The Reddit blackout is underway, with 1000’s of subreddits switching to personal mode in protest over Reddit’s decision to increase the value of its API access, which can force many third-party Reddit apps to shut down consequently.
According to a live list tracking the protest, over 7,000 subreddits have currently “gone dark,” out of the 100,000 or so energetic Reddit communities in the app. And while 7% of communities may not appear to be quite a bit, the affected groups have a combined subscriber count of two.7 billion, which could have a huge impact on Reddit engagement.
Indeed, the very motion of switching so many groups to personal has already caused issues at Reddit, with the location experiencing a temporary outage consequently, while the subreddits themselves will remain out of motion indefinitely in response to Reddit’s API pricing changes.
Late last month, Reddit announced that it might be upping the value of its API access, in order to make cash off of big-name developers which were using Reddit data to fuel their systems. Most notably, various generative AI tools have been using Reddit and Twitter as key sources of input to construct their conversational models, which those businesses are actually on-selling to their very own customers, essentially making billions, largely via Reddit and Twitter conversation.
Twitter increased the value of its API access back in March in response, and now, Reddit’s also seeking to follow Twitter’s lead, in order to construct “a more equitable system” for its API use. Though very similar to Twitter, the change will even impact many smaller third-party Reddit clients and tools, which many individuals currently use to access the app.
Popular Reddit reader app Apollo has already announced that it would be forced to shut down at the top of this month consequently of the change.
Apollo developer Christian Selig explained that:
“June thirtieth shall be Apollo’s last day. I’ve talked to a whole lot of people, and are available to terms with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an unsightly point.”
Selig claims that, under Reddit’s latest pricing structure, Apollo would wish to pay around $2 million monthly to maintain the app running, effectively pricing him, and lots of others out of the market.
That sparked the initial backlash amongst Reddit community managers, which has now led to this protest motion — while an effort from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman late last week to calm the situation by conducting an AMA evidently did more harm than good.
What will this mean for Reddit, long-term?
Eventually, cooler heads could prevail, and the platform will get back to normal operations. But the protest motion also highlights a flaw in Reddit’s system, and its reliance on volunteer moderators to run the app.
Unlike other social platforms, that are reliant on algorithms and automatic detection, a big chunk of Reddit’s moderation and engagement maximization efforts come via human engagement, with moderators playing a necessary role in managing their groups, and ensuring that they stay on-topic and on target. That’s delivered major advantages for the app, particularly in terms of reducing spam and misinformation, but at the identical time, it signifies that Reddit needs this army of volunteers to maintain things rolling, which is a major weakness in its current approach.
That hasn’t been an enormous problem till now, and it’ll be interesting to see how long the protest goes on for, and the way Reddit responds, especially if app usage drops consequently.
One option may very well be for Reddit to take control of those communities itself, and keep them running, even when the present mods refuse to come back back. That would effectively be the top for Reddit’s current system, and a giant step to take, but Reddit does have options that it could consider, if the impacts turn into an excessive amount of.
Right now, we wait and see what comes next, with Reddit, to date, refusing to budge on its API pricing increase.
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