Crypto Subreddits Go Dark In Protest

Several communities on the popular social media platform Reddit, including popular crypto subreddits, unanimously decided to go private for 48 hours to protest controversial charges to developers of third-party apps.

A total of 3,489 subreddits have gone dark in protest, including five of the 10 most popular communities on the site – r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music, r/todayilearned and r/pics – which each have memberships of more than 30 million people.

Reddit starts charging for APIs

Reddit heavily relies on moderators to run smoothly. However, the social media company announced in April that it would make some changes to its website. The changes include preventing users from freely accessing APIs and tools.

Third-party apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet were set up as a way for people to access the platform on their mobile devices before Reddit launched its own app in 2016.

Now, Reddit has introduced a series of charges to the developers who wish to continue using its Application Programming Interface (API) – the behind-the-scenes code which allows third-party apps to find and show the content on Reddit. All four of these apps have said they will be shutting down as a result of Reddit’s new API pricing.

Crypto subreddits join the protest by going dark

Popular crypto subreddits protesting against the change include r/Bitcoin, r/CryptoCurrency and r/cardano. These and other thousands of subreddits will remain private or in read-only modes between June 12 and 14 to protest the changes.

Reddit, which is also planning for an IPO, is asking developers to pay $12,000 per every 50 million requests. The Apollo developer said that it would cost him 20 million US dollars per year to use Reddit’s APIs.

BBC reported that the protest could go on longer that 48 hours on some subreddits as the community demands Reddit to roll back the changes.

Read More: Elon Musk Supports Reddit In Pricing APIs