Reddit protest updates: all the news about the API changes infuriating Redditors
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeChanges to the Reddit API are forcing beloved apps like Apollo to shut down, and Redditors aren’t happy. Continue reading…
JaneWalter
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Reddit’s new API updates announced in April could change the platform forever — but maybe not in a good way. Ever since Apollo for Reddit developer Christian Selig revealed he’d be on the hook for $20 million per year due to the changes, Redditors have been furious over how the updates might affect third-party apps.
More than 8,000 of Reddit’s communities, including some of the biggest, most active ones like r/funny, r/gaming, r/gadgets, and r/todayilearned, have gone dark as a part of a coordinated protest. The protest even crashed Reddit, with an outage affecting the main homepage.
While Reddit announced it would exempt accessibility-focused apps from the pricing changes, things are looking more grim for other developers. On June 8th, Selig announced he would have to shut down the Apollo app at the end of the month, and soon after, other developers said they’d be shutting down their apps, too.
CEO Steve Huffman hosted an AMA about the changes on Friday, and based on that, it seems like Reddit won’t budge on the changes. In a memo to employees, Huffman said that the blackout “will pass” and that “we absolutely must ship what we said we would.”
Here’s our coverage of the changes at Reddit.
“To subreddit mods: Please stay dark indefinitely!”
That’s the message from the reddark_247 Twitch stream, which shows a live count of which subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s new API rules. Many communities are planning to extend their blackouts past the original Wednesday end date.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
Illustration: The Verge
Over 8,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes, and it’s shown me just how much I rely on Reddit to find useful, human-sounding information in my Google search results.
With Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private.
Why disabled users joined the Reddit blackout
Image by Alex Castro / The Verge
The Reddit blackout is in its second day as more than 8,000 communities go dark to protest the tech giant’s plans to implement API pricing that users say is too high, too fast. It’s created a ripple effect from bored people not being able to access r/relationships to academics missing r/AskHistorians. In the process, it’s also highlighted an issue that often lurks in the darkness: accessibility.
Subreddits like r/blind, r/HardofHearing, and r/deaf are relatively small, but their concerns loom large in the protest. Some disabled users fear the API changes will threaten their ability to access the site. Because both Reddit’s website and its official app fall short of their needs, they rely on third-party applications to navigate Reddit. Those third-party applications can’t afford the API fees, and some, such as Apollo, are already announcing that they’re shutting down.
Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Moderators of many Reddit communities are pledging to keep their subreddits private or restricted indefinitely. For the vast majority of subreddits, the blackout to protest Reddit’s expensive API pricing changes was expected to last from Monday until Wednesday. But in response to a Tuesday post on the r/ModCoord subreddit, users are chiming in to say that their subreddits will remain dark past that 48-hour window.
“Reddit has budged microscopically,” u/SpicyThunder335, a moderator for r/ModCoord, wrote in the post. They say that despite an announcement that access to a popular data-archiving tool for moderators would be restored, “our core concerns still aren’t satisfied, and these concessions came prior to the blackout start date; Reddit has been silent since it began.” SpicyThunder335 also bolded a line from a Monday memo from CEO Steve Huffman obtained by The Verge — “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well” — and said that “more is needed for Reddit to act.”
8,471 subreddits have gone dark.
8,838 have pledged to do so. Though I have to wonder if these numbers are about to grow.
Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
In an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.
The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, is in response to popular subreddits going dark this week in protest of the company’s increased API pricing for third-party apps. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year. More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday, some have said they’ll stay private indefinitely until Reddit makes changes.
Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit — and why users revolted
Image: Christian Selig
Christian Selig did not mean to be the face of a revolution. All the Canadian developer wanted, really, was to be able to keep working on his app. But that app, a Reddit client called Apollo, has become the central figure in an all-out platform war.
The short version of a long history goes like this: in April, Reddit announced new terms for its API, the tool through which developers of third-party apps access Reddit’s data. Every time you post a comment, refresh a page, search for something, or take just about any other action in an app like Apollo, the app pings an API to get the data you need. Reddit’s API has been free for many years, leading to a flourishing community of third-party tools. But Reddit finally decided it was time to charge for access, both to recoup the costs of running the API and to help the company become more profitable ahead of its planned IPO.
7972 subreddits — and counting — have gone dark.
I’m signing off for the day, but I wanted to share the latest count of subreddits that are going private to protest Reddit’s API changes. 8,304 subreddits have pledged to do so, according to a live tracker.
The subreddit blackouts are expected to last until June 14th.
Here’s my 53-second summary of what’s going on with Reddit.
And you might not know that AI is at the heart of it.
Reddit tested blocking logins from mobile browsers and forcing you into its app, but that test is over.
Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge that an experiment preventing users from logging in to Reddit’s mobile website is done. A Reddit admin confirmed the test a month ago after a Redditor said they couldn’t login to the mobile site on iOS.
Reddit seems to be coming back.
Things have switched from “major outage” to “operational” on Reddit’s status dashboard, and a new message indicates things are getting better. “We’re observing improvements across the site and expect issue to recover for most users,” Reddit wrote. “We will continue to closely monitor the situation.”
Here’s our story about the outage.
Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout
Image by Alex Castro / The Verge
Reddit went through some issues for many on Monday, with the outage happening the same day as thousands of subreddits going dark to protest the site’s new API pricing terms.
According to Reddit, the blackout was responsible for the 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 tells The Verge. The company said the outage was fully resolved at 1:28PM ET.
More than 7,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s API changes
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Over 7,000 subreddits, including many of the most-subscribed communities on Reddit like r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music, and r/science, have set themselves private to protest Reddit’s upcoming API pricing changes. It means these communities are no longer publicly accessible, even to Reddit users previously subscribed to them. Here’s a Twitch stream which is tracking the exact number of subreddits that have gone dark.
Moderators began planning the actions last week after the developers of some of Reddit’s most-beloved third-party apps said they wouldn’t be able to afford the platform’s updated API pricing. On Thursday, the developers for Apollo for Reddit and others announced they would be shutting down their apps on June 30th due to the API changes.
Want to follow the subreddit shutdowns in real time?
The Reddark tracker that Wes posted about yesterday got too much traffic, so now you can watch the count go up in real time on Twitch. If you have the stream open, it plays a sound every time a subreddit goes dark — and over the past 15 minutes or so I’ve had the tab open, I’ve heard that sound a lot.
Thousands of subreddits pledge to go dark after the Reddit CEO’s recent remarks
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The version of Reddit we’ll see over the next few days may be a shell of itself. More than 100 subreddits have already gone dark, and thousands more plan to follow in protest of Reddit’s coming API changes, according to the website Reddark, which is tracking the protests.
The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. Frustration was already brewing in the community as developers began reacting to the changes this week, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days have only escalated the community’s pushback.
Alexis Ohanian: “Online community-building is more like IRL community-building than people realize. Thing is — most people don’t wanna do the work.”
The Reddit co-founder posted what sure reads like a subtweet just a few hours after fellow co-founder and current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrapped up his poorly-received AMA. Harsh.
Some subreddits are already going dark.
A few subreddits, like r/TIHI and r/polls, went private on Friday ahead of the mass platform protest that’s set to start on Monday. A mod for r/polls cited CEO Steve Huffman’s AMA as the reason for going dark early.
Thousands of subreddits are expected to participate in the protest — the latest count I’ve seen is 3,589.
The AMA’s done.
I can’t see anything in Reddit’s AMA with CEO Steve Huffman about the API changes to indicate that it’s over, but Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells me that it’s done. Based on Reddit’s stickied comment, Huffman answered 14 questions, while a few other admins jumped in with seven replies. As of this writing, the AMA had more than 16,000 comments.
Reddit won’t budge on the API changes that are shutting down apps like Apollo
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hosted a promised AMA on Friday over the platform’s controversial API changes, but based on the tone of his initial message and some replies, it doesn’t seem like Reddit will be budging on potentially expensive API updates that have caused multiple developers to announce they will be shutting down their apps.
“On 4/18, we shared that we would update access to the API, including premium access for third parties who require additional capabilities and higher usage limits,” Huffman, who goes by u/spez on Reddit, wrote in the initial post for his AMA. “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.”
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