Reddit going dark: 6,000+ subreddits go quiet over developer pricing changes
Christopher Hutton
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More than 6,000 forums have gone dark in protest of the social forum website Reddit charging developers for access to its internal code, a protest that could leave users unable to use large portions of the website for days.
Several subreddits, or smaller forums dedicated to specific subjects on Reddit, set themselves to private on Monday, meaning users will not have access, including those who had previously subscribed. The protesting subreddits include some of the website’s largest, such as r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music, and r/science. The moderators of the subreddits said they were protesting over the company charging developers for its once-free API, which third-party apps require in order to access a website’s content. Several Reddit app developers claim that the current pricing system is too much for their overhead costs, forcing them to shut down their apps.
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“This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love,” the Redditor Toptomcat wrote in a r/Save3rdPartyApps post announcing the protest last week.
The protest is scheduled from June 12-14, although some subreddits may extend the shutdown until Reddit updates its API policy.
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hosted an “Ask Me Anything” on Friday over the API changes, but the questioning session was poorly received. Several users slammed Huffman, calling him a coward and stating they lost his trust.