Reddit blackout: More than 3,000 subreddits to go dark in protest to new changes

‘Some subreddits will return after 48 hours, others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed,’ one moderator warns

Reddit communities are planning to go dark on 12 June, 2023, in protest to API charges (iStock/ Getty Images)

Thousands of Reddit communities are planning a widespread blackout that will impact millions of users.

The revolt comes in response to proposed charges for third-party app developers, which they claim will make the social media platform inaccessible for a significant proportion of users.

On 12 June, many of the site’s biggest subreddits, including r/videos and r/gaming and r/bestof, will go dark for 48 hours in an effort to prevent the new pricing from coming into force.

Reddit was launched in 2005, but did not develop its own app until 2016. This meant that for the first decade third-party apps became a popular way to access the platform, with many still being preferred over the official app due to the user experience.

These third-party apps need an API – which stands for Application Programming Interface – in order to access the site’s information so that it can display it in the app for users.

“Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing,” a popular third-party app called Apollo announced in a post. “Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20m per year to keep running as is.”

According to Apollo, Reddit plans to charge $12,000 for 50 million API requests.

“I’m deeply disappointed in this price,” Apollo wrote. “For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls.

“I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”

The Independent has reached out to Reddit for comment.

In an “Ask Me Anything” discussion on Friday, Reddit chief and co-founder Steve Huffman reportedly said the new changes are part of the company’s strategy to become a self-sustaining business.

“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,” Mr Huffman said, according to Mashable.

Despite being owned and operated by Advance Publications, Reddit forums are controlled by volunteer administrators, who have organised the protest.

One moderator named Toptomcat wrote in a post that the proposed pricing changes would make it “impossible” to keep operating in the way many Reddit users are used to.

“Many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy,” the user wrote.

“Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app.”

“As the subreddit blackout begins, I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to the Reddit community and everyone standing up. Let’s hope Reddit listens,” Apollo developer, Christian Selig, tweeted on Monday.

The Reddit conflict also comes on the backdrop of an ongoing clash between social media companies and AI firms like OpenAI that have scraped huge amounts of data from these platforms to train their AI systems.