Thousands of Reddit communities are preparing to go on strike in response to the social news site’s decision to monetise access to its data, according to reports.
Over 3,000 subreddits have joined the protest, planning to go private on Monday, thereby blocking external users from viewing their posts.
According to a report by The Guardian, major forums like r/todayilearned, r/funny, and r/gaming, each with over 30 million subscribers, have pledged their support for the campaign.
Moreover, subreddits with over a million members, including r/iPhone and r/unexpected, have already shut down ahead of the strike.
The protest is based on upcoming changes to Reddit’s application programming interface (API), which enables other companies to utilise Reddit’s data for their own products and services.
‘Premium Access’ to be introduced on Reddit
The planned modifications will introduce substantial fees for “premium access,” effectively impeding the operations of popular third-party Reddit apps such as Apollo, renowned for its customisable interface.
Christian Selig, the sole developer of Apollo, estimates that these apps would need to charge approximately $5 (£4) per user per month just to cover the new fees imposed by Reddit.
Selig also announced that his app would shut down on June 30 via a Reddit post.
A similar situation occurred on Twitter in the 2010s, where conflicts emerged due to the impact of third-party apps on the social network’s ad-supported business model.
However, the current Reddit dispute is primarily driven by a clash between the social network and AI companies like OpenAI, which have extensively scraped Reddit’s data to train their systems.
Steve Huffman, Reddit’s founder and CEO, acknowledged the value of the Reddit data corpus, stating that the platform does not need to provide all of “that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free,” as per a report by The New York Times in April.
In a joint statement, the moderators of the participating subreddits expressed their intentions, stating that many subreddits would go dark on June 12 to protest against the new policy.
Some may return after 48 hours, while others might disappear permanently if the issue is not adequately addressed.
The moderators highlighted the insufficient tools available through the official app, which hinder their ability to continue their work.
They also said that their actions are fuelled by love for Reddit and a belief that the proposed changes will make it impossible to continue doing what they love.
“The two-day blackout isn’t the goal, and it isn’t the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they’ve broken, we’ll use the community and buzz we’ve built between then and now as a tool for further action,” the statement said.
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