The Reddit subreddit strike, which began last Monday in protest against the platform’s monetization plans, has already had an impact on the work of the popular community. Since the first day of the strike, Reddit has experienced a major outage affecting its mobile and web versions. However, analytics firm Similarweb said the strike’s impact on Reddit’s operation was limited but noticeable.
The previous day of the strike, June 12, was marked by over 57 million visits to Reddit from desktops and mobile devices during the day. By the end of the first day of the strike, that number had dropped to less than 55 million. The following day, June 13, Similarweb recorded less than 53 million visits to the Reddit platform, a 6.6% decrease from the average number of daily visits to Reddit over the past month.
Similarweb also noted a significant reduction in the amount of time users spent on the Reddit platform. Prior to the strike, the average time spent on the website was about 8 minutes and 31 seconds. Within one day, this time was reduced to 7 minutes and 17 seconds, which is the lowest figure in the last three years.
While a temporary decrease in traffic is unlikely to affect Reddit in the short term, the decision of many subreddits to extend the strike and the reluctance of management to meet them may lead to a gradual decrease in user activity, notes NIX Solutions. This could have a negative impact on Reddit ahead of its planned IPO and its self-sustaining plans.