The IT Nerd

The Reddit community’s mass protest over the company’s controversial API changes has begun. By some counts that I have seen via a Twitch stream tracking the protest, over six thousand subreddits are participating in the protest by shutting down. Some for 48 hours which was the original plan, and some indefinitely because they are that mad at Reddit. This 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 community admins, most of whom are volunteers because it is easier to administer a subreddit with a third party client rather than the official Reddit app.

What doesn’t help matters much is that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had a train wreck of an “ask me anything” last week where he did more to anger the Reddit community than to placate it. I’ve seen posts on Mastodon urging people not to log into Reddit and some subreddit admins have also set up Discord servers to encourage subscribers to stay off of Reddit. From what I see, the only big loser in this is Reddit. Now I’m not saying that Reddit should continue to give API access away. But that’s clearly not what they’re doing here. Not even close. And the fact that the Reddit community and beyond can see that is not a good look for Reddit. Steve Huffman has created a situation where the Reddit community has become so mad that they are considering moving their communities to someplace other than Reddit. Which is bad news for Reddit and Huffman as having those communities active gives Reddit the opportunity to make money via advertising. If you take away those communities, and the people who follow them, Reddit will have issues paying the bills. So If I were Huffman, I’d be rethinking my life choices at this moment because he’s the only one who will lose. And the sooner he realizes that, the sooner he can change course.

This entry was posted on June 12, 2023 at 9:14 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Reddit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.