A major protest targeting Reddit saw countless communities go dark on Monday over planned pricing changes set to negatively affect third-party apps. The protest also caused the site to crash.
Moderators for some of the site’s largest subreddits enabled private mode in order to keep out non-members, a tactic used to limit the number of Reddit visitors and reach of posts.
Calls for protest arose earlier this month after Reddit announced it would be limiting access to its API, which allows third-party developers to access and use Reddit’s data in apps of their own.
On Monday, major subreddits like r/ShowerThoughts, r/gifs, r/Jokes, and others all had posts that read, “Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself).”
The protest has been in the works for weeks, as Reddit announced the changes earlier this spring. The protesters say that the pricing would make it too expensive for certain companies that developed third-party reader apps, like Apollo, to continue to operate.
“On July 1st, 2023, Reddit intends to alter how its API is accessed. This move will require developers of third-party applications to pay enormous sums of money if they wish to stay functional, meaning that said applications will be effectively destroyed. In the short term, this may have the appearance of increasing Reddit’s traffic and revenue… but in the long term, it will undermine the site as a whole,” reads the text under r/gifs.
Reddit has long been criticized for its lackluster app, and people with disabilities have had to use third-party readers. In response to the initial outcry, Reddit said it would exempt apps that aided with accessibility.
According to the organizers, at least 6,000 communities have joined the protest. On Monday, Reddit confirmed to TechCrunch that the protest caused the entire site to go down. The site has since been restored.
While most communities only intend to stay dark for 48 hours, some have claimed they will keep the boycott going indefinitely.
In a post on r/Reddit, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman lamented that the site isn’t profitable and that the company needs to make changes until it is.
“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.
