The version of Reddit we’ll see over the next few days may be a shell of itself. More than 100 subreddits have already gone dark, and thousands more plan to follow in protest of Reddit’s coming API changes, according to the website Reddark, which is tracking the protests, The Verge reported.
The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. Frustration was already brewing in the community as developers began reacting to the changes this week, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days have only escalated the community’s pushback.
The Verge also reported that most of the subreddits have pledged to go private – preventing outside access – for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely. According to this post on r/ModCoord, protests will end when Reddit addresses issues with the API, improves accessibility for blind people, and creates “parity in access to NSFW content.”
The Guardian reported that some of the largest communities on Reddit will lock their doors in protest at the social news site’s decision to try and monetise access to its data.
More than 3,000 subreddits have joined the protest, and will go “private” on Monday, preventing anyone outside the community from seeing their posts.
According to The Guardian, forums such as r/todayilearned, r/funny and r/gaming, with more than 30 million subscribers apiece, have signed up to join the campaign, while others with 1 million plus members, including r/iPhone and r/unexpected, have already closed their doors in anticipation of the strike.
The protest is over a set of forthcoming changes to the site’s “API”, which lets other companies use reddit data in their own products and services.
The changes will introduce huge charges for “premium access”, effectively killing off popular third-party Reddit apps such as Apollo, which let users browse the site with a customizable interface.
Reddark appears to be keeping track of subreddits that are going dark or read-only on June 12th and after. You can scroll through Reddark to see which ones are going dark. Above the list of subreddits, it says “5497/7047 subreddits are currently dark.”
Mashable reported that CEO and co-founder of Reddit Steve Huffman stated: “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.”
Personally, I am in favor of the Reddark protest. The CEO appears to be interested in selling the data created by Reddit users, and wants to price-out the app makers. Thousands of subreddits going dark is a good way to do a protest. If no one posts anything on Reddit, the CEO won’t get any new data to steal and sell.