Reddit, the American on-line dialogue platform, has overtaken X to change into the fifth hottest social media platform within the UK, in keeping with the communications watchdog.
Ofcom stated Reddit, the place customers put up on dialogue threads inside topic-based communities, was visited by 22.9 million UK adults in Could this 12 months, in contrast with 22.1 million on X.
The figures make Reddit the fastest-growing massive social media platform within the UK and signify a development of 47% on the identical interval in 2023. The leap took Reddit above LinkedIn and X into fifth place on the desk of UK social media platforms, which is now topped by YouTube after it overtook Fb, reaching greater than 44 million adults.
Reddit, famend for its devoted consumer base who refer to at least one one other as Redditors, seems to have been boosted by updates to Google’s search engine this 12 months.
Farhad Divecha, the managing director of the UK-based digital advertising and marketing company AccuraCast, stated: “Google’s newest algorithm replace within the first half of 2024 gave Reddit a giant enhance in natural search site visitors. I feel that has most likely contributed quite a bit.”
Ofcom additionally speculated that the change could have been brought on by alterations to how third-party apps accessed its content material, forcing customers of these apps to modify to the Reddit website. The watchdog additionally flagged publicity round Reddit’s inventory market flotation in March this 12 months.
The recognition of X additionally fell over the identical interval, in keeping with Ofcom, with its attain falling by 8% since Could final 12 months. X has been criticised over content material moderation requirements since its takeover by Elon Musk in 2022 but it surely has additionally confronted competitors since July 2023 from Threads, a rival to X launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
The Ofcom figures featured within the watchdog’s annual report into the nation’s digital habits, which revealed that 4 out of 10 UK adults say they’ve encountered misinformation or deepfakes, with the vast majority of these circumstances occurring on-line.
The misinformation survey, primarily based on a ballot of greater than 4,000 UK adults, additionally discovered that three in 10 adults consider there’s a single group of people that management the world collectively, with the identical quantity believing there’s “important proof” of electoral fraud within the UK.
The regulator additionally discovered that one-third of UK adults aren’t assured in judging whether or not a picture or a bit of audio or video has been created by synthetic intelligence.
