User visits and time spent on the social media platform normalize after traffic to Reddit briefly dipped last week during the blackout, according to SimilarWeb.
I went on Reddit yesterday for the first time since the strike, whilst trying to debug a code issue. Almost every post from years old questions had the replies deleted by the users. I think the real damage will be the deletion of content and the change in tone from redditors. Most useful discourse will be gone and it will turn into a place only for arguing, memes and shit posting. Advertisers aren't going to want to pay to advertise on low quality content like that.
I truly feel most of the 3rd party app users were the more level headed folks in the userbse. For the most part we were users there since before reddit had an app when good discourse took place. We're taking that discourse with us and I anticipate further deterioration of reddit. More akin to Facebook style toxicity and echo chambering. I'm sad to see it because overall that's a net loss for humanity/the internet. But I like it here.
I continued to look reddit for reasons, but honestly the feed is deteriorating fast, maybe traffic is back, people posting content, not so much, engagement? Even less, it's like looking to a old mediocre Google News feed.
Apollo has 25m downloads, I can't imagine that the various Android 3rd party apps are any lower than that in total, if not individually.
Officially they make up a small amount of traffic, but amongst power users who both create and comment significantly is much more commonly done through 3rd party apps.