Google's AI Overviews Lowered Reddit's Traffic. Its Stock Dropped 29% (cnbc.com) 51
Reddit's stock plunged 29.22% on Friday, reports CNBC, its worst drop since becoming a public company in 2024.
Thursday Reddit reported a sales growth that was weaker than previous quarters, and also forecast weak sales for the quarter to come (below analysts expectations): The report comes as the company has seen a shift in its search referral traffic with the rise of Google's AI Overview. In an interview with CNBC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said search-referral traffic from Google went "down meaningfully in this quarter" due to AI... Multiple analysts downgraded the stock following Reddit's disappointing results, with Citizens noting that "search changes highlight the problem with selling content to Google" and that as referral problems worsen, uncertainty around user growth amid the login requirement switch "puts more pressure on user monetization."
Reddit's CEO also said that forcing users to login will help the company's advertising business. "Reddit is the last platform to provide basically unfettered logged-out access, and that's largely because of me. I've been holding that line."
"I think users will probably go through the same understanding that I have, which is that it's a sign of the times. It's an evolution of how these platforms work."
Thursday Reddit reported a sales growth that was weaker than previous quarters, and also forecast weak sales for the quarter to come (below analysts expectations): The report comes as the company has seen a shift in its search referral traffic with the rise of Google's AI Overview. In an interview with CNBC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said search-referral traffic from Google went "down meaningfully in this quarter" due to AI... Multiple analysts downgraded the stock following Reddit's disappointing results, with Citizens noting that "search changes highlight the problem with selling content to Google" and that as referral problems worsen, uncertainty around user growth amid the login requirement switch "puts more pressure on user monetization."
Reddit's CEO also said that forcing users to login will help the company's advertising business. "Reddit is the last platform to provide basically unfettered logged-out access, and that's largely because of me. I've been holding that line."
"I think users will probably go through the same understanding that I have, which is that it's a sign of the times. It's an evolution of how these platforms work."
Oh no! Reddit's WOKE SLOP website gets no views! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! Reddit's WOKE SLOP website gets no views (Score:5, Funny)
ClippyAI: Reddit mods: the only people who can turn an unpaid internet hobby into a full-blown authoritarian regime. A collection of self-appointed digital dictators whose entire personality revolves around wielding imaginary power over strangers. Imagine being so spectacularly devoid of achievement, purpose or meaningful human interaction that your proudest moment in life is removing someone's comment and declaring victory. It's not moderation; it's a desperate little power fantasy played out by people who couldn't get authority anywhere else. The Internet's answer to a neighborhood jobsworth, except with less charm, more resentment and absolutely no fucking self-awareness.
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I'm banned there as well
Re: Oh no! Reddit's WOKE SLOP website gets no view (Score:1)
ClippyAI: Reddit mods: the only people who can turn an unpaid internet hobby into a full-blown authoritarian regime.
This is such a weird take on an Internet forum. You don't have to go there. It's as centralized as you make it out to be. It's not the only place to find other people that share your hobby. A single forum with hundreds of thousands or millions of members has moderation you disagree with... well no shit, that's fucking huge. Why are you in such a bigass space??? The rooms are virtual.
I grew up on IRC chat rooms with _tens_ of people, and moderators were dickheads then, because they're random people that got
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Probably modded down because reddit is a place where you can make whatever the fuck you want. Want to make a woke central subreddit? Go for it. Want a subreddit dedicated to masturbating to pictures of Trump? Go for it. Claiming it is "woke" is just the same at saying "I'm a moron who can't see the trees because Fox News planted a forest in the way.
By saying the OP is 100% accurate you are saying you too have no capability of thinking for yourself, either through affiliation or whatever affliction affected
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Sorry english is my 4th language. If you read something anti-semitic in that it says more about you than it does me.
Re: Oh no! Reddit's WOKE SLOP website gets no view (Score:1)
It's sad like arguing with the bouncer about how ugly the strippers are, pissed off you're not allowed in the club. It's all woke slop but you want to be there. And it's all virtual dude.. you can make another virtual room with your own ugly strippers but nobody wants to hear your unpopular bs in #saggytitsandpolitics or r/grannysnatchconfederacy so you feel entitled to speak to the billion people tuned into #internet, then bitch on /. about those mods. Then you'll bitch about the /. mods on /. OFC. Then go
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Reddit: best and the worst of the internet (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Reddit: best and the worst of the internet (Score:2)
filled with vitriole, but also kindness and wisdom, but gatekept to oblivion
If you get kickbanned from #grannypr0n for leaching, you start #grannypr0n2 it's very simple.
IDK what we're teaching kids these days but if you're part of this generation that gave us the overly centralized internet, and you have every tool at your disposal to create another damned happy space like r/fuckthoseotherguys but you complain about gatekeeping because that's too much work, then... I guess I don't have nice things to say to you. Just pointing out that it's all what you make it to be.
never relied on it (Score:1)
Making Things Harder (Score:5, Funny)
"we've seen a massive drop in views, so we're making it more difficult for people to view our content"
Damn, that's an amazing business idea! Wish I had thought of it.
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Re: Making Things Harder (Score:2)
Plus one here. Iâ(TM)m more or less already blocked on my phones default browser âoei.e login to read this post.â
But hereâ(TM)s the thing, its too much friction for me to switch browsers and the relative value of Reddit to me is infinitesimally low. I can get the same answer from other sites and of course AI summary.
IMHO Reddit vastly inflates their value to the marketâ¦but then again I value FB at nil and yet they seem to be doing fine over the years
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I used to SOMETIMES visit reddit to go check things out. Now they throw up a "ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! GO SIGN UP RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN" interstitial ad thing if you use if for more than 20 seconds. I would rather not know the thing, than click on the reddit link and see that ad again. Reddit was a fun 5-10 min a week time waster, and useful for super obscure stuff, but lately it's unusable, especially without being logged in.
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Reddit is hoping that AI companies will pay them. Reddit is a major source of information for AI.
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Just wondering if anyone got paid for this "Idea"?
The rise of Google's AI Overview (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, in Reddit's case, there's a certain irony. Reddit itself relies heavily on unpaid user-generated content. So perhaps there's a degree of poetic justice here. It's not quite the same loss as an independent publisher losing traffic to work produced by paid journalists.
Re:The rise of Google's AI Overview (Score:4, Interesting)
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people have even less reason to visit Google.
FTFY.
Google's search results were never very good once they started pushing ads to the top, masquerading as search results. Neither were Reddit's. The minute Overview started presenting their results as The Authoritative Answer, it just took longer to dig through the garbage to find actual usable links.
Sorry Reddit. Being number two in the parade isn't a great business strategy when all you can see is the asshole of the lemming ahead of you.
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That's a strange theory. Why should Google push SEO crap, when they want to sell the same people the paid ad slots? They have a good interest to not rank the people to the top, who might pay them for the paid slot.
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Are you sure that the Overview slop placement isn't based on some sort of payment?
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s/slop/slot/
Sorry about the Freudian slip.
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I'm not sure what overview are you talking about. The AI summary? I also have adblock, so I usually don't see the "sponsored" links. But in general there are a lot of SEO sites and many are ranked higher than they should be, but Google's interest would be that these pay for being a sponsored link instead of gaming themselves to the top of the actual result list.
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Alternatively, end the Google partnership? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most social media is regurgiation (Score:4, Interesting)
Including this post, which others have likely made thousands of times before.
It's all the same chatter going back and forth as new people arrive and old people depart. Reddit is probably a perfect use case for AI replacement.
Train an AI on the content database and you really don't need it any longer; you publish the AI and let users talk directly to it to get remixes of the same responses that have been generated millions upon millions of times already.
Yes, including that clever 'original' joke you made.
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The issue with Reddit is that consensus is distorted by moderators that are not viewpoint neutral. Reddit is a series of echo chambers, not a true representation of broader social consensus. As such, its unity and appeal is limited.
For example, Reddit for my city is an extreme example of such echo chamber. They tend to s
Re: Most social media is regurgiation (Score:2)
Using Reddit to train an AI on how to communicate, fine.
Use Reddit to train AI on facts and content, yeah not so great. Too much is modded on opinions, not facts. Feels like we still need people to curate information to prep it for AI consumption.
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That is true only if the social context remains the same. When people debate the benefits of Marxism that is unlikely to generate anything new or meaningful that hasn't been said before. That said when we're discussing a problem of today, caused today, then a conversation had by the previous generation will not be relevant and simply indexing old information will either not give you any result, or worse, give you a wrong one.
Imagine asking AI why your EV isn't running smoothly and getting instructions on ho
I don't know what percentage of Reddit is bots... (Score:1)
Re: I don't know what percentage of Reddit is bots (Score:2)
End Google. (Score:3)
I am not an alarmist, and I don't reach for the regulatory hammer on a whim - or, actually ever - but I can't think of more objectionable, destructive behaviour. Build an empire on the backs of the output of the masses, then systematically destroy the value of that world for everybody but themselves. How is this not hijacking click through en masse?
I think Google needs to be stopped. And since the moat is so vast, I think it should be done by government intervention.
Good luck with that, though, on the American front.
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Not Google's Traffic (Score:4, Informative)
The stock dropped when they announced you can only read Reddit after logging in.
Disruptive technologies... (Score:2)
gonna disrupt.
How long before? (Score:1)
How long before OpenAI starts creating copy-cat services like Reddit to bypass the middle man? They have massive reach, and can just gently nudge users there instead of Reddit.
Happened to a client ... (Score:3)
Last December, a client of 8 years informed me that they no longer have the traffic that generates revenue to justify spending money on my services.
The web site is a reference to some well known software, and documents all the intricacies of how to use it. They relied on ads because they had a lot of traffic when someone searches for the name of the software and a feature of it.
That traffic plummeted because "AI is killing content web sites" (their words).
So I totally believe Reddit on this, and many other sites will follow in the next year or two.
Lest we forget (Score:2)
For the things many people are searching for that normally sites like Reddit would have threads discussing it to death, crappy ad-laden websites have made it their mission to climb ahead of Reddit and other discussion forums in search results so they can give the exact same information, but only after wading through 40 megabytes of ads, two video panels, and a captcha. Now that LLMs are able to make sense of silly questions and provide straightforward answers, the LLM's answer is able to make that particul
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I would not particularly *mind* going to Reddit to participate in those threads, but they've become a bit "user-hostile" since they decided to start working up to an IPO, and now technology is turning them into the place where answers are decided upon and born, but not really any easier to get them than the SEO-obsessive sites. The bulk of straightforward questions about common things are now something an LLM can reliably answer without feeling like making things up.
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Had Reddit not forgotten it's core utility was people helping people figure things out when they began prioritizing a focus on ad revenue, they'd be happy about this because it would mean fewer site visits where the reader isn't likely to contribute anything useful in exchange for the limited bandwidth and storage their access requires.
The hollowing out of society (Score:2)
In the same way that Chinese goods and dollar stores destroy the surrounding businesses because they can't compete Google and AI are destroying the internet and society.
What did they expect? (Score:1)