Mass Protest On Reddit: API Changes Provoke Over 7,000 Subreddits To Go Dark

The blowback over Reddit trying to milk money using its API keeps escalating. As per Reddark tracker, over 7,000 sub-Reddits have gone dark, which means except for existing members, no one can view the community and neither post nor comment there.

Notably, the combined headcount of users that are part of these now-private subreddits stands at a staggering 2.7 billion. Some of the communities that have gone dark are familiar names such as r/funny (40 million+ members), r/gaming (30 million+ subscribers), r/food (20 million+ users), and more.

The number of moderators that have joined the online protest exceeds the 28,000 mark. These are the same moderators that have committed thousands of hours worth of free volunteer work to keep these communities safe and clean using a mix of manual moderation and automated bots.

In April, Reddit announced that it will start charging for access to its APIs, the code which connects any third-party product to its servers unless it's for non-commercial purposes like improving accessibility. That meant apps like it's best third-party app, Apollo would have to end up paying millions of dollars in API fees, and as a result, they are shutting down. Communities that rely on bots for everything from moderation to helping members find helpful resources would also suffer under financial stress. 

To protest against the controversial API policy, multiple subreddits announced that they will go dark temporarily, with some of them warning of a full shutdown if Reddit doesn't budge. Following the backlash, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman did an AMA, but he didn't really make any meaningful concessions and was eviscerated by Reddit users in the comments section.

Reddit is not the only platform to end the free API policy, as Twitter also implemented a similar policy in order to milk money, outright banning every third-party Twitter client. Reddit isn't banning third-party clients but argues that it needs to become a self-sustaining business and that it is in no mood to give its valuable human data to AI labs for free. 

But unlike Twitter, Reddit is built atop hours of volunteer moderator work, and the API monetization won't work the same way across both platforms. On Twitter, it's the platform's responsibility to handle moderation and abuse in conversations. In Reddit communities aka subreddits, it's the human moderators that keep the conversations in line. 

Taking away the necessary API tools from them will not only degrade the experience for users but also open the floodgates for spam and disturbing exploitative content, warn the moderators. Of course, the mobile experience will also worsen, as Reddit's official app is downright terrible, while good third-party clients like Apollo are calling it quits.