Thousands of communities on Reddit are organizing a massive protest against the monetization of access to its data. About 3,000 subreddits are taking part in the protest against Reddit’s controversial API pricing by going “private” on Monday, making their posts inaccessible to those outside the community. Communities with over 30 million subscribers, including r/todayilearned, r/funny, and r/gaming, have joined the campaign, while others with more than 1 million members, such as r/iPhone and r/unexpected, have already closed their doors to outsiders in preparation for the strike.
The protest is over changes to Reddit’s “API,” which allows other companies to use Reddit data in their products and services. These modifications will result in significant charges for “premium access,” causing popular third-party Reddit applications like Apollo to be shut down.
The moderators of thousands of subreddits who are participating in the protest said in a group statement: “On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours; others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed since many moderators are not able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. We love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.”
Apollo’s creator, Christian Selig, predicts that these apps would have to charge each user approximately $5 (£4) per month to cover the new fees imposed by Reddit. However, he ultimately decided to shut down the app at the end of this month.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent API changes that led to the closure of popular third-party apps during an AMA discussion. “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 wrote in his AMA post. Huffman also addressed the blackout, stating, “We respect when you and your communities take action, including, at times, going private. We are all responsible for ensuring Reddit provides an open accessible place for people to find community and belonging.”
A moderator of a subreddit said the protest aims to show strength in numbers. They also explained that Reddit might intervene if only one subreddit went private. However, if a significant portion of the website went private, there would be more pressure on Reddit to take action.
Reddit moderators are against the change as they believe it undermines their role in running the site. They question whether Reddit would sacrifice their hard work building communities to push through an unpopular change. Despite recent communications between moderators and Reddit administrators, the moderator does not believe that Reddit intends to reverse the changes.
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