Over 7,000 subreddits have reportedly gone dark in protest of changes to Reddit’s API. Reports coming in now claim that many subreddits are going private in response to the updated Reddit API pricing starting from June 12th to June 14. And some of them are even reported to be indefinite.
Changes to Reddit’s API
More than 7,000 subreddits, which is inclusive of many of the most-subscribed communities on Reddit such as r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music, and r/science, have reportedly set themselves private in a bid to protest the upcoming API pricing changes of Reddit. It simply means that these communities are no longer accessible publicly, even to Reddit users that are previously subscribed to them. Here is a Twitch stream that is now tracking the exact number of subreddits that have reportedly gone dark.
Moderators started to plan out the actions in the previous week after the developers of some of the most-beloved third-party apps of Reddit stated that they would not be able to afford the updated API pricing of the platform. The developers for Apollo for Reddit and others on Thursday announced that they would be shutting down their apps on June 30th due to the API changes.
Developers for Apollo For Reddit Announcement
Plenty of subreddits that are participating in the protest are reportedly going private for 48 hours, starting from June 12th to June 14th, but some however plan to stay private until things get to change on the platform, according to a pinned post reported in the subreddit r/Save3rdPartyApps.
“This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love,” r/Toptomcat in a post wrote. And some subreddits in question did not even wait until Monday: r/TIHI (Thanks, I Hate It) and r/polls in question were among those that went dark shortly after the poorly-received Friday AMA of CEO Steve Huffman.
Christian Selig, the Apollo app developer, whose post about Reddit’s API pricing generated much of the initial outrage, has stated that it was “incredibly amazing” seeing the community of Reddit come together to push back against the proposed changes in question. “I really hope Reddit listens,” he reportedly wrote in a post on the Apollo subreddit. “I think showing humanity through apologizing for and recognizing that this process was handled poorly, and concrete promises to give developers more time, would go a long way to making people feel heard and instilling community confidence.”
How the Reddit Community Responded To the Newly Reported Changes
And while many subreddits are now going private, others in question(such as r/NintendoSwitch, r/Frugal, and r/StarWars) are instead opting to restrict new posts. Historical posts are, however, still very much visible, but moderators will not be letting new content on these communities while the protest is still taking place. One subreddit, r/DankMemes on the other hand, is still public but only lets users to post memes about the API changes.
In r/ModCoord on the other hand, four separate threads detail an “incomplete and growing list of participating subreddits” and that as you should know includes numerous well-known communities with tens of millions of subscribers.
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