Reddit API charges spark community outrage, days-long blackout

More than 6,000 Reddit communities person gone acheronian and are restricting entree to protestation the changes to the company's developer billing structure, opening Monday morning.

The blackout comes aft Reddit told developers that it would statesman to complaint thousands of dollars for entree to thing called an exertion programming interface, oregon API.

"Don't Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!" a station announcing the blackout said. The organizers encouraged users to constitute complaints and boycott the platform. They besides enumerated a database of demands, with resolving the API issues arsenic apical priority.

Among the concerns for the blackout organizers is allowing third-party apps to tally advertizing for the third-party developer's benefit.

Reddit, which has reportedly been mulling an IPO for years, draws the lion's stock of its gross from advertising. But the institution has barred third-party apps from moving their ain ads oregon benefitting from Reddit's advertizing platform, and coupled with the projected API pricing, poses a important hazard to continued third-party developers, the blackout organizers person said.

Reddit is bulk owned by Advance Publications, the genitor institution of Condé Nast and a large shareholder in Charter Communications and Warner Bros. Discovery.

The fashionable third-party Reddit app Apollo would person been 1 of the hardest-hit by Reddit's billing change, which came aft Twitter proprietor Elon Musk instituted comparable practices astatine the societal media network.

Developers usage APIs to pass straight with a website's bundle oregon infrastructure, and they let Reddit's third-party developer ecosystem to physique applications and services for users.

Christian Selig, Apollo's developer, said the alteration would outgo him $20 cardinal annually, forcing him to sunset Apollo by the extremity of June, the developer said successful a Reddit post.

The moderators of implicit 6,600 subreddits — specialized communities that run connected Reddit — person taken their communities into backstage oregon restricted entree arsenic of Monday morning, according to a Twitch stream tracking the blackout. Communities dedicated to humor, gaming and gaming are among those participating successful the blackout, denying entree to hundreds of millions of "Redditors" successful protest.