Reddit Blackout Revealed: The Shocking Reason Your Favorite Pages Are Going Offline Today

Starting from Monday, major Reddit pages with millions of followers will be going offline for the next 48 hours as a form of protest against the social network’s newly imposed charges for third-party apps accessing its API. Subreddits dedicated to music, movies, games, and celebrities have collectively decided to demonstrate their opposition to Reddit’s recent regulations, resulting in over 3,000 page moderators choosing to temporarily take their pages offline.

Back in April, Reddit announced that users of its application programming interface would be required to pay a nominal fee, justifying the need for “fair compensation.” Developers argue that running third-party Reddit apps will become prohibitively expensive as a result, prompting many page moderators to support the protest by making their pages private. While some intend to return after the 48-hour period, certain third-party apps have declared they will remain offline until Reddit retracts its new regulations. It is worth noting that until the official app was released in 2016, Reddit relied entirely on third-party apps for its functionality.

Moreover, according to users, select third-party Reddit applications offer superior user interfaces and additional accessibility features, making them preferable to the official app. Currently, users can still utilize and create pages on the Reddit official app/website at no cost. However, third-party Reddit apps like Apollo, Narwhal, Relay, and Infinity are now required to pay API fees to ensure their apps remain operational.

While Reddit has not officially disclosed the API charges, a Sky News report indicates that Apollo, a third-party app built using Reddit’s API, claims the company is charging $0.24 for every 1000 API calls. Considering this rate, Apollo would incur a substantial fee of $2 million per month or $20 million per year. It is important to note that these third-party apps generate revenue by serving advertisements to their users.

In response to the controversy, Reddit argues that it must charge API users to cover hosting costs and advises app developers to optimize their apps to reduce API calls.