Reddit is paying the price for ignoring the users' protest against latest changes made by the company.
On the one hand, many people have moved to platforms such as Lemmy, which has tripled its user count in a short time:
On the other hand, the Reddit site was taken offline by protests in which more than 7000 forums went private1 and four million people stopped using the website2. In an attempt to minimise the damage, Reddit removed several protesting moderators from moderation teams, replacing them with compliant moderators3.
However, some forums are still closed. There are also users who are uploading irrelevant content to the platform in order to diminish the value of the company and to continue the protest. One example is the r/pic forum, which is now a "A place for images of John Oliver looking sexy". In addition, some people are filling the platform with videos of noise4.
All this discontent has not gone unnoticed by several advertising companies, which have stopped their campaigns5.
Moderators work for free for the company; they have not been listened to. The users, who are also essential, have not been listened to either. The result has been disastrous for Reddit: loss of users, loss of ad revenue and increase in junk content.
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Peters, J. (June 12, 2023). Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/12/23758002/reddit-crashing-api-protest-subreddit-private-going-dark ↩
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Bonifacic, I. (June 17, 2023). Reddit’s average daily traffic fell during blackout, according to third-party data. https://www.engadget.com/reddits-average-daily-traffic-fell-during-blackout-according-to-third-party-data-194721801.html ↩
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Divided by Zer0 (June 17, 2023). Mates, today without warning, the reddit royal navy attacked. I’ve been demoded by the admins.. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35555. ↩
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Horizon (June 15, 2023). Since the blackout isn't working, everyone upload 1gb large videos of noise to reddit servers. https://bird.trom.tf/TheHorizon2b2t/status/1669270005010288640. ↩
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Perloff, C. (June 14, 2023). Ripples Through Reddit as Advertisers Weather Moderators Strike. https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/amp/. ↩
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