Wikipedia’s traffic is down -8% year over year driven by the rise of AI overviews in search and young people preferring to get their answers from TikTok.

It’s still startling to me how many technology trends I thought permanent were actually just generational trends.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/wikipedia-says-traffic-is-falling-due-to-ai-search-summaries-and-social-video/

Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video | TechCrunch

Looks like Wikipedia isn't immune to broader online trends, with human page views falling 8% year-over-year, according to a new blog post from Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation.

TechCrunch
@carnage4life if these declines are offset by $ contributions by the AI companies, maybe it may not be so bad.
@carnage4life does Wikipedia earn from traffic anyway? If it doesn't decrease donations, isn't it better for Wikipedia?

@carnage4life A decline in Wikipedia traffic doesn’t necessarily mean a decline in reading Wikipedia articles.

Since Wikipedia articles are legally copied and used outside of Wikipedia, like in Duckduckgo’s information boxes, people could be viewing Wikipedia articles elsewhere.

But there is definitely a lot of ”I’ll just ask the chatbot” instead of just looking things up on Wikipedia. The question is how prevalent that is.

@carnage4life check out Tucker Carlson’s recent podcast interview with the developer who created Wikipedia, regarding what a corrupt shitshow it has become. Regardless of what you think about Tucker, it’s a good interview.