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The Future. In protest of Reddit’s new API pricing increase, over 7,000 subreddits went private or read-only yesterday, with the blackout lasting until tomorrow (though some will do so indefinitely). With Reddit angling to IPO in the near future, the battle over the platform’s API may highlight the struggle of free, community-driven platforms to actually turn a profit.
Community control
The subreddits have struck back.
- According to Insider, the blackout “stands to affect over 2.6 billion Reddit subscribers and more than 28,000 moderators.”
- This protest has caused major “stability issues” (Reddit’s words) on the site, effectively crashing it for a period of time.
Reddit has positioned the price changes as a way to keep AI systems from just using the platform as a free repository for constantly-updating data. The company wants to make some money for that access, especially as advertising has proven to be a complicated revenue generator for the platform.
But Redditors allege that the price increases are just too astronomical to justify, forcing many apps that rely on the API to shut down because of the cost. One popular app, Apollo for Reddit, said it would now cost $20 million per year to continue operating the app. Wow.
All the drama is apparently great news for Discord.
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