Today (June 12), Reddit users will have noticed that many of the social media site’s subreddits are either missing, set to private, or in read-only mode. That’s because many subreddit moderators are participating in a site-wide blackout — here’s why, who’s taking part, and when the blackout is expected to end.
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Earlier in the month, Reddit announced that from July it will start charging third-party developers significant fees to access its Application Programming Interface (API) — which third-party Reddit apps, custom extensions, and moderation/accessibility tools rely on to run.
Since the announcement, unofficial Reddit apps like Apollo and Reddit Is Fun have confirmed that they will be closing later this month, as they cannot afford the fees Reddit is proposing.
As reported by Apollo creator Christian Selig, the upcoming changes would see him paying annual costs of £16million ($20million), which he, and other developers shutting down, say they cannot afford.
As a result, many of Reddit’s subreddit communities are taking part in a blackout — meaning they will be going into an unreadable private mode, or preventing any new content from being submitted.
When will the Reddit blackout end?
While some moderators have indicated their blackout will last 48 hours (June 12-14), others have suggested the protest will remain indefinitely if Reddit leadership does not address their concerns.
