In the next few days, Reddit’s version may be a shadow of itself as hundreds of subreddits have pledged to go dark, with thousands more planning to follow. The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, such as Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. The community was already frustrated as developers began reacting to the changes, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days have not calmed things down.
The CEO’s Response
In a Reddit AMA on Friday, Huffman was met with seemingly universal anger. There were a lot of negative comments from the community, with many people calling him a coward. Before r/Videos went private, its mods wrote that Huffman’s AMA performance was “a collage of inappropriate responses” and that Reddit’s CEO seemed to have intentionally misconstrued a conversation the company had with Apollo developer Christian Selig. The two men recently spoke about the API changes and, according to Selig, Huffman grew upset and claimed Selig was threatening him. Selig has since posted a recording illustrating the “threat,” which was cleared up as a misunderstanding while they were still on the call. However, he says Huffman has continued to tell Reddit employees that Selig threatened him in the meeting. Now, mods and developers are calling Huffman and other Reddit leaders “liars,” accusing them of ignoring big questions during the AMA, even though those questions had the most upvotes, to answer easy ones instead.
One of the biggest complaints is about how Reddit’s leadership has, or mostly hasn’t, communicated the details of changes to its API pricing or incoming restrictions, including prohibiting third-party apps from showing NSFW content that’s already viewable on the site. ReddPlanet developer Tony Lupeski said it was a “blatant lie” that Reddit leadership was keeping dialogue open with impacted third-party developers, as Huffman wrote. “That’s not an answer and you know it,” said user Anacharsis to the same Huffman reply. When moderator Merari01 asked why the site hadn’t probed the new changes with users and moderators, Huffman said the company “started sharing this information in April.” A few responses pointed out that the earlier announcement didn’t include any pricing information and left out details like the ban on third-party apps showing NSFW content.
The Protests
According to this post on r/ModCoord, the protest will end when Reddit addresses issues with the API, improves accessibility for blind people, and creates “parity in access to NSFW content.” Since the AMA, some subreddits have escalated their response. Over at r/iPhone, the moderators posted early morning that their original plan was to go dark for just 48 hours, but Huffman’s behavior changed their minds. /iPhone will be going private, severely restricting access to the sub. As will r/Music, a default subscription for new accounts and one of the largest subreddits on the site. Mods of that community put it right in the title of the post announcing its participation, which says it will close starting June 12th “Until Reddit Takes Back Their API Policy Change.” r/iPhone, which has 3.8 million users, echoed r/Music’s sentiment, saying, “in the (somewhat unlikely) scenario that Reddit’s leadership has a change of direction that sees the reversal [of] the recent API policy change, we will reopen the subreddit.” r/Gaming says its shutdown will begin on the 12th, and it will be set to private “for 48 hours or longer.” At the time of publishing, a pinned bot post on the r/ModCoord sub’s post about the protest says nearly 4,500 communities are pledging to go dark, while Reddark, a site tracking the protesting subreddits, says over 200 already have.
Reddit’s leadership has been criticised for its poor communication regarding the API changes and restrictions. The recent AMA with Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman has only escalated the situation, with accusations of lying and ignoring important questions. As a result, hundreds of subreddits have pledged to go dark, with thousands more planning to follow until their demands are met.
Leave a Reply