More than 6,500 Reddit subreddits out of 7,000+ have announced that they will go private on June 12 in protest over the platform's intentions to charge third-party app developers for access to the site's API (Application Programming Interface). The protest is anticipated to last at least 48 hours, however, some groups have made it clear they plan to remain in the dark longer, reviewing their status at the end of each day..

"Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app," a post from the subreddit r/Save3rdPartyApps read.

Several popular including r/iPhone, r/aww, r/video, r/Futurology, r/LifeHacks, and r/bestof are said to go dark during the protest. According to TechCrunch, most of these communities have millions of users.

What triggered the protests

Earlier in April, Reddit announced that it intends to charge third-party app developers for importing information like user posts and reader comments. Apps like Apollo, rif, and Sync were created to help users navigate the expansive site. The developers of the apps claim that the API fees are excessive. For instance, Apollo asserts that it would be required to give Reddit $20 million annually. The developer of the app, Christian Selig, announced that the app would have to shut down, in a Reddit post on the r/ApolloApp subreddit on Friday. Others too have followed suit.

Reddit intends to launch its new pricing model on July 1. Due to this, a number of third-party applications, including Apollo and Sync, have announced their closure on June 30.

In an attempt to address the issue, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrote on the site that “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidise commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”.

He added that developers using OAuth authentication can use the API data for free for 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id and those not using the said authentication can access it for 10 queries per minute.

According to Huffman, over 90 percent of apps fall into this category and can continue to access the Data API for free.

However, from July 1, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1,000 API calls (less than $1.00 per user/month for a typical Reddit third-party app). Apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun (rif) and Sync fall into this category and hence might shutter their business.

Huffman continued to say that from July 5, Reddit will also limit access to mature content via its Data API “as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed”. The same was announced earlier in April as well.

How big is the impact?

According to reports, nearly 86 percent percent of Reddit will go dark as a result of the protest, affecting 458 million submissions, 5.7 billion comments, and more from over 66 million authors.

Apollo creator Selig confirmed on Twitter that the app will be shutting down on June 30. “I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests cost $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined,” he wrote on the Apollo app’s subreddit earlier this month.

“Apollo made seven billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year,” he added.

Another developer, ReddPlanet, said its app would also be shutting down by the end of the month, as will Reddit is Fun.

According to TechCrunch, Apollo has been downloaded over four million times since 2021. In the same timeframe, Android clients such as Boost for Reddit and Infinity for Reddit have been downloaded more than 430,000 and 280,000 times, respectively.

What happens next?

There are four types of communities on Reddit, according to the company — public, restricted, private, and premium-only. When a subreddit goes private, the only way to view it is if you have been granted direct access by a moderator, according to the site’s FAQs. With such a vast number of users in many of these forums, it’s unlikely that moderators will be granting access to large numbers of users during the blackout period.

​​Users who heavily rely on these third-party apps may seek alternative platforms, potentially impacting Reddit's user base and engagement levels. The outcome of the protest and Reddit's response will likely shape the future dynamics between the platform, developers, and its user community.

(With inputs from agencies)