Thousands of subreddits go dark over paid API access; moderators contest platform governance.
Reddit API protests by moderators/users
Event Not yet reviewed This page has not yet been through the automated review pipeline.Reddit moderators and users organize widespread protests against API pricing changes, highlighting tensions between platform governance and community power.
Sources
- 01.
Reddit, Inc.. Creating a Healthy Ecosystem for Reddit Data and Reddit Data API Access. (2023). Reddit's own announcement of 18 April 2023, the change the June protests responded to — read in full. Replaces the `reddit.com/r/redditdev` post previously cited here, which no client can retrieve: reddit.com returns an empty shell to every automated request, and its single Wayback capture is a 3.5 KB interstitial rather than the post. This is the same announcement on Reddit's own corporate site, and it resolves.
- 02.
Reddit, Inc.. Key Facts to Understanding Reddit's Recent API Updates. (2023). Reddit's own statement of 15 June 2023, last updated 30 June 2023 — published during the blackout. Source for the company's position on API pricing and third-party apps, and for its own figures on the protest's reach: that as of writing 'more than 96% of our top 5,000 communities (by DAU) are open'. Cited as Reddit's account of the dispute, not as a neutral one.
- 03.
r/ModCoord, Reddit. Reddit Blackout 2023: Save 3rd Party Apps. (2023). Moderators' own coordination post, announcing that 'The June 12th blackout is about to officially begin' and setting out the community's list of demands, alternative platforms, and instructions for setting a subreddit private. The live URL returns an empty shell to every automated client; the archived capture of 12 June 2023 was read in full and carries the post itself, not an interstitial. Two limits on what it supports: it gives no end date — the 12-14 June duration is cited to The Verge below — and it *links* to a wiki list of participating subs rather than naming them, so it is not the source for which communities took part.
- 04.
Peters, J. (2023). More than 7,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit's API changes. The Verge. Contemporaneous account of the scale of the 12 June blackout and of the third-party app shutdowns.
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June 12, 2023
Reddit API protests by moderators/users
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