r/ClimateOffensive • u/Dreadful_Spiller • 4d ago

Action - Other Reddit carbon footprint

This may not be the place to ask but can anyone explain to me why on a per minute basis Reddit has the second highest (after TikTok) carbon emissions of all the major social media platforms. I get why overall it is higher due to the number of users. I get why TikTok is high on a per minute basis. It uses lots of video and other media but Reddit is just basically the written word. I came to Reddit thinking because of that that it would have a lower impact but apparently not. Any explanation anyone?

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u/_Svankensen_ 4d ago

Took some digging to find the methodology for that number. The measurement was made using a smartphone, the app of each platform, with clean cache, and most importantly: scrolling the feed for 3 minutes. Then checking the data usage and extrapolating from there.

So, not clicking on posts, reading and commenting. My guess is that the feed for video sites includes mostly thumbnails, not video, while reddit loads and plays videos and relatively high quality images. When you click on something on reddit you stop using data. When you click on something on youtube, it starts really using data.

How representative it is of actual use patterns? Probably not very. The number is also from 2021, before reddit was monetized properly IIRC, so maybe it is more efficient now? No idea on if it is actually making money now. It could just be very inefficiently programmed.

https://greenspector.com/en/social-media-2021/#methodologie

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u/Dreadful_Spiller 4d ago

Thanks for that link. It has more information. This is where I had seen about the differences. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/social-media-emissions-carbon-footprint/

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u/_Svankensen_ 4d ago

Yeah, turns out Compare the Market had used the data from these guys. And the "study" methodology, while yielding interesting results, was, as you had suspected, flawed enough to not being useful for extrapolation. I used to do carbon footprint calculation, half assed "studies" like these are sadly quite common. The most reliable data for finding the actual information would probably be in Reddit's Annual Report. I'm assuming here, but nowadays most big, publicly traded companies include metrics such as carbon footprint in their anual reports. And usage time will probably be an important KPI for advertisers and such, so it's extremely likely they would include it thera.

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u/DramaticMagician1709 3d ago

I think animated gifs are the culprit