Some sections of the site are being set to private for 48 hours as part of the protest, which started Monday, meaning some of the largest communities on Reddit won’t be publicly viewable during the protest.
The protest came after third-party developers that use Reddit said they would be shutting down over new fees to Reddit’s API, or application programming interface.
For example, the creator of the Reddit app Apollo, which aims to help users navigate the platform faster, said it will shut down at the end of June, saying Reddit’s changes have “made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”
Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said the platform is in contact with a “number of communities to clarify any confusion around our Data API Terms.”
“Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved; we spend multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees and Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps. Our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs,” Rathschmidt wrote in an email summarizing what was shared with the community of developers.
He added that the “vast majority of API users” won’t have to pay for access, and not all third-party app usage requires paid access.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
