Major Reddit communities go dark to protest API pricing changes

Thousands of Reddit communities are going dark today and making their subreddits private to protest the company’s move to start charging developers for access to its API.

Reddit’s decision has received a backlash from third-party clients who have long used its API to create apps and bots that help users make use of Reddit. While the company hasn’t disclosed how much its API will cost after the change, Christian Selig, developer of popular Reddit client Apollo, said that it would cost him $20 per year.

As a result of the pricing change, many popular Reddit clients, including Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync for Reddit, announced last week that they would shut down their services on June 30.

More than three thousand subreddits including r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music, r/apple, r/todayilearned, r/videos, and r/sports are now going dark today to protest the change and support the clients impacted by it.

These communities will remain private for 48 hours, or possibly longer than that, restricting users from joining them and submitting posts.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman talked about the change in a post on the platform on Friday, but the post has received thousands of downvotes.