Decoding the Reddit protests: Why subreddits went private from June 12

Here is why nearly 3,500 subreddits on Reddit will be inaccessible starting June 12.

Here is why moderators of subreddits on Reddit are protesting. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)

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Update: Many users faced issues on Reddit on Monday due to the ongoing Reddit Blackout protest by third-party app developers and subreddit moderators. A significant number of subreddits went private on June 12, causing stability issues on the platform, and the company is currently said to be working on resolving these issues. The original article published earlier follows.

Thousands of “subreddits,” or communities, on the social network Reddit are set to become inaccessible on Monday, June 12 as moderators protest how the company is running the site and making it difficult for third party applications by charging for access to the Reddit API. Here is what you need to know about the meltdown happening at the major social media platform.

Unlike most other social networks, users follow subreddits on Reddit instead of following other users. A “subreddit” refers to a particular community on Reddit where users gather to create posts and comments to discuss a particular topic or subject. There are a wide variety of subreddits, everything from r/aww, where users post cute things like puppies, kittens and babies to r/BuyItForLife, where users discuss practical and durable goods to buy.

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What went wrong at Reddit

A week ago, Christian Selig, the developer of the popular Apollo app on iOS for Reddit posted on r/apolloapp that he had a discussion with Reddit where he found out that the app will have to pay Reddit $20 million dollars a year to keep running the way it does.

“Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month,” wrote Selig in the post.

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Selig compared this to Twitter’s outrageous pricing for its API, even though, interestingly, Reddit’s new pricing means it will only charge a quarter of what Twitter will cost per request. But that goes to highlight how much more outrageous Twitter’s new API pricing is rather than pointing towards how reasonable Reddit is. It isn’t.

📣 Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing. Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as-is.
by u/iamthatis in apolloapp

https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js

Selig also compared the $12,000 per 50 million requests pricing to the image and media hosting site Imgur. He said that he pays Imgur only $166 for the same 50 million API calls.

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The protest

Its community and anonymity-centred user experience means that Reddit is more dependent on community moderators than any other platform. Known on the site as “mods,” these moderators voluntarily spend a part of their day making sure that irrelevant, illegal and offensive content does not make its way to different subreddits.

In a way, they are rewarded for this time they spend by Reddit hosting a community space for them for free, where they can discuss and inform themselves about the subjects that interest them.

But many of these moderators who manage the subreddits have been rubbed wrong by Reddit’s actions, which many of them find greedy. To protest the social network’s actions, the moderators of nearly 3,500 subreddits plan to take those subs private between June 12 and June 14, meaning that they will not be accessible to users who are not members. This includes subs like r/pics and r/aww, both of which have over 30 million members each.

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“If it was a single subreddit going private, Reddit may intervene. This is a completely volunteer position, we don’t receive any financial compensation, and despite that, we do like to take it quite seriously.If it’s almost the entire website, would they destroy what they’ve built up in all these communities, just to push through this highly unpopular change that both the mods and users of Reddit are overwhelmingly against?,” said a moderator of a major subreddit to BBC.

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Reddit CEO’s response

More than a week after Selig’s post about the outrageous Reddit API pricing, he made another post on the Apollo app subreddit where he announced that the app would be shutting down permanently on June 30.

📣 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. ❤️
by u/iamthatis in apolloapp

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman made allegations that Selig was blackmailing the company, according to the latest post by Selig. Based on Selig’s interpretation of the situation, this was a misinterpretation by a Reddit executive when Selig asked them why Reddit doesn’t just outright buy Apollo if they think it is costing Reddit $20 million a year.

In an AMA (Ask me Anything) on the Reddit subreddit, Huffman doubled down the API pricing and even doubled down on the accusations against Selig, according to TechCrunch.

Addressing the community about changes to our API
by u/spez in reddit

Of course, these developments are coming as the company is cutting about 5 per cent of its workforce and reducing its hiring plans as Bloomberg reports. This means that the forum operator will eliminate more than 90 full-time roles from its total 2,000 employees. Its hiring plans will reduce from 300 previously down to 100 new roles.