Parts Of Reddit Will Go Dark In Protest Over Reddit Killing Access To Third Party Apps
In an Elon Musk like move, Reddit announced that is going to raise the price of API access, which by extension will likely kill Reddit access by third party apps like BaconReader and Apollo. For example, the developer of Apollo said that these changes would cost them $20 million a year. Which from my perspective is something that third party developers can’t sustain. The cynic in me says that this is a move by Reddit to kill third party apps and force people to use their app or the Reddit website instead. Which if that sound familiar, is what Twitter did when they pulled a similar stunt.
The difference is that unlike Twitter, Reddit users are rising up against this move:
On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. 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 two-day blackout isn’t the goal, and it isn’t the end. 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.
This isn’t a trivial move as Reddit like Twitter relies on user interaction to make money. But unlike Twitter who has seen a large amount of users abandon the platform, Reddit users are a much more militant bunch who will stand and fight this move and escalate if they don’t get what they want. This is going to be a problem for Reddit as I am sure that the company thought that they could push this through with little or no pushback. But clearly that is turning out not to be the case. And it will be interesting to see how Reddit deals with this. And how quickly this escalates.
June 8, 2023 at 3:07 pm
[…] recently told you about the fact that Reddit was going to start charging for access to its API, and that had many […]
June 12, 2023 at 9:14 am
[…] protest is due to Reddit’s API changes where Reddit will charge for API access. That move will basically kill third party Reddit clients, including Apollo which is the most popular third party Reddit client. But it will also hamstring […]