Oct 30 (Reuters) - Reddit shares tumbled 29% on Friday, marking their biggest single-day drop and hitting their lowest level in over a year, after the company warned that Google’s AI-powered search was hurting referral traffic and could shrink its user base.

The online discussion platform still appears in Google search results but is attracting fewer clicks, as users increasingly rely on the tech giant’s AI tools for direct answers.

“When more than a million search referrals a week disappear because Google’s AI answers the question itself, investors are no longer looking just at the next three or four months, but at how much of Reddit’s audience it will really own in the years ahead,” said Vitor Madeira, senior market specialist at Capital.com.

Reddit warned that its daily active unique visitors could fall by a low double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter if referral traffic kept declining.

If current losses hold, Reddit is set to lose more than $7 billion in market value and Pinterest about $900 million. The two stocks have fallen about 44% and 23%, respectively, this year through their last close.

Reddit has a 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio of 19.03, compared with Snap’s 7.53 and Pinterest’s 8.48, according to LSEG data.

Separately, Reddit on Friday said it has extended its cloud services agreement with Google through 2029, committing to spend $580 million over three years.

At least 11 brokerages cut their price targets on Reddit, and at least 13 did so on Pinterest.

    • Thales@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      You say that…

      I still use the app for 1 specific thing and let me tell you the iOS app (presumably their largest audience) is GARBAGE. And it gets worse every single release.

      The latest release has a dead zone (!) in the list view. You’ll click a row/item and nothing happens. It only occurs after using the app for a bit and only in certain vertical place (about 20% down from the top). You have to scroll the list to be to click that item. Hilarious.

      Of course all of this is on top the numerous other bugs.

      Chrstian - ONE FUCKING GUY - made a superior app by himself. What did PewDiePie say, “it’s evolving, only backwards.”

      • Krudler@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        I think it took them 4 years to get their video player working too. A video player.

        • DrunkenDuckling@lemmus.org
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          6 hours ago

          Their video player working would be news to me in 2026. I still have to download most videos in order to watch them.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            Ugh, on the theme of media, their image-hosting is so incredibly user-hostile.

            I used image search to find something the other day, and the one I wanted was hosted on Reddit. But, it was impossible to see the whole image because Reddit insisted that the only way to see the image was with the whole forum around it, and the image resized to fit that view, with the top and bottom of the image cropped out. There was no way to actually see the full image with the top and bottom visible on Reddit. I had to actually download the image to see that part.

      • OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        They’re appealing to a different generation users. New reddit users think old reddit is ancient outdated design. They like the new design because it’s oriented to the internet generation that uses mobile UIs.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          its for the tiktok generation. this actually goes way back, when they were doing doomscrolling on another platform i was in before it was permanently shuttled.

        • steelplatedmech@piefed.ca
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          13 hours ago

          I hate it on browser too and is why I use redlib. So much wasted space with side padding filled with useless stuff on an already small screen.

        • atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          7 hours ago

          Do people on lemmy have memory loss? This isnt the first time someone claimed something old is actually new

          People have been saying that the reddit app is unusable when the API pricing was announced

          • noodlejetski (he/him)@piefed.social
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            5 hours ago

            it’s always been total garbage, especially compared to the third party apps. some of them supported some native reddit features better than the official app.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          11 hours ago

          Yeah old Reddit was locked up a few months ago. They don’t want people scraping and most new users use the ‘new’ interface.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      That might actually be an active strategy.
      Making the UI worse so people have to click around more. Makes opportunity for more advertising, and makes it look like people are engaging more.
      Never really thought about it that way.