Reddit crashed due to a growing subreddit blackout according to reports. On the first day of a sitewide protest at the planned API changes at Reddit, the website reportedly experienced a major and significant outage.
Reddit Crashed According To Reports
Reddit went through some problems for many on the platform on Monday, with the outage taking place the same day as thousands of subreddits going dark in a bid to protest the new API pricing terms of the site.
And according to Reddit, the blackout in question was responsible for the reported problems. “A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt revealed to The Verge. The company stated that the outage in question was resolved fully at 1:28 PM ET.
The issues began on Monday morning, with the status page of Reddit reporting a “major outage” affecting the desktop and mobile sites of Reddit as well as its native mobile apps. “We’re aware of problems loading content and are working to resolve the issues as quickly as possible,” the company on the status page wrote in a message at 10:58 AM ET. At 11:47 AM ET, the company then stated that “we’re observing improvements across the site and expect the issue to recover for most users. We will continue to closely monitor the situation.”
User Reports On the Ongoing Reddit Problems
And while the problems were going on in the platform, for many Verge staffers, Reddit.com was not just loading, but some subreddits on the other hand were. There were about 43,000 user reports of issues on Downdetector at the peak of the reported issues, but the reports have ever since fallen significantly.
A site that had for some time been tracking the number of subreddits that are going private on a Twitch stream also appeared to be broken as a result of the reported outage, but it has since then returned to normal. “Count will be wrong for a while,” as per a message that had appeared on the live Twitch stream following the count. “It’s Reddit not working.”
Reddit User’s Response to the New Changes to the Platform
Over 7,000 subreddits have now gone private or read-only in response to the API pricing terms, which is reportedly forcing the developers of apps such as Apollo for Reddit to shut down at the end of the month. The new pricing in question will potentially be very prohibitively expensive for developers, with Apollo for Reddit creator Christian Selig stating that he would have to pay over $20 million per year to operate the app.
Redditors also are unhappy with just how the API changes could get to force some accessibility apps to shut down, although Reddit has said that accessibility-focused apps will be granted an exception to the API pricing changes. (Red Reader and Dystopia on Friday announced they received exceptions.)
Subreddits Are Now Going Dark for 48 Hours on the Platform
Many subreddits are now going dark for 48 hours, kicking off from June 12th through June 14th, but some on the other hand have chosen to stay private indefinitely until something gets to change at Reddit. That being said, the platform seems to be unwilling to budge.
CEO Steve Huffman reportedly held the company line during an AMA on Friday, and in the process angered many Reddit users and then caused some subreddits to go private earlier than initially planned. I asked Reddit on Sunday if it still planned to move forward with the API pricing plans, and Rathschmidt then stated that the company was not planning any changes to what has already been announced.
MORE RELATED POSTS
- Over 7,000 Subreddits Have Reportedly Gone Dark in Protest of Changes to Reddit’s API
- Reddit Account: Detailed Instructions for Creating an Account and Signing In to Reddit
- The 10 Best Reddit Apps for Android in 2023
- Google Drive’s 5 Million Item Capacity and What It Means for You
- Reddit – Reddit on the App Store and the Google Play Store
