Monday, June 12th 2023
Reddit Communities Go Private in Protest Over Policy Adjustments
Thousands of dicussion communities on Reddit have now shut doors to public access—warning signs started to appear online over past weeks, with community leaders drumming up support for a protest against the social news site's policy changes, including a strategy to monetize access to a vast pool of user data. For example the highly popular r/hardware subreddit is now "a private community"—unregistered users are greeted with a succinct message on the front page: "This subreddit is temporarily closed in protest of Reddit killing third party apps, see /r/ModCoord and /r/Save3rdPartyApps for more information." News sites are reporting that close to a total of 3500 subreddits have joined the "blackout" effort. According to the BBC this includes "five of the 10 most popular communities on the site - r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music, r/todayilearned and r/pics - which each have memberships of more than 30 million people."
A group message was shared by a moderation collective last week: "On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love." A moderator (speaking to the BBC anonymously) said that the protest will be effective due to "strength in numbers," which will presumably grab the attention of Reddit's executive team.
They explained the though process behind the virtual march: "If it was a single subreddit going private, Reddit may intervene. But if it's half the entire website, then you feel a lot more pressured. This is a completely volunteer position, we don't receive any financial compensation, and despite that, we do like to take it quite seriously. Our entire community is supporting us against this change...It feels good to be able to have the power to say: 'We will not continue to moderate our communities if you push these changes through...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?"
Reddit's policy changes will introduce sizable charges for "premium access," which effectively kill off the need for popular third-party Reddit applications - such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet - that grant users the ability to browse the site via a customizable interface. Apollo developer Christian Selig claimed last week that the new premium model could result in him having to shell out $20 million to keep his app going: "Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work." He has since outlined plans to shutter the service: "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."
Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman commented on the subject of protests last Friday—his platform "needs to be a self-sustaining business" and he informed critics: "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." A Reddit spokesperson also proposed to the BBC that Apollo was "notably less efficient" when compared to rival third-party interfaces. Part of the defense statement outlines that the firm spends "multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees" and reiterates Huffman's view that Reddit "needs to be fairly paid" for its services and continued support of third-party apps: "Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs." Reddit has outlined policies in the past where external application developers would not be charged, but the spokesperson has declared that a few of them will require paid access from now on.
Sources:
BBC News, Guardian UK, Reuters
A group message was shared by a moderation collective last week: "On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love." A moderator (speaking to the BBC anonymously) said that the protest will be effective due to "strength in numbers," which will presumably grab the attention of Reddit's executive team.
Reddit's policy changes will introduce sizable charges for "premium access," which effectively kill off the need for popular third-party Reddit applications - such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet - that grant users the ability to browse the site via a customizable interface. Apollo developer Christian Selig claimed last week that the new premium model could result in him having to shell out $20 million to keep his app going: "Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work." He has since outlined plans to shutter the service: "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."
Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman commented on the subject of protests last Friday—his platform "needs to be a self-sustaining business" and he informed critics: "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." A Reddit spokesperson also proposed to the BBC that Apollo was "notably less efficient" when compared to rival third-party interfaces. Part of the defense statement outlines that the firm spends "multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees" and reiterates Huffman's view that Reddit "needs to be fairly paid" for its services and continued support of third-party apps: "Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs." Reddit has outlined policies in the past where external application developers would not be charged, but the spokesperson has declared that a few of them will require paid access from now on.
68 Comments on Reddit Communities Go Private in Protest Over Policy Adjustments
That gameplan of profiting off 3rd party apps better than their own is backfiring hard
For desktop combination of old reddit and reddit enhancement suite.
Phone, diode app, but might try out that apollo app as never heard of it until now.
- random communities shutting down in protest
- people can’t use third party apps
I really tried to be on people’s side but this just isn’t a big deal to me, or the average user.
To me it really just seems like the third party app developers that already steal your data pouting because they have to buy it now.
Reddit may survive this but I don't see it being what it once was if they don't cave.
I will just keep going to the site and reading all my shit. It all still works for me. Good for Reddit.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"The Reddit Data API was ostensibly released to help developers build apps and services for Reddit users by allowing access to posts and other info hosted on Reddit. It's also used by academics, researchers and "social listening tools" to get access to Reddit data, the company said, but some people are using it excessively.
While not naming companies like Google and OpenAI directly, Reddit CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman told The New York Times in an interview that Reddit "is a home for authentic conversation" online, and as such "the Reddit corpus of data is really valuable," to third parties.
"Crawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with," Huffman opined. "It's a good time for us to tighten things up. We think that's fair."
Hello LLM's, no free lunch.
Certainly that happens but that is not the issue most are concerned with at all.
I'll be clear I barely use reddit anymore since the only subreddit that interested me was banned for dubious reasons, but as a former mod of said subreddit, I know the arguments are valid.
I'm also saying their argument makes no sense against half the pricing choices on the API.
On mobile reddit is unusable without an app, the default website is absolutely horrific.
For specific communities on reddit, personal finance for example, it's an advantage to have more permanent threads; you may not get the answer right away, but eventually someone is likely to see it and respond. But what this change will accomplish is that the people who care are just going to leave, and guess what: the people who care are 99% of the reason anyone visits that awful, astroturfed website. The people who care are the ones answering questions and making reddit useful; drive them off and you don't have reddit anymore, you just have political propaganda and bot posts.
reddark.untone.uk/
Look, reddit has issues but I mean, come on, you can't be serious.
Apollo dev said he makes $500,000 from subscriptions, and was giving $0 to Reddit.
That is not fair, a API does cost to build and upkeep and all the extra stuff.
What Reddit has done is put a price tag that is a bit higher than other companies charge (Google / AWS / Microsoft and so on).
Though, they do say it still is free for open source apps or apps that don't charge people money, and that seems pretty fair does it not?
Those devs aren't making money, so Reddit gives them a pass.
It is only the 3rd party apps that are commercial (for profit) is where this is targeted, and yes, those 3rd party people SHOULD pay something for Reddit's API usage
The only question is, how much should they pay, and that is the part both sides should get together on and talk about it.
Oh, and also, 7K subreddits out of 3,125,000 total subreddits is a joke, barely a blip.
I think Reddit's mobile app is trash, and their new layout on the desktop is also trash, they should hire one of those 3rd party people to fix it, otherwise, when old.reddit goes down, then adios.
As you said there needs to be an agreeable number agreed on by both parties, % share aka twitch model might be the way forward.