The voluntary blackouts, which restrict groups’ content from being publicly visible, affect Reddit’s largest online communities, including popular groups devoted to music, history, sports, and video games. The protests include more than two dozen subreddits with at least 10 million subscribers, as well as thousands of smaller networks.
Now, however, Reddit is seeking large payments from app makers to maintain that same level of access through its application programming interface , in a move apparently aimed at better monetizing Reddit users. Last week Christian Selig, developer of the popular Apollo app, said Reddit wanted to charge him $20 million a year to keep his app running. He later said he has no choice but to close down the app.
Reddit’s defenders, including some users, have said it is Reddit’s right to set its own prices for API access, and that it is a business entitled to control how users access the data on the platform it provides. Some users have said they were not even aware it is possible to access Reddit from third-party apps.
Now Reddit faces a similar revolt, one that may prove even more effective in light of its greater reliance on community members for the site’s basic upkeep. For Reddit’s developers and moderators, however, the platform’s value derives not just from the company’s operation of the platform but also in the user-led moderation of the site’s countless forums, as well as the various tools and features that others have created to make Reddit more useable — for example, for the blind and visually impaired.