pipes, it’s just not straight money.Reddit wasn’t build by Reddit. They own the place, that’s all.
Fairly certain RIF scrapes. That’s why it grabs “pages” of content. Beyond that, most reasonable folks don’t think the API needs to continue to be free. It’s just ridiculously cost prohibitive. Many services offer APIs that cost money. It’s just Reddit’s costs aren’t based in a reality dictated by cost. It’s created to force large apps offline. We’ll see how long infinity lasts. It’ll likely cost significantly more than reddit premium. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 50% more.
RIF scrapes.
So API not an issue?
force large apps offline.
Sure, 3rd party apps break reddit’s business model.
I don’t think any apps are going to be able to afford to pay. They purposefully priced it too high to be viable. At the start there was a few who seemed to tentatively say they’d look in to it, but every app I’ve seen now has done the math a realized there’s just no way.
At least Pushshift made a deal with Reddit and other Accessibility apps are exempt from the payment. If their idea is to push third party apps off the market, that only supports the fact that API access is too expensive for Reddit to provide to said apps.
If their idea is to push third party apps off the market, that only supports the fact that API access is too expensive for Reddit to provide to said apps.
That’s naive. Pushing 3rd party apps out isn’t about the costs to reddit, it’s the opportunity costs of not being able to mine data from users, and is likely being driven by Steve Huffingpaint in the hopes of driving up the IPO price before bailing on reddit with a golden parachute.
Current reddit admins don’t give a shit about the long term health of the platform, and the fact that people believe their lies about costs instead of seeing that theyre playing the user base just like they did back with Pao.
u/spez out here really grasping at straws
What apps? I haven’t seen a single one.
And no, providing an api reduces load on the server because otherwise people use scrapers… Wich happened before. You just believe what reddit is shiting out.
I don‘t like your tone so I‘ll refrain from further participation in this discussion. Bye
There’s nothing wrong with their tone. Seems like you just don’t like being questioned about your empirical claims that you’ve provided no supporting evidence for.
None afaik. Only one I heard about that was going to give it a go was Relay but in the end it doesn’t matter.
The dev tried so hard but couldn’t make it work.
From what i gathered one, yes, one single dev wanted to sign up for it… But reddit just straight up ghosted them. (it was part of the ama)
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.
Why pay the bloated and gouging costs for API access when you can just write a web parser and scrape the site the old fashioned way?
Scrapers can easily be disabled. Reddit won’t look the same obviously. But this isn’t a real obstacle.
then the scrapers start using residential proxy botnets
Then you just force them to change the syntax repeatedly and scraping will break with regular occurrence. Scraping is extremely fragile and not easily adaptable without human effort which costs money.
There is no reason other apps need to be swept up in the same cost structure as LLM enterprises.
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.
Measure of traffic is not a good indicator, since unmoderated subreddits will be full of trolls and chaos, generating traffic.
I never click on ads anyway. Is it okay for me to start using Reddit, at least a little, or should I continue not to give traffic to them?
You do you. Whatever works best for your life imo. I will no longer browse Reddit, I will never download their app. If a question I google seems to ONLY have a solution on Reddit, I will only view it on browser (old.Reddit, ad blocker, logged out).
There is nothing that’ll make me want to go back. Spez burned that bridge, even if 3rd party apps are saved at this point. Fuck that place and fuck their IPO.
Reddit declined to comment on the traffic analysis from Similarweb.
Of course lol, keep up the good fight!
Interesting… not surprising the majority don’t care. (Admittedly, i only put up with reddit until now because i wasn’t aware of the alternatives which the latest foofaraw revealed).
i’ve fully migrated to kbin (replaced my reddit feeds with kbin rss feeds into miniflux for a completely transparent migration… like nothing ever happened, except the noise went down along with toxicity and no intrusive ads).
Glad to be here with people who care about their discussion platform.
What you mean kbin RSS feeds?
kbin magazines can be retrieved as an rss feed – at the bottom of the magazine’s web page is the recognizable “rss icon” which contains the url of the rss feed (the icon near the top for lemmy community web pages). i use these rss urls with my miniflux aggregator to group kbin/lemmy magazines/communities into more digestible subject categories – very useful during this early period when there are multiple magazines for the same topic.
As nice as the kbin webpage looks, even tweaked with the appropriate userscripts, i prefer browsing topics with the minimalistic category oriented UI of miniflux (which works both on the desktop and the mobile device).
