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
The content is exclusively the work of the users, they use the users data to sell and even serve the users ads. These companies should pay us to be on their platforms
No users, no reddit. I hope some alternative comes along, because reddit is a shadow of what it was in the past.
If it was up to me we'd go back to more tighter-knit, focused communities like TechPowerUp and the forums of old. I doubt that'll happen, but one less social media platform polluting the public sphere is a positive.
It's not like reddit is not turning a profit, they are making money, they just want to make more because capitalism. Yes, API calls cost money and apps are willing to pay a reasonable ammount, what happens is that they went the way of twitter - after saying they wouldn't - and just set an unreasable value by a lot.I think that's won't be as big an issue, though it's easier if a mobile app can use the API directly, it's also frequent for mobile apps to just wrap the web front end.That makes perfect sense, the problem is the values involved. Apollo wouldn't need to pay just 500k$ - for building a proper app that reddit wasn't interested in doing mind you - they would need to pay something like 20 million! After putting in the work to build something that allows for better moderation of reddit that is a main benefit for **ding ding ding** reddit itself. There needing to be some profit sharing is totally understandable but reddit is not doing that, they just decided to put 3rd party apps out of business clear and simple without even offering an alternative solution (not that just sherlocking the work of 3rd party apps would be really acceptable but it would be something!)I don't particularly disagree but there are several advantages to having a one stop shop for everything, it's much easier to find information or to discover new things.
There have been so many old sites that had huge communities die off and lots of great information was lost because of a variety of things, but it still boils down to, everyone needs to make $ to stay alive, nothing is really free, no matter where you live
Maybe Usenet and the old 'news groups' can make a comeback, but, the problem is more and more ISPs have dropped them and there is only paid access now
I also find that more focused forums tend to allow for less inflammatory discussion (less, not none ;) ). The smaller scope means everyone tends to know everyone and treat them like humans. It's not perfect, but it's far more preferable to reddit and Twitter where opponents dig up dirt and publicly shame each other in attempt to "gotcha" the "enemy" because they're just another face in the crowd.
I'm skeptical of whether or not the broader userbase of the subreddits, especially the larger ones, actually supports this action, especially for any prolonged period of time. If not I would wonder if reddit ultimately exercises control and simply prunes moderators.
This to me seems like another situation in which the vast majority of people are being dragged into an issue that they don't actually care about.
Again, we're going back to the fact that Reddit's own app is a hot steaming pile of dog shit.
Does anyone remember Alien Blue? Reddit bought it and took what was one of the best Reddit apps at the time and threw it into the woodchipper. What came out is what the Reddit app is today. A hot steaming pile of... well, you get it.
They made this protest, reddit is full of people and subreddits, hard to kill the beast
Subreddits are also a business for the ones managing them, if the people are there, they will be there. If the subreddits are there people will be there. It's the chicken and the egg thing
And there is even the google thing, so many searches end there.