Data Deep Dive - How Much Traffic Do SET News and Mnews Actually Lose Without PTT Gossiping Board's Boost?

On July 30, 2026, the moderator of the PTT Gossiping board announced a ban on links from SET News and Mnews. SET News was accused of publishing a sensationalized report involving a homicide case, containing inaccuracies that the victim's family protested without proper correction; Mnews received an enhanced penalty due to controversy over inaccurate reporting related to Korea. The moderator stated bluntly: "The law can't touch you, but board rules can." This move immediately ignited polarized debates across social media over media literacy and censorship.

Following the incident, many people have been discussing the current predicament facing Taiwan's media industry.

When it comes to driving traffic from PTT, Dcard, and Meta-related platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), the latter two currently have their limitations, while PTT is the forum most capable of directly feeding traffic to media outlets. This gives us an opportunity to examine what consequences this ban will actually trigger. As it turns out, the PTT Gossiping board's ban on SET News and Mnews may appear on the surface to simply mean losing a few million clicks per month, but in reality, it severs one of the most important "SEO moats" and "high-stickiness traffic pools" that these two media outlets have in Taiwan's internet ecosystem.

Let's first look at the cold hard numbers. If the PTT Gossiping board truly fully bans links to these two media outlets' domains, SET News will directly lose approximately 3.08 million clicks in traffic per month, accounting for 17.5% of its average monthly total traffic; Mnews will lose approximately 910,000 clicks, accounting for 8.0% of its average monthly total traffic. In other words, one out of every six clicks to SET News comes from PTT, while for Mnews it's one out of every twelve. This isn't marginal traffic that can be brushed aside — it's a critical channel that steadily delivers to both media outlets' traffic structure every month, and the moment the ban takes effect, it drops to zero instantly. Given the current shifting landscape of traffic-driving mediums, this is no small blow. But if you think this is just about losing a few million page views per month, the consequences could actually be far more severe than you'd imagine. We need to zoom out and look at what's happening in the current internet traffic ecosystem:

First, PTT has never been, and should never be viewed as, a single traffic source. In Taiwan's internet environment, PTT has countless "shadow clones." The moment an article is published on the Gossiping board, it's immediately scraped by countless crawler sites and mirror sites like Disp BBS and PTT Web. What does this mean? It means a simple URL share can instantly generate dozens of "backlinks" from high-authority websites for that news site. In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), this is essentially a gift from heaven. When the Gossiping board bans sharing their links, this automatically-running SEO backlink generator gets completely shut off. Over time, both media outlets' rankings in Google search results will inevitably take a serious hit.

Even more critical is that we're now entering the era of AI search (AEO, AI Engine Optimization). Whether it's ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Manus, these AI tools rely heavily on forum discussion volume when determining a news story's authority and relevance. When your news links can't be discussed and cited on Taiwan's most influential forum, AI will judge your content as "lacking discussion value." This is an extremely dangerous warning sign for future traffic strategy.

So can they make up this gap by relying on today's hottest social platforms? It's difficult.

Let's look at Meta (Facebook and Instagram). Anyone familiar with social media operations knows that Meta's algorithm now has just one core logic: keep users locked firmly on their own platform. They absolutely hate directing traffic out to external websites. You write an in-depth, quality article, attach a news link, and your reach gets slashed to the bone instantly. Media social media managers now have to play a cat-and-mouse game of "putting the link in the comments." So counting on Meta alone to fill this 4-million traffic gap? That's an unrealistic fantasy — not to mention that media outlets would have to pay out of pocket for social ads to acquire users, and the return ratio between exposure/clicks and content investment is no longer what it used to be.

What about Threads, which has been quite buzzworthy lately? Here we need to expose a blind spot in the data. If you only look at web-based traffic analytics tools (like SimilarWeb), you'd think Threads' traffic in Taiwan is pitifully low, even in a state of avalanche-like decline. But in reality, Threads has, from its launch to now, transformed into a platform that's "purely App-driven" — the web version data is essentially just an afterimage.

The real situation is: Threads' global App monthly active users (MAU) continues to climb, and Taiwan is actually one of Threads' largest strongholds globally, with a traffic contribution rate as high as 21.83%, ranking first in the world [2]. If we work backwards using this ratio, Threads' App MAU scale in Taiwan has already surpassed 100 million (this includes a large amount of cross-device and non-logged-in browsing), far exceeding the web-based traffic of both Dcard and PTT, and also surpassing both of their App MAU figures (though this figure is only an estimate, with no confirmed number).

However, while Threads' traffic is indeed astonishingly large, for media outlets, this is a poisoned apple that "looks great but can't be tasted." Threads is fundamentally a highly anonymous, emotionally charged, closed text-based community. People are used to taking screenshots there, venting emotions, and engaging in flame wars — but they simply "don't click links." It's an excellent venue for brand exposure, but as a traffic-driving tool, its conversion rate is pitifully low. Trying to rely on Threads to drive people back to a news website? That's practically a mission impossible.

And amid Threads' aggressive rise, Dcard isn't having an easy time either. While Dcard's web traffic appears relatively stable (holding around 40 million monthly average visits), Dcard is also a platform highly dependent on its App. According to actual data disclosed by Dcard's internal creators, their App-side article reach has plummeted from a past average of 10,000 views down to under 3,000, a drop of over 70% 3. Young users' attention is being massively siphoned away by Threads.

In contrast, PTT, this veteran forum, has demonstrated astonishing resilience. Because PTT itself has no official App, a large number of users rely on the web version or third-party open-source Apps for access, so web traffic can better reflect its true underlying strength. Data shows that PTT still maintains a stable average of 41 million monthly visits from Taiwan [4].

Even more critical is "stickiness." PTT's bounce rate is only 40.9%, far lower than Dcard's 52.4% and Threads' web version rate of 73.4% [4]. PTT users view 9.4 pages per visit on average, stay for over 7 minutes on average, and each user returns an average of 8.4 times per month — nearly double that of Dcard. This means PTT's users aren't just numerous in volume, but are genuinely "high-value users" who stick around to actually read content and click on links.

This is the predicament these two media outlets are about to face. Based on past operational experience, we understand PTT's traffic characteristics clearly: it's not a one-time firework, but rather a spark that keeps smoldering and building. A news story that gets "推爆" (heavily upvoted) on the Gossiping board often triggers follow-up coverage from other media outlets, and can even become material for evening political talk shows, forming powerful secondary and tertiary distribution, ultimately shaping the scope of online discussion and becoming source material referenced by various creators, which then gets transformed into all kinds of digital content on other platforms.

When this spark is extinguished, caught in a four-way squeeze where Meta won't give up traffic, Threads can't drive traffic out, Dcard's App-side traffic is quietly hemorrhaging, and the highly sticky PTT is now banned — the cost of acquiring traffic for these two media outlets going forward will skyrocket dramatically. They may have to rely even more heavily on LINE official account push notifications, or pray for the favor of Google Discover's algorithm. This isn't merely a matter of losing 3 million or nearly 1 million clicks per month — it's a crisis of the entire content distribution chain breaking apart. In an era where traffic keeps getting more expensive, losing a free channel that automatically helps with SEO, generates buzz, and brings in highly sticky users is undoubtedly a heavy, silent blow.

References

1 SimilarWeb traffic data analysis: PTT referral statistics from January to June 2026 2 Yahoo News Taiwan (2025). Taiwan Becomes the World's Most Enthusiastic Threads-Using Country! Traffic Contribution Rate at 21.83%.3 Threads Creator Disclosure (2025). Dcard's traffic has dropped extremely severely, possibly down to only 30% of its original level. 4 SimilarWeb Traffic Analytics (2026). Web traffic and engagement statistics for PTT, Dcard, and Threads.