Reddit communities begin blackout in protest of site changes

Will the site listen?

It’s a red-letter day for Reddit, as thousands of its communities will begin a blackout today. Those of you who are frequent users — also known as “Redditors” — will see some of your favorite hangouts go private for the next 48 hours, if not longer. This also includes some notable gaming-related subreddits.

For those who are not in the know, the reason for the blackout has to do with recent changes that have been implemented. A recent thread gives insight into what the protest is about. In a nutshell, as of May 31, 2023, Reddit raised its prices for access to its API, the “application programming interface” that third-party apps use in order to build their own Reddit software.

According to the developer of Apollo, one of the more popular third-party apps, Reddit is now charging fees of up to $20 million dollars a year to gain access to its API. The Apollo developer, who goes by the username “iamthatis”, says their app made around seven billion requests to the API recently. This means they would effectively be paying the site around $1.7 million per month.

The Big Reddit Blackout of 2023
byu/AskRedditModerators inAskReddit

If you use the official app or the browser/desktop version of the site, there are concerns that this could affect those users as well. The linked thread above goes on to say that the new charges will have an effect on auto-moderation. Essentially, subreddits depend on mods to keep the peace and ensure that spam is removed. This can be a large task, especially for bigger communities. According to the post, there is a likelihood that third-party apps will be unable to keep up with the costs, resulting in the shutting down of many of them. In turn, those apps that use auto-moderation will also be affected, which could result in a flood of spam content.

As such, there has been a huge amount of backlash. Many Reddit communities are choosing to protest these new API costs, either for a set amount of time or until the company makes changes. At the time of writing, r/Gaming is now set to private. Other popular subreddits which are partaking in the blackout include r/AskReddit, which currently has over 41 million subscribers, r/music, which has over 31 million users, and fandoms for the likes of Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, and others are also joining the protest.

According to the BBC, more than 3,500 communities will be going private, resulting in millions being unable to access large parts of the site for 48 hours.