Hundreds of subreddits plan to go black in protest against API plans
A group of subreddits are planning to go ‘black’ in protest against Reddit’s planned API changes. The company wants to charge money for API access and those amounts seem so high that the existence of custom Reddit clients is threatened.
The list of subreddits participating in the protest, grows fast. Over the past weekend, numerous subreddits signed up, including big names like aww, EarthPorn, LifeProTips, videos, creepy, Futurology, lifehacks, bestof and nextfuckinglevel. Those subreddits have millions or tens of millions of subscribers. The official list is now reaching its character limit for Reddit posts, and new participants are pouring in in the comments.
The subreddits want that the intended prices for API access will be reduced. In addition, they want more frequent and clearer communication about what changes Reddit will undergo. Finally, data from nsfw subreddits must remain accessible via the API; that data flow will be completely closed in the future. Elsewhere it can also be read that Reddit moderators need third-party tools to do their job properly; according to them the official app has bad tools.
The plan is to go dark with all participating subreddits on June 12. The subreddits are expected to still be visitable, but will not display any content. “Some return after 48 hours, but others disappear permanently unless the issue is properly resolved,” the list of participating subreddits states. Similar protests were also held in 2015, for a different reason.
Earlier this month it emerged that the developer of Apollo, a popular Reddit client for iOS, will soon have to pay the platform $1.7 million per month for its current number of users and API calls. The developer is not even remotely able to pay that amount with his turnover. Reddit hasn’t announced any rates yet, but says the rates are “as fair as possible.”
Reddit is working on an IPO. According to Reuters sources the plan is for this to take place in the second half of this year. Increasing turnover in order to create more stock market value is a possible motivation for the platform. In addition, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The New York Times that it also wants to promote API access because large language models such as those from ChatGPT are trained on Reddit posts. “Reddit [scrapen]generating value and not giving any of it back to our users is something we have a problem with.”