Reddithas now surpassed Facebook and is now the third-most-popular internet destination for users in the United States, according to rankings published by Amazon subsidiaryAlexa(no, not thatAlexa), a website that tracks and analyzes web traffic. Despite its recent controversial site redesign, this means that Reddit now trails Google and YouTube, but ranks ahead of Facebook and Amazon.
While Reddit still doesn’t attract the same amount of traffic as Google or YouTube, the good news for the site is that users spend more time browsing the site, averaging 15 minutes and 10 seconds every day,The Next Webreported. For comparison, users spend just 7 minutes and 16 seconds on Google, 8 minutes and 31 seconds on YouTube, 10 minutes and 50 seconds on Facebook, and 7 minutes and 37 seconds on Amazon. Reddit also outranks the top five sites on Alexa’s list with more daily page views per visitors. Rounding out the top 10 sites are Wikipedia, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, and Netflix.
Reddit’s rise comes at a tumultuous time for Facebook, which has experienced a number of high-profile scandals over user privacy and data sharing in recent months. Most notably, theCambridge Analytica scandal, impacting as many as 87 million Facebook users, has resulted in users calling for aboycott of Facebookover the company’s data collection and advertising practices. In response to the scandal, Facebook unveiled changes to make its site safer, and Europe’sGeneral Data Protection Regulation, also known as GDPR, subsequently went into effect to help make the internet a safer place for users.
Reddit itself has also been a subject of controversy. Created by founder Alexis Ohanian, the site merged with Aaron Swartz’s Infogami in 2006. In 2011, Swartz wascharged with federal hacking lawsfor downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription service, to which he was given a guest account through MIT. Two years later, Swartz was found dead in his apartment by suicide. Most recently, Reddit made headlines when itrefused to ban hate speechon its site, arguing that free speech should be protected unless there is a threat of violence or harm. In a separate incident, Reddit was also the home wherethe personal images of celebrities were uploadedfollowing an Apple iCloud attack.
