EXPLAINER
News|Technology
Some 7,000 Reddit communities, totalling hundreds of millions of subscribers, are protesting against new API pricing changes that could kill off third-party apps.
From June 12 to June 14, thousands of Reddit communities, also known as subreddits, are going dark to protest planned API changes that would essentially kill off many third-party applications.
Self-proclaimed as the “front page of the internet”, Reddit is among the top 20 most popular websites and has an estimated 430 million monthly active users.
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Over the course of 48 hours, thousands of subreddits will be switched to private mode by their moderators. Only members of the community that are approved by the moderators will be able to view and participate in those channels. For everyone else, the pages will be inaccessible.
Some subreddits have said that they will remain offline until the planned changes are revised or withdrawn.
What’s an API and what is Reddit changing?
APIs (application programming interfaces) are considered to be the backbone of the modern web. Simply put, they permit two applications to communicate with one another, allowing developers to access data and build new features and functionality.
Like all other technology companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter, Reddit has a public API that programmers can sign up for and use after agreeing to certain terms and conditions.
Until now, Reddit has offered free access to its API. However, on April 18, the company announced that it was updating its API terms to include charging developers for API access – a change that will take effect on July 1, 2023.
Reddit’s decision comes months after Twitter announced that it was suspending all third-party apps, forcing people to use the platform’s official app and website.
In an April Interview with the New York Times, Reddit’s CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said that “more than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation”.
“Crawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with,” Huffman went on to say.
Reddit provides a vast amount of text from various communities, making it valuable for building AI (artificial intelligence) language models such as ChatGPT and Bard.
What do the changes mean for Reddit’s third-party apps?
Reddit has a large community of third-party application developers. These apps offer users extra features and customisations beyond those available on the official Reddit app or website.
Under the new terms, applications with fewer than 100 queries per minute will remain free. These, according to Huffman, account for more than 90 percent of current applications.
Third-party apps with higher API requests will be charged $0.24 for every 1,000 requests.
One of the most popular third-party apps shutting down is Apollo, the popular iPhone and iPad app best known for its slick user interface and custom themes.
According to Christian Selig, creator of the Apollo app, the new pricing would cost him $20m per year to continue operating based on the current rate of seven billion monthly requests.
On June 8, Selig tweeted that Apollo will close down on June 30, saying “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”
Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years. ❤️ https://t.co/HOJaLMW8fx
— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) June 8, 2023
Other big-name apps including Reddit is Fun, Sync and Reddplant have also announced that they will be shutting down due to the fees.
Following an uproar among users, Huffman, who goes by u/spez, defended the changes in an action-packed “Ask Me Anything” open forum on Friday. He said, “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”
Huffman added that “non-commercial, accessibility-focused apps and tools will continue to have free access.”
Despite widespread backlash, Huffman confirmed the company has no plans to revise its coming API changes.
Which subreddits will go dark?
Nearly 7,000 subreddits, some with tens of millions of subscribers, will be switched to private by their moderators starting on June 12. Some of the biggest communities that are going dark include:
- r/funny (49 million subscribers)
- r/gaming (37 million)
- r/aww (34 million)
- r/todayilearned (31 million)
- r/Pics (30 million)
- r/Videos (26 million)
- r/Music (23 million)
- r/food (23 million)
- r/Art (22 million)
- r/gadgets (21 million)
- r/sports (20 million)
Thousands of other subreddits have also signed up to participate in the protests.
