Large Reddit communities are going into the dark to protest threats to third-party apps

by Janice Allen
0 comments

Some of Reddit’s largest communities, including r/videos, r/reaction gifs, r/aardpornAnd r/lifeprotips intend to set themselves to private on June 12 new prices for third-party app developers to access the site’s APIs. Setting a subreddit to private, also known as “going dark,” means that participating communities are inaccessible to the general public while the planned 48-hour protest takes place.

Like a Reddit post on the protest, which has since been posted on several participating subreddits, explains:

On June 12, many subreddits will go dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will disappear permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, as many moderators are unable to do their job 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 continue doing what we love.

The protest comes after the developers of several third-party Reddit apps said the future of their services is threatened by the company’s new pricing. The developer behind Apollo, for example, said that at the current rate of 7 billion requests per month, it would have to pay $1.7 million to access Reddit’s API, or $20 million per year. “I don’t see how these prices are based on reality or are anything but reasonable,” developer Christian Selig wrote. “I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or even know how to take it off a credit card.”

However, one of the Reddit contributors has argued that the new API costs should be affordable if third-party apps are efficient with the API calls they make. “Our price is $0.24 per 1000 API calls, which equates to <$1.00 per user per month for a moderately managed app," They wrote. “Apollo as an app is less efficient than its peers and has been excessive at times – probably because it was free to be that way.”

But the developers behind other third-party Reddit apps have raised similar concerns. Reddit is nicely said it would have to pay an amount “in the same ballpark” as Apollo to continue operating and that it “earns nowhere near this number”. The developer behind Narwhal said it “dead in 30 daysas a result of the allegations.

The potential for third-party apps to shut down is particularly problematic for subreddit moderators, who say they often rely on these tools to manage their communities. “In many cases, these apps offer superior mod tools, customization, streamlined interfaces, and other quality of life improvements that the official app doesn’t,” wrote moderator BuckRowdy in an open letter that has since been co-signed by the moderators of numerous other subreddits. “The potential loss of these services due to the price change would have a significant impact on our ability to moderate efficiently.”

In addition to the new API pricing, the open letter also raises concerns about the ability of third-party apps to serve ads (a major source of revenue), and new restrictions that would prevent NSFW (not safe for work) content from being made available through the API.

You may also like

All Right Reserved Businesskinda.com