Reddit says protesting communities crashed the site
Major subreddits are protesting against Reddit's plan to charge third-party apps.
Major subreddits are protesting against Reddit's plan to charge third-party apps.
Although the website resumed functioning almost two hours after early reports of an outage, a coalition of Reddit moderators and users continue to engage in a standoff with the company on Monday and Tuesday. Greg Doherty / Variety via Getty Images file
June 12, 2023,
By Khadijah Khogeer
The popular online forum Reddit experienced outages hours after thousands of Reddit communities launched a protest against its policy to charge third-party apps for data access.
“A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” Reddit said in a statement to NBC News.
During an outage Monday morning, the website’s front page showed empty Reddit posts with the message: “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic.” Users were unable to load posts on it until the platform resumed working again.
The #RedditBlackout hashtag started trending on Twitter after the blackout began, with more than 4,238 tweets associated with the term as of Monday. Reddit was trending with more than 112,000 searches on the social media platform. Twitter users as early as 9 a.m. noticed that Reddit was experiencing technical issues. One user’s tweet about the Reddit outage received more than 80,000 views within an hour. “Nice to see even Reddit itself getting in on the Reddit Blackout today,” the user wrote.
June 12, 2023,
By Khadijah Khogeer
The popular online forum Reddit experienced outages hours after thousands of Reddit communities launched a protest against its policy to charge third-party apps for data access.
“A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” Reddit said in a statement to NBC News.
During an outage Monday morning, the website’s front page showed empty Reddit posts with the message: “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic.” Users were unable to load posts on it until the platform resumed working again.
The #RedditBlackout hashtag started trending on Twitter after the blackout began, with more than 4,238 tweets associated with the term as of Monday. Reddit was trending with more than 112,000 searches on the social media platform. Twitter users as early as 9 a.m. noticed that Reddit was experiencing technical issues. One user’s tweet about the Reddit outage received more than 80,000 views within an hour. “Nice to see even Reddit itself getting in on the Reddit Blackout today,” the user wrote.
Although the website resumed functioning almost two hours after the early reports of an outage, a coalition of Reddit moderators and users continue to engage in a standoff with the company Monday and Tuesday.
More than 7,808 unique subreddits planned to participate in the blackout starting Monday, with the largest being r/funny, a community with more than 40 million users, according to an index by r/ModCoor. Around 7,260 subreddits are private as of Monday afternoon, according to a real-time stream of the protest on Twitch.
Reddit communities are going dark in response to the company’s intent to charge third-party developers to access its application programming interface (API). Reddit announced it would update its API terms in April.
The third-party app Apollo said it intends to shut June 30, after its creator, Christian Selig, said in a Reddit post that new terms would cost him “over $20 million per year.” He said Reddit would charge developers $12,000 for 50 million API requests.
Reddit’s API pricing changes follow a similar move by Twitter in March to start charging developers for access to its API. The social media platform said it would scrap free access to Twitter API in February.
More than 7,808 unique subreddits planned to participate in the blackout starting Monday, with the largest being r/funny, a community with more than 40 million users, according to an index by r/ModCoor. Around 7,260 subreddits are private as of Monday afternoon, according to a real-time stream of the protest on Twitch.
Reddit communities are going dark in response to the company’s intent to charge third-party developers to access its application programming interface (API). Reddit announced it would update its API terms in April.
The third-party app Apollo said it intends to shut June 30, after its creator, Christian Selig, said in a Reddit post that new terms would cost him “over $20 million per year.” He said Reddit would charge developers $12,000 for 50 million API requests.
Reddit’s API pricing changes follow a similar move by Twitter in March to start charging developers for access to its API. The social media platform said it would scrap free access to Twitter API in February.
BY REBECCA KLAR -
THE HILL 06/12/23
Communities on the online message board Reddit are “going dark” to protest new fees the site is charging third-party developers.
Some sections of the site are being set to private for 48 hours as part of the protest, which started Monday, meaning some of the largest communities on Reddit won’t be publicly viewable during the protest.
The protest came after third-party developers that use Reddit said they would be shutting down over new fees to Reddit’s API, or application programming interface. For example, the creator of the Reddit app Apollo, which aims to help users navigate the platform faster, said it will shut down at the end of June because Reddit’s changes have “unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”
Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said the platform is in contact with a “number of communities to clarify any confusion around our Data API Terms.”
“Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved; we spend multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees and Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps. Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs,” Rathschmidt wrote in an email summarizing what was shared with the community of developers.
He added that the “vast majority of API users” won’t have to pay for access, and not all third-party app usage requires paid access.
In response to the protest, Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman hosted an “AMA,” or “ask me anything,” session on the site recently and told users, “We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, at times, going private. We are all responsible for ensuring Reddit provides an open accessible place for people to find community and belonging.”
The protest also limited access to the entirety of Reddit.
According to DownDetector, Reddit outages peaked around 10:30 a.m. and the platform appeared to be running again within an hour.
Rathschmidt said in response to the outages that “a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue.”
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