WASHINGTON — Thousands of Reddit communities have "gone dark" in protest of the social media platform's new API pricing in a mass protest that includes some of the site's most popular subreddits.
As the protest got underway Monday, many users reported issues accessing Reddit.com, though not everyone seemed to be impacted. Reddit's status page noted around 11 a.m. Eastern it was "aware of problems loading content and are working to resolve the issues as quickly as possible."
The "front page of the internet" reaches an estimated 1.66 billion users each month, but has angered some of its most popular communities, known as subreddits, over changes to how it will charge applications to gather information from the site.
The controversial API changes, which the company announced in April, will effectively kill off third-party apps used to view the site.
In total, more than 6,500 communities on Reddit have chosen to go private (which blocks off all access to the content on them) or read-only to protest the sudden changes, which they view as an attack on developers making the Reddit experience better.
A Twitch stream tracking the protest shows that another 700 subreddits plan to go dark at some point Monday.
Here's what's happening, and how we got here.
What is an API?
An API is short for Application Programming Interface, which is simply a system that allows two apps to talk to each other and give specific information without sharing their own data. For example, there are a number of third-party Reddit apps that communicate with the website using the API, allowing users to access their feeds and post to the website without using the official Reddit app.
For years, Reddit has allowed its API to be used for free, opening up the world to popular apps such as Apollo, which includes features that Reddit doesn't have in the official app, such as tabs and fewer adds.
That last part may be the crux of the matter at hand, as far as Reddit is concerned. Because third-party apps only request specific data from the site, it's harder for the company to show advertisements to users on those apps, hobbling a main source of revenue for Reddit.
So in April, Reddit announced changes to their API's pricing. Under the new guidelines, set to take effect July 1, it will cost $0.24 for every 1,000 API calls (one call is made each time new data is requested). Apps making less than 100 calls per minute will still be able to use the API for free, but the $0.24 pricing can add up quickly for larger apps with thousands of users.
Apollo, for example, said it would shut down operations on June 30 because at its current number of calls, it would cost about $20 million per year to stay in business — an unsustainable cost for an indie developer with a free app.
What is the Reddit protest?
Many of the site's most popular subreddits, such as r/Music and r/todayilearned, have chosen to go dark on June 12 in support of Apollo and other API users.
The moderators of these subreddits are hoping that the widespread drop in content and users on Reddit caused by the changes will force the company to reconsider their API plans, especially as they prepare to go public with an IPO later this year.
Most subreddits have committed to a 48-hour blackout, but some are taking the protest further, saying they will remain dark "indefinitely" until the company walks back the policies.
Many are also calling for users to avoid Reddit completely, setting up Discord servers as alternate forms of communication to encourage their communities to stay off the site.
Christian Sellig, the creator of Apollo, thanked the Reddit communities that were participating in a post on Twitter that, ironically, linked back to a Reddit post he made Sunday.
"It's been so incredibly amazing seeing the whole Reddit community come together over a common frustration for how Reddit handled the announcement around changes to API pricing," Selig wrote.
What's at stake?
For starters, a massive trove of information hangs in the balance. Reddit, with its wide userbase and seemingly endless subreddits about any niche topic imaginable, is where millions go for their information. For many people searching online for a solution to a problem, typing in "reddit" after the question often brings the first clear answer they've been able to find.
Even ChatGPT, the AI model that took the world by storm in November, was trained in part on Reddit data, according to its creators at OpenAI.
With subreddits going dark in protest, much of this catalog of questions, answers and content remains inaccessible for the time being. And if Reddit chooses not to go back on its API changes, some subreddits could remain dark indefinitely. Even if new ones are made to replace them, the original information will still be locked.
Also at stake are a number of accessibility options for users that aren't supported by Reddit. For example, the moderators of r/blind, which is a hub for blind or visually impaired users on Reddit, said in a post announcing the blackout (the only one visible on the subreddit) that they couldn't even take the community private without the help of a person with vision.
"If Reddit was a restaurant third party apps are franchises," the mods wrote. "We can get a burger from Reddit directly or from a franchise. The official Reddit location is at the top of a cliff. Disabled people can't get there. Reddit is charging franchise fees so high nobody else can afford to offer burgers. We, with thousands of other subreddits, have gone dark for 48 hours. We will be back on June 14. Our Discord server remains open. Thank you for understanding; app so bad, vision required to go dark."
Perhaps the most important thing at stake to Reddit is the company's bottom line and how the protests will affect it.
In 2022, Bloomberg reported that Reddit had filed confidential paperwork to begin the process of going public on the stock market. The company valued itself at $15 billion at the time. But in the time since, reports indicate that creditors who are helping Reddit get to the starting line of an initial public offering on Wall Street are growing skeptical, with investment firm Fidelity downgrading the company's prospects numerous times.
The protest, if it is successful in keeping users off of Reddit, could hurt the company even more, as potential investors worry about the power the moderators of individual subreddits have over the platform.
It's unclear if the protest will move Reddit's leaders. In previous threads on the site's AMA (Ask Me Anything) subreddit, CEO Steve Huffman defended the policies. Reddit hasn't commented publicly on the protest since it began.