Thousands of subreddits will switch to private mode for 48 hours, in protest of the company’s new API policy. Source: Antonio Zugaldia
Between June 12–14, thousands of Reddit communities (subreddits) are going dark in protest of the company’s planned API changes that will kill of many third-party apps.
Over the planned 48 hours, thousands of subreddits will switch to private mode by their moderators, meaning the channels will be inaccessible to anyone except community members specifically approved by each subreddit’s moderating team.
Some subreddits plan to remain dark beyond the June 14, and will only return online if the planned API changes are revised or withdrawn.
Reddit has an estimated 430 million monthly users and is among the top 20 most popular websites, pro-claiming itself as the “front page of the internet”.
APIs (application programming interfaces) are essential to the modern web, allowing two applications to communicate with each other, and allowing developers to access data and build new features based on the parent application.
Reddit has public API that developers can use after agreeing to specific terms and conditions.
Currently, Reddit offers free access to its API, but changes announced in April included changing the API terms to charge developers for access to Reddit’s API.
These changes will take effect on July 1, 2023.
Twitter made a similar change recently under Elon Musk, suspending all third-party apps and forcing users to use Twitter’s official app and website.
Reddit’s third-party apps allow users extra features and customisation beyond what is offered by Reddit’s official app and website.
Under the new terms, third-party apps with more than 100 queries per minute will be charged US$0.24 for every 1,000 requests generated by its users.
According to the developer of the popular Apollo app, Christian Selig, Reddit’s new API pricing will cost him US$20million per year to continue operations, based on his current monthly rate of seven billion requests.
As such, Apollo, along with many popular Reddit apps such as Fun, Sync and Reddplant, has announced plans to shut down once the pricing change is implement.
Selig tweeted that Apollo plans to close down on June 30, as “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”
Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years. ❤️ https://t.co/HOJaLMW8fx
— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) June 8, 2023
In response to users’ criticisms, Reddit’s CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman defended the changes in an “Ask Me Anything” forum last week.
“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” he said.
Huffman confirmed that despite the backlash, the company has no plans to revise the incoming API changes.
