If you used Reddit about a week ago, you probably noticed that many subreddits (similar to forums) were set to private. This is because they were participating in a protest activity.
The cause of this protest was the API changes proposed by Reddit about two months ago. In simple terms, Reddit planned to make their API paid, similar to Twitter, and at a very high price. Reddit relies on their API even more than Twitter. Firstly, many third-party applications can provide a better experience than the official app and make the work of administrators easier. Secondly, there are many bots on the website that rely on the API. Additionally, some companies have used Reddit content as study material when training language models.
Instead of finding ways to collaborate with third-party app developers and improve the official app, Reddit intends to increase the price of the API to "kill" these competitors. One of the developers of a third-party app called Apollo shared his experience:
"After six weeks, they started discussing the pricing of the API. To quickly process the information, I quickly created software that allowed me to input prices and calculate monthly/yearly expenses, expenses for free users, and expenses for paid users.
They provided a pricing of $0.24 per 1000 API requests. I immediately inputted this data into my program and realized that it was similar to Twitter's outrageous price - $12,000. For my software, the monthly cost would be nearly $2 million or close to $20 million per year. This is not an exaggeration; I just calculated the seven billion API requests made on Apollo last month using this price. Can I lower this number? Given some time, of course I can, but it still shows how huge the fees Apollo will be charged in the future."
After facing such a situation, Apollo had to shut down its program on June 30th. It wasn't just Apollo that was heavily affected; various third-party apps and bots will also cease to exist. This led to a protest movement called Reddark, urging subreddit administrators to set their subreddits to private and participate in the protest.
Initially, Reddark planned to protest for only two days. However, if a protest has a fixed end date, it's similar to taking a break. So many subreddits decided to remain closed indefinitely. Finally, a few days ago, Reddit couldn't sit still anymore. One would think they might reflect on their website's flaws and make improvements. But no, they decided to forcefully open these subreddits and threatened administrators with removal if they didn't comply. Although Reddit's API changes were indeed difficult to accept, most users don't care about third-party apps or bots; they just want to browse the website and view their content. Therefore, this protest also faced criticism from many people.
Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, took a firm stance, stating that "Reddit never intended to support third-party apps." So, does this mean the protest is over? Of course not. After many subreddits were forcefully reopened, some administrators, known as "landlords," held votes to let users decide the future direction. As a result, many subreddits found unique ways to disrupt Reddit.
For example, r/memes now only allows medieval memes, and the titles must include words like "medieval" or "landlord." r/wellthatsucks took the word "sucks" literally and now only allows posts about vacuum cleaners. r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww only allow content related to John Oliver. In addition to these unique evolutions, some people came up with ideas like uploading 1GB snowflake videos to occupy the servers.
For a platform that relies on user-generated content to survive, trying to suppress user resistance will likely backfire.
Extensive Read (Watch):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2lticohwHqRoSdZ78YYg-V3U
https://reddark.untone.uk/
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763538/reddit-blackout-api-protest-mod-replacement-threat