It’s not just a british thing. I find that reddit blocks VPNs but not tor exit nodes, they even have a .onion website.

https://www.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion/

I’ve set up a private redlib instance that routes all traffic through tor and I have a browser extension that redirects all reddit links to my server. If you have a vps/home server this is a very seamless setup or you can use one of many public redlib instances or browse through tor directly.

What does traffic mean in this context, is it the total amount of bytes transferred or the total amount of requests made?

How is that clickbait, that’s exactly what happened?