Thousands of Reddit communities remain dark as app policy protests continue

Thousands of volunteer-run message boards on Reddit went dark on Tuesday, a week after community moderators began what they called a 48-hour protest against Reddit’s planned changes to its business model.

More than 3,200 message boards, also known as subreddits, remained restricted or private, up from nearly 9,000 last week, according to a website follow the uprising. Others were deluged with memes mocking Reddit CEO Steve Huffman as anger continued to bubble on the site over changes in the company’s business model.

Moderators of some of the communities that reopened said they did so after Reddit threatened to replace them.

“We want the best for this community and have no choice but to open it up again – or let it open for us,” said the moderators of the Apple enthusiast forum. recall wrote in a message calling for Mr. Huffman to resign.

Other communities reopened, but chose to only allow GIFs, memes, and photos of the “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” host.

The moderators of r/photoswhich, for example, has 30 million members, held a poll on whether or not to “return to normal operation” or “only allow images of John Oliver who looks sexy.” The Oliver option won decisively, with 37,331 votes to 2,329 for “back to normal”. Many of the memes that swept the community mock Mr. Huffman.

Mr Oliver encouraged the uprising, posted photos of herself in various outfits — pink panda print pajamas, a wizard hat with a purple cape — on Twitter, along with the message “Dear Reddit, great work. Attn: r/pics — do something about it…”

Backlash erupted last week after changes Reddit announced in April when it said it would start charging some large-scale companies for access to its application programming interface, or API, the method by which outside entities can exploit the social network’s massive size. download and process. selection of memes, GIFs, videos and conversation threads.

Reddit said it no longer wanted to give away such a valuable asset to companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, which have used its data to develop artificial intelligence systems.

But some Reddit users and developers said the pricing plan would kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, Reef is Nice for Reddit, ReddPlanet, and Sync that people rely on to browse and comment on the site. Moderators said the changes could harm some of the tools they use to manage freewheeling discussions on the site.

As of June 12, many Reddit moderators have made their communities “private” or inaccessible to members for at least 48 hours. Some users had problems using the site that day; Reddit said a “significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues.”

A week later, many communities were still in rebellion.

“You can see there are still a lot of subreddits out there that have a lot of frustration with how the whole thing was handled and Reddit’s unwillingness to really budge an inch on this,” Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, an iOS app widely acclaimed for its design and rich functions, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr Selig said he still planned to shut down the app on June 30, a day before saying it would start incurring $20 million in annual costs under Reddit’s pricing plan.

Despite the turmoil, Mr. Huffman indicated that Reddit, which is preparing for a possible IPO this year, will not change course.

He told NBC news Last week, Reddit considered allowing users to vote out moderators who led the protest, comparing them to “landed gentry” who thwarted the site’s democratic ethos. An estimated 57 million people visit the platform every day.

“Protest and dissent are important,” Mr. Huffman said The associated press last week. “The problem with this one is it’s not going to change anything because we’ve made a business decision that we’re not negotiating.”

Tim Rathschmidt, a Reddit spokesperson, said Mr Huffman, in his reference to “landed gentry”, was “talking about how users have spoken out about their communities wanting to open again”, and that many moderators and users disagree agreed with the protest.

“In the future, we could look at developing a way for community members to vote down a mod if they disagree with decisions being made that affect the whole community,” Mr Rathschmidt said in an email on Tuesday .

However, he said Reddit was not threatening to replace moderators. “That’s not how we work,” said Mr. Rathschmidt. “Putting people under pressure is not our goal. We communicate expectations and how things work.”

Mr Selig said developers and moderators were not opposed to Reddit charging for access to its data. He said they asked the company to consider charging less and allow more time before the new prices go into effect.

Instead, corporate executives shut down and said, “You don’t matter.” We’ll just get through this,” Mr. Selig said. “And that’s where a lot of the frustration cuts through.”