Why are subreddits going dark?

Thousands of Reddit forums will go dark Monday to protest how the social media platform is being run, an action that will include popular subreddits such as r/Music, r/DIY, and r/collegebasketball. Specifically, the groups are upset by the decision to start charging some third-party apps for access to the company’s API. 

An API (application programming interface) allows a third-party app to communicate with Reddit and display information from the site. Just like with many social media platforms, the everyday user experience on Reddit is critical to the functionality of those apps.

The issue lies less in the fact that Reddit plans to charge developers and more in the reportedly exorbitant fees that those developers are being charged. One app developer, Apollo, said in a Reddit post last week that to support the company’s seven billion requests each month, it would need to pay Reddit $1.7 million a month, or $20 million each year.

“Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month,” the developer wrote. 

Pricing information also was only made available for developers on June 1 and goes into effect on July 1—giving companies, many of which have accessed the company’s API for over a decade, only 30 days to make any adjustments to their apps. The result is that a large number of third-party apps are being forced to shut down by June 30 before the change takes place.

On Monday, June 12, thousands of subreddits on the site plan to go dark in protest of the change, to raise awareness of the issue among other Reddit users, and ultimately put pressure on Reddit—which relies on those subs and their moderators—to reconsider the change. In some cases, those subreddits will be prohibiting new posts; and in others, the entire subreddit will be inaccessible.

Participating subs include those with over 30 million subscribers, such as R/Gaming and R/todayilearned, as well as smaller subreddits, such as r/Tattoos and r/Android. The protest is expected to last through June 14, though it could continue or take other forms if Reddit doesn’t take a step back from the decision.

For now, it seems like the company is standing by the change, as indicated by a statement to Fast Company last week. In a Reddit AMA discussion on Friday, CEO Steve Huffman said, “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.” However, he also indicated the company was willing to work with companies that might find the change burdensome.

The company has already made a few concessions, notably making an exception for accessibility apps.

In late 2021, Reddit filed confidentially to go public, but the tech landscape has changed dramatically since then, with many of the largest tech firms seeing multiple rounds of layoffs and significant cost cutting. Reddit itself is said to be cutting about 5% of its staff.