Reddit administrators made a bold step earlier this month that sparked a stir online. They opposed the platform’s contentious move to charge developers for data access.
Reddit’s Ad Platform
Users abandoned Reddit, the “front page of the internet,” for a while. Moderators of thousands of subreddits questioned Reddit’s decision to charge developers for API access. A blackout movement dropped Reddit by 7% and daily traffic by 16% during June 12-13. The criticism also decreased daily visitors to Reddit’s ad platform, which advertisers use to target their audience and promote Redditors. On the first two days of the demonstration, Reddit users spent 7.16 minutes, down from 8.40 minutes on other days.
Reddit’s daily traffic and average time spent have recovered from the first slump. On June 12, many subreddits went black in response to Reddit’s decision to charge for API use, lowering the average time spent on its mobile app by 17%. Since May 31, the Apollo app has seen 9,000 daily downloads, up from 3,000 in the previous 60 days.
