Reddit API protest: 80 % of top forums now online, Steve Huffman says platform never intended to support third-party apps

A blackout was organised from June 12 by developers in protest of API charging announced by Reddit.

The Reddit app icon is seen on a smartphone on Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. More than 8,000 subreddits, or Reddit communities, have gone dark as of Tuesday, June 13, in protest of upcoming API changes, which include a controversial policy that will charge some third-party apps for continued use. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

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Days after the protest and blackout on Reddit Inc, the company said that communities on its platform were operating normally. The company in its official blog said that as of June 15, over 80 per cent of its top 5,000 communities were now operational and that the company expects them to continue the same way.

Meanwhile, Reddark, a website that has been tracking the blackout on Reddit also confirmed that over 5,000 subreddits were limiting access to their content. This is lower than the nearly 9,000 forums that had vowed to go dark in protest from June 12.

Even as thousands of Reddit communities continue to be in the dark as a mark of the protest, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said that some of the third-party apps were not adding much value to the platform. Huffman said so in an interview with The Verge.

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Huffman told the publication that a vast majority of the users of the API – not third-party apps like Apollo – and other 98 per cent of them make tools, bots, and enhancements to the platform. He asserted that Reddit was never designed to support third-party apps. He said that he allowed these apps to exist, adding that he should not be blamed for the same as he once advocated for them.

The CEO highlighted the issues with the third-party apps that were building a business of their own via Reddit. “I didn’t know — and this is my fault — the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities,” he was quoted as saying by the publication.

Also Read | Over 300 subreddits with millions of users to go dark indefinitely after Reddit CEO’s internal memo goes public

The protest has been in the works for weeks after the platform announced in April that it would be charging third parties for accessing its APIs. API or application programming interface is a means for multiple computer programs to communicate with each other. Third-party apps have been using Reddit’s free API to gather data or build apps.

However, now Reddit is proposing to charge developers who may require higher usage limits. Earlier some of the popular apps such as Apollo and RIF announced that they will shut down due to the new charges. Organisers of the blackout which began on June 12 said that the new changes threaten to eliminate ways of customising the platform.

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