‘Reddark’: Reddit Goes Dark as Users Revolt Against API Charges

It’s all lights off on Reddit today. The online forum has gone dark in a site-wide protest against plans to charge for access to its API – the tech that gives developers access to its data.

The blackouts, dubbed “reddark” is a coordinated effort between tens of thousands of Reddit moderators and millions of users in protest of Reddit’s recently announced pricing for API access. 

The proposed prices will see some third-party developers paying upwards of $2 million per month to run their Reddit apps.

More than 8,000 participating apps and subreddits have gone offline or switched to read-only in protest of the changes, with app developers warning that Reddit’s new prices for API access would make their apps unsustainable. 

One hugely popular iOS Reddit app, Apollo, said it would be forced to shut down if the new prices were implemented. 

“Reddit’s recent decisions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all your support,” Apollo said in a statement on its subreddit. 

“The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month or over $20 million per year.”

Moderators on the subreddit r/ModCoord are keeping track of participating subreddits in an ongoing thread. As of Tuesday morning, 28,606 moderators are participating, and 8,300 subreddits pledge to go private for 48 hours in support of the movement.

“The two-day blackout isn’t the goal, and it isn’t the end,” a post in r/Save3rdPartyApps said. “Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they’ve broken, we’ll use the community and buzz we’ve built between then and now as a tool for further action.”

Left in the dark

Until now, API access – which allows a third-party app to communicate with a website – has been free. 

Upvoting a post, adding a comment, browsing subreddits and all other interactions users have using a third-party app requires API requests. 

“API access also allows third-party apps to provide accessibility features for users who are blind or visually impaired and allows moderators to use “superior mod tools, customization, streamlined interfaces, and other quality of life improvements” that the official Reddit app doesn’t offer,” an open letter in the r/ModCoord subreddit says.

“The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves,” moderator BuckRowdy wrote in the open letter.

In addition to the blackout, Reddit itself has gone down, and in the subreddits that are still live, the Reddit website isn’t populating posts or comments.

Not listening to the community in a community platform is just ironic.

Reddit is giving the cold shoulder to all the devs that helped build the platform.

The Reddit blackout today is a reminder that we should listen to our users above anything. pic.twitter.com/anTl2w2hV7

— Rodrigo Ortiz (@rodrigoakarolo) June 13, 2023

Reddit is different to other social networks in that it depends heavily on its users, who administer the forums and moderate the content that appears on them rather than a team hired by Reddit. 

This saves the platform a lot of money – Meta, for instance, pays big to ensure that explicit or offensive content does not appear on Facebook and Instagram.

But some 30,000 moderators thought to be running the subreddits are involved in the protest and working together has given them considerable power to leave Reddit in a blackout.

It’s so eerily powerful watching the #RedditBlackout happen in real time.

Amazing to see 28,000 unpaid volunteers rebel against a company that’s trying to cripple itself.

Proof that together, us tiny consumers have way more power than we think. pic.twitter.com/Qh8uqAcJxO

— Brettles (@BrettMichaelOrr) June 13, 2023

“The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves,” moderator BuckRowdy wrote in the open letter.

“We understand that Reddit, like any company, must balance its financial obligations. However, we believe that the longevity and success of this platform rest on preserving the rich ecosystem that has developed around it.”

Reddit’s API AMA

In the wake of the backlash, Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman hosted Ask Me Anything (AMA) centred around the API changes. The company said it would be updating its API terms, but these changes will not bring back popular apps like Apollo.

Huffman said the company would stand by its pricing of $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, but that apps using less than 100 requests per minute through the OAuth client ID will be able to use the API free of charge. According to Reddit, over 90 per cent of the apps available today fall into this category.

The Executive added that Reddit will limit access to explicit content through its API and that moderation tools that need access to the API, such as Accessibility-focused apps, will continue to have free access.

“If the usage is legal, non-commercial, and helps our mods, we won’t stand in your way,”  Reddit said in a post explaining the API changes. 

If usage is legal, non-commercial, and helps our mods, we won’t stand in your way.

Reddit

“Moderators will continue to have access to their communities via the API, including sexually explicit content across Reddit. Moderators will be able to see sexually-explicit content even on subreddits they don’t directly moderate.” 

Reddit’s front page was exceptionally quiet on Monday afternoon. The most popular post of the day was a thank-you note from Apollo developer Christian Selig in r/apolloapp, with over 137,000 upvotes.

“I think showing humanity through apologizing for and recognizing that this process was handled poorly, and concrete promises to give developers more time, would go a long way to making people feel heard and instilling community confidence,” Selig said in the post. 

“Minor steps can make a potentially massive difference,” he added.