Reddit communities including some of its biggest clicked into to private mode today, meaning not accessible to the broader public, as they carried through on threats to protest the platform’s fees hikes to third-party app developers.
The protest hit the site Monday with users reporting widespread problems loading content. The company’s latest at 8:47 PT said, “We’re observing improvements across the site and expect issue to recover for most users. We will continue to closely monitor the situation.”
Dozens of the thousands of communities, called subreddits, that are now in blackout mode have over a million subscribers — from r/videos and r/reactiongifs to r/earthporn. The protests is expected to run for 48 hours, although some subreddits that depend on third parties could permanently shutter thereafter. In many cases it seems moderators can’t do what they need with just the tools available through the official app.
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Fees Reddit now wants to charge third-party software developers for access to the company’s API (application programming interface) could run into the millions annually, which many can’t afford.
Reddit had indicated its intentions earlier this spring and the mass protest had been in the works for weeks.
A subreddit moderator, BuckRowdy, wrote that third-party apps can “offer superior mod tools, customization, streamlined interfaces, and other quality of life improvements that the official app does not offer.” In an open letter that he asked other moderators to sign, he said: “The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently.”
He added, “the prohibitive cost threatens to make it difficult to mod from mobile, stifle innovation, limit user choice, and effectively shut down a significant portion of the culture we’ve all come to appreciate. Indeed, on May 31, 2023, when these changes were announced, every third party app developer on Reddit made essentially the same statement: ‘I will have to shut down the app.’ Apps can also no longer show ads which was a primary source of revenue. So not only do they have to pay exorbitant fees, they can’t even mitigate those fees with ads.”
Reddit spokesperson told Deadline the company is “in contact with a number of communities to clarify any confusion around our Data API Terms, platform-wide policies, community support resources, and timing for new moderator tools.” In terms of comments on the substance, he said “expansive access to data has impact and costs involved; we spend multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees and Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps. Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs.” Also, “some apps are more efficient (and require significantly less API calls)”.
Reddit communities similarly went dark in protest of other issues in 2021 and 2020.
Reddit is seeking to raise revenue as it plans to take another stab a initial public offering after last year’s IPO plans fizzled. The company recently announced plans to lay off 5% of its workforce.
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