Reddit’s massive ‘blackout’ protest, explained

Reddit users are revolting en masse against planned changes to the platform’s API. The social media site experienced an outage on Monday morning, as more than 7,600 subreddits — including some of the largest gaming-related subreddits — went dark in protest of changes to third-party API pricing, just days after a disastrous AMA with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Some subreddits have stopped accepting posts and edits.

This blackout is slated to run from June 12 to June 14, but some mods and communities are planning to continue protesting until “the issue is adequately addressed,” according to the website Save 3rd Party Apps. That site is also tracking the blackout status of Reddit’s 250 most-followed subreddits.

Why do Redditors protest?

Reddit released an update to the API on April 18. This included a new paid-for model. It would require “premium access for third parties who require additional capabilities and higher usage limits,” according to the announcement.

Last week, developers of a number of third-party apps — including Apollo and Reddit Is Fun — said that the new API pricing would make it unaffordable for those apps to continue working on Reddit. BaconReader is another popular Reddit Reader app that would be likely affected. A number of users have compared this change to Twitter’s recent move to charge for “premium” third-party API access.

Christian Selig (the creator of Apollo, a Reddit app available on iOS) has announced that the app will be closed on 30 June due to the changes in API pricing. In a long post on the subreddit that now boasts more than 800,000.000 members, he announced his decision. In the blog post, Selig outlined how this new API change makes the creation and maintenance of apps impossible.

Selig stated on Reddit, Twitter and other social media sites that $20 million per year would be needed to maintain the app. Apollo received 7 billion API calls last month according to The Verge.

The outrage of users grew when CEO Steve Huffman posted under the username u/spez and participated in an AMA Friday. The post explains the reasoning and rationale behind the change. At the end of the post, Huffman wrote, “I will be sticking around to answer questions along with other admins. We know answers are tough to find, so we’re switching the default sort to Q&A mode.”

Many of the most popular comments are not answered. Some responses were not clarified. In one thread, Huffman wrote about Selig: “His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place — saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call — to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.” Selig responded: “Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.”

Later, Huffman shared that non-commercial and accessibility-focused apps would continue to have free access to Reddit, to which another user responded, “answer an actual question you fucking coward.”

Polygon has reached out to Reddit’s press contact email address for comment on the API pricing and the protest and will update this article when we receive a response.

How many subreddits participate in the blackout

As of this writing, more than 7,600 Reddit subreddits have participated in the blackout. A Twitch stream called “reddark_247” is keeping track of participation in real time. A number of subreddits, such as r/funny and r/music are taking part, along with r/aww.

Subreddits related to gaming accounted for a large portion of participants, and the number of subreddits represented some of the biggest video game forums available on the Internet. There is also r/gaming which boasts more than 36 million members. Also, there are subreddits dedicated to popular games and publishers, such as r/Zelda and r/Nintendo.

Reddit went down Monday morning due to the high number of blackouts. Redditstatus.com reports that the outage began around 8 am PDT, and continued for about two and half hours.

Selig expressed his gratitude to the community on Monday in the r/apolloapp Subreddit for taking part in the Blackout. Polygon has contacted Selig to get his comment. We will update this story if Selig responds.

What does it mean to call a Subreddit a Private Community?

A subreddit “blackout” means the mods have set the sub to private. Subreddits that are set to private make the pages inaccessible even for community members. The pages can only be viewed by mods or community members that have approved them.

When you pull up a subreddit that’s been set to private, a pop-up will note that it’s a private community. The pop-ups include a place for some kind of explanation. Polygon’s subreddits have all included blurbs which explain the protest is against API pricing changes. The r/zelda subreddit’s private community note, for example, explains that mods chose to go dark following a community vote, and it directs fans to gather on Discord instead.

Reddit Image via Polygon

Some of the subreddits that haven’t been set to private are protesting in other ways. On r/photoshopbattles — where users normally share funny photoshops based on a prompt image — users are posting black squares only in protest. Mods on r/AmITheAsshole have disabled the ability to post new messages and reply. This popular sub for etiquette discussion and sharing stories has been locked by moderators. In order to give the topic the maximum visibility, users are directed towards a post that has been pinned about the blackout.

A pinned post on r/games says the subreddit “tries to distance itself from meta incidents spanning the entire site.” It also cited the Ubisoft and Capcom video game showcases as a reason for staying live. However, the subreddit “will enter a ‘restricted mode’” as of Monday that will, for example, “have a sticky to raise awareness about the ongoing shutdown,” the post said.