Opinion Why and how are Redditors protesting the app

Unlike other popular social media platforms, Reddit is forum centric, where users can join communities of their interests, and interact with content posted by users by upvoting/downvoting (the Reddit equivalent of likes and dislikes) or commenting. Users can also create their own subreddits.

Apart from some Reddit-wide community guidelines enforced by admins who are employees, subreddits have their own submission guidelines and rules agreed upon by the mods. Mods are volunteer users who maintain and enforce the subreddit guidelines. These volunteers put in countless hours of unpaid labour to enforce community guidelines and keep the platform running smoothly. This model has often helped Reddit be a little better at tackling the challenges that its counterparts like Facebook and Twitter struggle at. As an article by The Atlantic reveals, Reddit’s siloed topic-centric communities model could be one of the reasons that allowed the platform to efficiently deal with QAnon when other platforms were struggling. A 2022 study estimates that mods perform labour worth $3.4 million annually.

While Reddit provides basic moderation tools, more is needed. Mods rely on third-party applications and tools to effectively moderate and maintain their communities. Over the years, the community has developed and come to depend heavily on a vast array of such tools and applications that plug into the Reddit API.

On May 31, Reddit announced it would limit free access to its API, which allows one to request and access Reddit’s data. Until then, access to the Reddit API was open and free. Alongside moderation tools, unrestricted access to the API let a lot of third-party developers build client applications with better features, functionality and user experience, such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet or accessibility-focused applications like RedReader, Dystopia and RedditForBlind.

Starting July 1, Reddit will charge for access to its API. Apollo, one of the most popular alternate client applications with over 1.5 million monthly users, has decided to shut shop on June 30. With the new pricing, Apollo would have to pay an annual fee of over $20 million. And it’s not just Apollo. Three of the most popular applications are also shutting down. Apollo’s creator argued that while they’ve always favoured paying for API access, the current pricing is very unrealistic. Developers also complained about the 30-day notice period for the new pricing to come into effect, terming it as an unreasonably short time for them to work with.

r/TranscribersofReddit, a group of volunteers who transcribe media of over 100 popular subreddits decided to shut down, stating that the new API pricing structure will make it way more difficult to function. The community has also expressed a “lack of trust” in the platform and cited Reddit’s “clear disregard for accessibility” as another reason.

After facing backlash, Reddit admins have come back with an exemption for accessibility-focused applications like Dystopia and others as long as they choose not to monetise the applications. Reddit admins say they are also working on exemptions for moderation tools “if usage is legal, non-commercial and of reasonable scale”.

Statements by Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman, in public interviews and the Reddit AMA (which stands at zero upvotes) have only fueled further outrage. Huffman claims that the protesting users are a small minority. Reddit admins have also issued veiled threats to reopen their subreddits or be replaced. In some instances, they have also suspended mods behind the protests. Huffman stated that he is looking into changing the site’s rules to weaken the power mods hold.

Reddit has justified the changes to the API access as a move to control the flow of data that generative AI companies like Google, and OpenAI are using to train their large language models (LLMs). Huffman also said that limiting third-party access to the API will force users to use Reddit’s client application, making it easier for Reddit to control and show ads in user feeds. Therefore allowing it to monetise users more efficiently.

These pricing changes at Reddit come months after Twitter decided to start charging hefty amounts for accessing its API. In one of his interviews, Huffman also praised Musk’s actions in trying to make Twitter profitable. This is despite Musk’s actions not bringing it closer to breaking even, and in fact putting it in a death spiral — a slow collapse of the community as users leave the platform, something that Reddit also runs the risk of if it doesn’t get its act together.

Reddit needs to remind itself that it is built upon the unpaid labour and passion of thousands of volunteers and millions of users who deeply care about their communities. Bulldozing critical changes to its infrastructure while chasing profits, will end with the creators of its “valuable corpus of data”, the users, losing trust and moving away.

The writer is a Campaign and Advocacy Associate with the Internet Freedom Foundation