If you are a regular Reddit user, you have probably noticed that in recent days, thousands of subreddits have disappeared, from r/videos and r/pics, to r/Apple, r/PS5 and even adult themes subreddits. But what’s going on? Here we explain it to you.
What’s going on with Reddit?
A few weeks ago, Reddit announced changes to its policies that basically seek to generate more money through the sale by using the social network’s API. Nowadays, dozens of alternative applications allow you to use Reddit in a much better way than the official app, by offering better interfaces, customization options or even accessibility for the visually impaired. All this is achieved thanks to free access to all the information hosted on Reddit’s servers.
Well, now Reddit wants to charge 24 cents for every 1000 requests from a user who uses these third-party applications, per month. Considering that these apps can have thousands of users who use reddit hundreds of times a day, a simple calculation shows that these applications would have to pay millions of dollars a month to reddit to keep working, an amount of money that they obviously do not have. So, extremely popular apps like Apollo, Reddit Sync, Reddit is Fun and more, have announced that they will be shutting down once the changes take effect at the end of the month.
Thus, users will have to forcibly use the official application, which is clearly inferior to many of these third-party applications.
That’s just the beginning of the problem, because Reddit also wants to eliminate most of the bots that help moderators keep the different subreddits more or less presentable. reddit says it’s working on tools to help moderators, but you’re not ready yet. Reddit is the only social network that does not pay a penny to the moderators of its communities, who do all their work in pure good faith. Without the bots that help purge spam, all the subreddits will start to be plagued by bots uncontrollably.
Here you can see a simple infographic on the topic, although in English:
What are the subreddits doing?
Both the moderators of different subreddits, as well as the developers of these third-party apps, as well as the users themselves, asked reddit to reconsider the changes to its policies. The community asked for lower quotas and time for the new moderation tools to be ready. The general director of Reddit Steve Huffman (u/spez), held a question and answer session in which he revealed that absolutely nothing is going to change from the new strategy and in fact even accused the developer of the Apollo app of leaking private conversations. It is not enough to say that the session was a complete disaster and that thousands of users began to insult him for his lack of vision and tact.
Reddit wants to become a public company, so the community considers that all the changes it is making are aimed at making the company more attractive to investors.
By way of protest, more than 8000 of the largest subreddits decided to protest by becoming private, so that they cannot be accessed, from this June 12th. Communities like r/videos or r/pics, which have millions of users, will disappear indefinitely, while others at least promised to disappear for a couple of days.
At the moment, then, most of Reddit is not accessible due to the proposal. If these days you have tried to search for something that ridicules you on Reddit and you don’t get anywhere, you know why. According to this Twitch stream, 96% of the subreddits that promised to disappear, have already fulfilled it.
What’s going to happen to Reddit?
Basically, what these communities are trying to do is put pressure on u/spez to rethink and modify these new policies. It is intended that it is not an obligation to use the official application and neither that the moderators run out of weapons in front of millions of bots that will soon flood all the communities. And if the director of Reddit does not comply, thousands of users promised to leave the platform altogether.
The blow to Reddit’s reputation has been hard. Fidelity, the lead investor in Reddit’s most recent funding round in 2021, has already reduced the estimated value of its equity stake in the platform by 41% since the investment.
After a couple of days, some communities will return to normal, while others will remain closed indefinitely. At the moment, it remains only to wait to know if reddit reconsiders or if it closes in on its decision, despite the fact that most of the community disapproves of it. More social networks have died for opposing their users so directly, so now it remains to see what will happen this time.
What do you think about this case? Leave us your comments!
