Reddit’s daily traffic drops after Subreddit protest against API pricing changes

More than 57 million daily visits to the social discussion platform were recorded on June 11, the day before the blackout started, across desktop and mobile web clients.

San Francisco: During the subreddits’ protest against the company’s new application programming interface (API) pricing changes, Reddit’s average daily traffic reportedly fell as compared to the last month.

According to Engadget, citing sources, the impact was small but noticeable.

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More than 57 million daily visits to the social discussion platform were recorded on June 11, the day before the blackout started, across desktop and mobile web clients.

Daily visitors dropped below 55 million by the end of the first day of the protest.

Less than 53 million daily visitors on the platform were then recorded at the end of June 13.

The 52,121,649 visits Reddit received on June 13 reflected a 6.6 per cent drop from the website’s average daily traffic over the previous month.

The report further mentioned that within the same time frame, there was a decline in Reddit users’ time spent on the platform.

An average session on the website was roughly eight minutes and 31 seconds the day before the protest started.

However, the following day, the duration dropped to seven minutes and 17 seconds, which is the shortest duration in the last three years, the report said.

In protest to the API changes that are forcing some third-party developers to shut down their apps, thousands of Reddit communities have gone dark on the platform.

Earlier this month, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to discuss the platform’s controversial API changes, confirming that the company is not planning to revive its coming API pricing changes that have caused multiple developers to announce they will be shutting down their apps.

In an internal memo sent to employees, Huffman had said that like any other blowups on the platform, “this one will pass as well”.