On the web, information can come from anywhere, shared by anyone, using any method possible. And Reddit touts itself as "the front page of the internet."
This is because many people consider the platform as a source of information.
But what Reddit is also known for, is its solid community.
This happens because Reddit is hailed for its digital influence, powered by its informed, passionate, trend-spotting and engaged users. While it isn't the largest platform on the internet, the website is known for its massively open nature and diverse community, who generate, debate and comment on a wide-ranging subject areas.
And these people come in huge numbers, and that they will support common cause that benefit the overall community.
What this means, they can put a fight, even against Reddit, if they see something they don't like.
It all began on April 18, 2023, when Reddit announced that is intention to make changes to its API service, including pricing changes.
Previously, the API was free in most use cases. But Reddit is changing this, partly because OpenAI had been using Reddit to train its ChatGPT chatbot.
CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman was angered when he realized that the company co-founded by Elon Musk has been digging deep into Reddit to gain knowledge from its vast content.
The AI market is increasing in value, and with analysts predicting explosive growth in the coming years, Reddit is sitting on terabytes upon terabytes of real, human conversations across the platform.
Huffman knows that Reddit is the priceless trove, and amongst the primary targets for data scraping material to fuel the development of Large Language Models, like ChatGPT and others.
What Huffman is doing here, is taking cues from Musk, and piggyback the AI hype, for monetization.
However, the price affecting developers also affect developers developing apps for Reddit. At first, Huffman said that the Reddit's API would remain free for them. But since in the end they also had to pay, many developers were annoyed.
One of the most prominent, the developer of Apollo, a popular third-party Reddit client, said that they have to pay Reddit $12,000 for 50 million API requests. This translates to over $20 million per year.
These people have all complained, and have spoken out against the pricing changes.
Huffman said that the changes is because " [...] we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use."
During the commotion, Apollo announced that it's shutting down. This is followed by Sync and BaconReader.
End users weren't affected by this at first, until they realized that their favorite third-party apps are gone. Many Redditors say that Reddit's official app lacks a lot of features. Even moderators have previously claimed that they also rely on third-party tools to moderate Reddit's community.
Those people were also dragged into the chaos, when moderators said that a protest was going to happen.
It was only after this, that even the most casual Reddit users became affected.
This is because thousands of subreddits, including five of the largest subreddits each with over 30 million subscribers, made a protest by turning their subreddits private or not allowing posts or comments between June 12 and 14, 2023.
Many users, both new ones who just joined Reddit, as well as old ones who joined when Reddit began, stated that they would abstain from posting and commenting during the protest, or would leave the site until Reddit reverses the decision.
Several subreddits with more than 10 million subscribers, even announced that they would remain private indefinitely.
In what is considered one of the most significant protests in Reddit's 18-year history, a temporary "black out" happened in many parts of the site.
At its peak, more than 8,000 subreddits went private, and because the change happened suddenly, Reddit experienced a slight server stability issues attributed to a "significant number of subreddits shifting to private."
Reddit, angered, threatened the moderators, saying that "Per Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct, moderators are required to be active and engaged within their communities. Given this, we encourage you to reopen," the message from Reddit reads.
If moderators still wouldn't comply, a Reddit admin said that they would invite a new team of moderator, who would replace then and reopen the private subreddits.
Giving existing moderators no choice, many moderators complied, and reopened the subreddits.
In a blog post explaining its API change, Reddit said it was "not shutting down discussions or unilaterally reopening communities."
"Dissent, debate, and discussions are foundational parts of Reddit. We respect our communities’ ability to protest as long as mods follow our Moderator Code of Conduct."
Because business is business, and business must go on, CEO Steve Huffman said:
Huffman said that the blackout didn't affect Reddit's revenue, but "created a fair amount of trouble."
He added that "there are areas of opportunity to be more flexible, to give longer transition time" to the third-party developers they were still in contact with.
Huffman is confident because 97% of Reddit users do not use third-party applications, and that "the vast majority" of moderators do not rely on third-party applications for moderation, and that after the staged blackout, 80% of the top 5,000 subreddits were viewable again.
To prevent a similar thing from happening again in the future, Huffman said that Reddit plans to implementing a democratic process to vote out moderators.
It's worth noting though, that during the staged black out, despite Huffman said that it didn't cause Reddit much damage, external sources claimed otherwise.
Data suggests that the Reddit protests hurt the site’s traffic and advertiser engagement that during its peak, Redditors spent about 16% less time on the platform than average; daily traffic dropped by about 7%; time spent on the platform declined by about 16%; and visits to Reddit’s ad portal decreased by about 20%.
Reddit said the protests hadn’t had a significant impact on revenue, but these numbers appear to contradict.
Regardless, Huffman showed that Reddit has become big and significant enough, that it's able to flex its control.
While it’s playing a risky game ahead of its long-gestating IPO, Reddit’s attitude shows that it has the power to harm others (and itself), and is able to risk it.