“Our pricing is $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, which equates to <$1.00 per user monthly for a reasonably-operated app,” they said. In spite of being Reddit's most popular third-party app, Selig announced Apollo will shut down due to the new API fees on 30 June.Ī Reddit employee challenged the widespread backlash, arguing the proposed API changes may be affordable if third-party apps are developed efficiently regarding the amount of API calls they make. "I hope it goes without saying that I don't have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card." "I don't see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable," said Selig. Multiple third-party app creators have announced outright closure amid the backlash, including Apollo developer Christian Selig, who said at its current rate of 7 billion API requests per month, he would need to pay $2.5 million (US$1.7 million) for access to Reddit's API, or $29.6 million (US$20 million) a year. More obscure subreddits are pitching in as well, with smaller communities such as r/StarTrekDiscovery, r/ColecoVision and r/SteamedHams currently left dark for their thousands of subscribers. Other gigantic subreddits joining the cause include r/gaming, r/Music and r/science – the latter of which cited a negative impact on "third-party tools, accessibility and moderation" as a result of Reddit's proposed API changes. "This community has shut down and will not grant access requests during the protest.” Do not message to request access," reads a notice on the landing page of /r/Funny, a Reddit forum with over 40 million subscribers. "/r/Funny has shut down as part of the coordinated protest against Reddit's exorbitant new API pricing. Users found similar messages waiting for them on various subreddits. While private, subreddits are made inaccessible to the wider public, and users are met with a lock-out screen displaying only a scant message from community moderators. The backlash effort went ahead on the proposed 12 June date, with more than 7700 subreddits (housing a collective subscriber count of over 2.84 billion) currently set to private, according to third-party app Reddark. "On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy." "This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free. "Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third-party app on Reddit," read a popularly cross-shared post on Reddit. The subsequent weeks saw bubbling tensions among community moderators and users alike – many of whom pointed out an inherent threat to popular third-party apps focusing on accessibility and research – and in early June, countless subreddit announced they would be banding together in a coordinated protest. Reddit, the popular news and discussion site, announced its proposed pricing changes around two months ago when it revealed some third-party apps would have to start paying for access to its application programming interface ( API), beginning 1 July. Thousands of Reddit communities have gone dark in a two-day protest over proposed API pricing changes which could see third-party app developers priced out of the platform.
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