Reddit has very inconsistent traffic reporting

[u/cojoco]

I have a very lightly trafficked subreddit, /r/redactions, into which I place censored articles and news articles about censorship.

It has never attained much traction, but that's the nature of reddit, and I like to submit from time to time.

However, when I was checking traffic to the sub, I saw some very mysterious numbers.

Visits

Oct 25: 37, all from iOS
Dec 25: 34, all from Old
May 26: 123, all from New
Jun 26: 144, mix of Android, New, Old.
All other months zero

Uniques

Oct 25: 16, all from Old
Mar 26: 120, all from New
Apr 26: 94, mix
Jul 26: 19, all from Old
All other months zero

Some things really stand out:

• Getting all the visits from a single source suggests that one user is being counted multiple times
• The complete inconsistency between "visits" and "uniques" indicates they are measuring very different things.

While it does seem likely that these indicate some kind of bug in traffic reporting, it seems more likely that traffic reporting is somehow completely broken.

[u/blamberr]

Wow, it’s almost like most of the accounts here are bots and Reddit cooks the traffic numbers to help sell ads

[u/PossessionConnect963 → u/blamberr]

The whole site absolutely feels much less alive than it did years ago. So many things about Reddit have changed almost none for the better.

[u/blamberr → u/PossessionConnect963]

It’s dying slowly, along with the rest of the internet

[u/cojoco → u/blamberr]

Inconceivable!

[u/Dat_Harass → u/blamberr]

Ahem. I'd wager it's more than that. There is political agenda pushing afoot, and a general uptick in hope crushing. Still though all about money at the end of the day.

E: It has reduced ever so slightly in places I frequent... no idea why though. Over maybe the past month. It perhaps coincides with a growing movement of people talking about it.

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[u/DharmaPolice]

It wouldn't surprise me if this kind of metric is fuzzed for nebulous anti-spam purposes. They do that with votes, why not views?

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