Reddit Communities Protest New Policy to Charge for API

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Many Subreddits went dark this week in protest of a new Reddit policy that will charge some for access to its Application Programming Interface.

The Details: In efforts to become profitable and control the user experience, the online forum website plans to charge high-usage third-party developers. As a result, many popular Subreddits have become private in protest, aiming to deter the company’s decision, which does not appear to be changing course.

For Context: API allows users to customize the way information is presented from the source. Third-party services aim to customize the user experience in ways like improving accessibility or removing advertisements – one of Reddit’s key forms of revenue. Popular ones include Reddit Is Fun, and Apollo, which will both be shutting down on June 30. Twitter announced a similar policy in late March.

Key Quotes: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said, “Running a product like Reddit is expensive. I would like to be a self-sustaining company — it means we’re defensible... and that we can endure into the future. So that’s what we’re working towards.”

How The Media Covered It: The news was most widely covered by Left-rated sources. Fox News (Right bias) provided a significant portion of Huffman’s comments, and ABC News (Lean Left bias) also presented input from Huffman. Wired (Center bias) presented little of Huffman’s perspective, and said the move is driven by Reddit’s ambitions to become “more profitable,” however Forbes (Center bias) says Reddit is not profitable.

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Thousands of Reddit discussion forums have gone dark this week to protest a new policy that will charge some third-party apps to access data on the site, leading to worries about content moderation and accessibility.

“Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself)," multiple subreddits wrote in posts seen on the platform's homepage this week.

The new fees are part of broader changes to Reddit's API, or application programming interface, that the company announced recently.

It's pretty easy to piss people off on Reddit. Less so to piss off seemingly everyone on the platform.

Still, Reddit’s management has succeeded in doing just that as it weathers protests over its decision to charge for access to its API. That ruling risks putting the company in a death spiral as users revolt, the most dedicated community caretakers quit, and the vibrant discussions move to other platforms.

A number of popular subreddits restricted users from accessing information from June 12-14 as a form of protest against Reddit's new policies that they say are severely hampering third-party apps. 

A subreddit is a topic-specific community on the website Reddit. 

Subreddits range from broad topics such as "r/WorldNews" to more niche interests, such as specific sports teams, locations or hobbies.