dailyO
Technology

Why have thousands of subreddits gone dark?

Advertisement
Shaurya Thapa
Shaurya ThapaJun 12, 2023 | 15:54

Why have thousands of subreddits gone dark?

Reddit's decision to charge successful third-party apps has drawn criticism from many Reddit communities (photo-DailyO)

Reddit goes dark. These three words are trending on social media. And if you’re a newbie to Reddit, you’re bound to be confused with several popular subreddits remaining offline or turning private by their moderators. 

What exactly does “going dark” mean?

Starting from June 12, many subreddits are expected to go offline, or turn private for over 48 hours (up to June 14). 

Basically, only members of the community that are approved by the subreddit moderators will be able to view and participate in these channels. For everyone else, these pages will remain inaccessible. Some of them are also appearing like they’ve been taken down intentionally. 

Advertisement

Why is Reddit going dark in the first place? 

Many of the Reddit communities are resorting to these steps as a form of protest against new API (application programming interface) changes that can affect the finances and existence of several third-party apps. 

For those unacquainted with tech terms, API interfaces allow two applications (in this case, Reddit and a third-party app) to interact with one another. This essentially allows developers to access data and develop new features. 

Much like Google, Meta and Twitter, Reddit has had a public API platform for which programmers can sign up once they meet some basic requirements. 

But Reddit is changing its API policy, which will essentially require program developers and third-party apps to pay a certain fee now. Ads (another major source for generation of revenue) will also be blocked on third party apps. 

Commenting on the change that will take effect from July 1, 2023, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The New York Times: “Crawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with.”

How was Reddit beneficial for third-party apps?

With all the vast amount of information that some subreddits could provide techies, Reddit has proven significant to build AI language models and programs like ChatGPT and Bard. These apps require large collections of text data that can be provided from platforms like subreddits. 

Advertisement

For third-party app developers, they also made profits as they provided Redditors with added features and customisations beyond the ones that are offered by the official Reddit app and site. 

What do the new changes suggest? 

Applications with fewer than 100 queries per minute will continue to be free under the new terms. According to Huffman, these account for more than 90% of current applications.

Third-party apps that make more API queries will be charged $0.24 per 1,000 requests.

Which third party apps and subreddits are closing down? 

While some subreddits have gone down for a two-day protest so far, many third-party apps that mainly relied on Reddit API queries will probably be shutting down. These include the iPhone and iPad-based Apollo (that presented Reddit's content with a more stylish UI interface), the software company RedPlanet and file sync software Sync. 

Given the money required for every 1,000 API requests, Apollo app creator Christian Selig revealed that this new pricing policy will cost his company $20 million in pricing for their average rate of seven billion monthly requests. 

Advertisement

Beginning June 12, moderators of the “dark” subreddits transferred nearly 7,000 subreddits, some with tens of millions of users, to private mode. These include r/funny (49 mil subscribers), r/food (23 mil subscribers), r/gadgets (21 mil subscribers) and many more. 

What’s the deal with explicit content on Reddit? 

While explicit content is not banned on Reddit, Hoffman revealed in a Reddit AMA session that, “Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed.”

However, some Reddit communities are concerned with the fact that this step might lead to stricter censorship as seen in Instagram’s policies of flagging content as nudity and blocking the users (which has drawn criticism from many as extreme and unreliable and has affected the lives of sex workers). 

How is Reddit responding now?

Reddit has issued no statement as of now, but Hoffman started an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit last Friday when he aimed to resolve most doubts. However, as the comments go, the general consensus towards the CEO and co-founder is mostly negative among Redditors.

Last updated: June 12, 2023 | 15:54
IN THIS STORY
    Please log in
    I agree with DailyO's privacy policy