Reddit blackout: Thousands of subreddits go dark in user protest

If part of your regular habits is to peruse Reddit, a lot of your favorite subreddits (if not all of them) are offline right now. And some of them might not come back—not unless Reddit changes its mind about an upcoming policy change.

For at least two days, you won’t be able to read or interact with much of the site, due to a user-led protest in response to Reddit’s announcement of API changes on June 5. But while the blackout was initially set to begin on Monday and last for two days, commentary from Reddit’s CEO last week during a Friday “Ask Me Anything” thread threw additional fuel onto the flames of discontent—prompting some subreddits to vow they won’t come back unless the policy is changed.

At the heart of the controversy is a new pricing plan, set to begin July 1: For every 1,000 API calls, developers will have to pay 24 cents USD. An API call is made every time the app fetches data from Reddit’s servers. Not long after the details broke, third-party app developers began telling users they would be unable to afford the upcoming costs and would likely have to shutter by June 30. Christian Selig, developer of Apollo for Reddit (one of the biggest third-party Reddit apps), estimated his fees would reach $20 million. 

Talks between third-party app makers and Reddit have not gone well either. Selig claims that Reddit accused him of blackmail and other app developers say Reddit is not responding to inquiries.

In the AMA thread, CEO Steve Huffman said of Selig: “His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.” Selig lives in Canada, which only requires one-party consent for phone recordings; Huffman and Reddit are based in California, a two-party consent state. Many of the comments in response to Huffman in the AMA include vehement expletives.

According to Reddark, a site keeping track of the number of offline subreddits in real time, 95 percent of the site has gone dark, with over 7,250 subreddits participating in the blackout. Some of the biggest and most popular subreddits are part of the protest, including r/funny (with over 40 million subscribers), as well as r/gaming, r/todayilearned, and r/aww (with over 30 million subscribers each). The number has been growing since the start of Monday, too—so it’s possible that nearly the whole site could end up offline for the next 48 hours.