In case you were unaware, there is a sort of Reddit protest currently underway. Essentially, ahead of an expected IPO, the Reddit admin team pulled a Twitter and changed their 3rd-party API policy from “free” to “a gazillion dollars.” It’s a gazillion because the price was intentionally set so high as to make it practically impossible for 3rd-party apps to function, even if they started charging a subscription fee. This suits the admins just fine, as either A) the apps die off and more people get funneled into the official (ad-supported) Reddit app, or B) they get paid lots of money.
The planned protest was on 6/12 and 6/13. On those days, the moderators of 7000-9000 subreddits turned those subreddits Private, essentially shutting them down. At first, it was difficult for me to tell something was amiss, as all the new threads in subreddits that didn’t protest continued to pile up in my feed. But when I went to look up commentary on the latest Hearthstone balance patch, I realized nothing was showing up. So I left it and went about my day.
The latest news though is that the protest is continuing for many, many subreddits. Perhaps indefinitely. The Reddit CEO did an Ask Me Anything session ahead of the protests and essentially told everyone to eat cake, which certainly did not help. It is anyone’s guess how this will end though, because while the Reddit admins are fully capable of booting the mods and unlocking the subreddits at will, somebody will still need to mod those spaces. For free, in their spare time, likely fighting a slew of ex-mod power users with a sudden influx of free time. Sort of highlighting the fact that Reddit itself doesn’t actually produce any content.
Do I have skin in the game? Sorta. I have used the Reddit is Fun app since before there was even an official Reddit app in the first place. But RiF is getting shut down on July 1st because of the API changes. And it is undeniable that the official app is a big step down in functionality (plus ads everywhere). The browser version will still work though, and I haven’t heard about Reddit Enhancement Suite getting shut down, so the experience won’t be too different at my desk.
RiF on left, Official Reddit app on right, after a lot of setting changes
The biggest loss though are some of the subreddits I have subscribed to. For example:
/r/Hearthstone
/r/CompetitiveHS
/r/GuildWars2
There might be more, but I only noticed those because I had shortcuts for them – private subreddits no longer appear in my subscription list otherwise, so it’s hard to tell what else is missing. In any case, all three of those subreddits are going dark indefinitely until the API changes are rolled back.
To be honest, I have no idea how to “replace” those communities. Like if I wanted to read some commentary on Hearthstone, I would be stuck with Hearthpwn, the sorta weekly Vicious Syndicate reports, and… what? Official Blizzard forums? Discord? I looked forward to the VS reports being posted in /r/CompetitiveHS and then reading through hundreds of comments about other peoples’ experiences running those decks, changes they made for their pocket metas, and other minutia. Similarly, the GW2 official forums are in no way a possible analog of the content produced in the /r/GuildWars2 subreddit. It was precisely the variety and sort of auto-sorting (by upvotes/downvotes) of quality content that is the reason I have been using Reddit for the last 10 years.
Times change, but this is hitting me rather hard, even if Hearthstone/GW2 aren’t exactly my #1 interests currently.
Having said that, broadly speaking, I support the protest and blackout. Enshittification is apparently inevitable, but that does not mean we should go quiet into that good night. The prospects for success are low, but they aren’t zero, and doing nothing gets you nothing. Let’s just see what happens.
In An Age 
Reddit Blackout
Jun 16
Posted by Azuriel
In case you were unaware, there is a sort of Reddit protest currently underway. Essentially, ahead of an expected IPO, the Reddit admin team pulled a Twitter and changed their 3rd-party API policy from “free” to “a gazillion dollars.” It’s a gazillion because the price was intentionally set so high as to make it practically impossible for 3rd-party apps to function, even if they started charging a subscription fee. This suits the admins just fine, as either A) the apps die off and more people get funneled into the official (ad-supported) Reddit app, or B) they get paid lots of money.
The planned protest was on 6/12 and 6/13. On those days, the moderators of 7000-9000 subreddits turned those subreddits Private, essentially shutting them down. At first, it was difficult for me to tell something was amiss, as all the new threads in subreddits that didn’t protest continued to pile up in my feed. But when I went to look up commentary on the latest Hearthstone balance patch, I realized nothing was showing up. So I left it and went about my day.
The latest news though is that the protest is continuing for many, many subreddits. Perhaps indefinitely. The Reddit CEO did an Ask Me Anything session ahead of the protests and essentially told everyone to eat cake, which certainly did not help. It is anyone’s guess how this will end though, because while the Reddit admins are fully capable of booting the mods and unlocking the subreddits at will, somebody will still need to mod those spaces. For free, in their spare time, likely fighting a slew of ex-mod power users with a sudden influx of free time. Sort of highlighting the fact that Reddit itself doesn’t actually produce any content.
Do I have skin in the game? Sorta. I have used the Reddit is Fun app since before there was even an official Reddit app in the first place. But RiF is getting shut down on July 1st because of the API changes. And it is undeniable that the official app is a big step down in functionality (plus ads everywhere). The browser version will still work though, and I haven’t heard about Reddit Enhancement Suite getting shut down, so the experience won’t be too different at my desk.
The biggest loss though are some of the subreddits I have subscribed to. For example:
There might be more, but I only noticed those because I had shortcuts for them – private subreddits no longer appear in my subscription list otherwise, so it’s hard to tell what else is missing. In any case, all three of those subreddits are going dark indefinitely until the API changes are rolled back.
To be honest, I have no idea how to “replace” those communities. Like if I wanted to read some commentary on Hearthstone, I would be stuck with Hearthpwn, the sorta weekly Vicious Syndicate reports, and… what? Official Blizzard forums? Discord? I looked forward to the VS reports being posted in /r/CompetitiveHS and then reading through hundreds of comments about other peoples’ experiences running those decks, changes they made for their pocket metas, and other minutia. Similarly, the GW2 official forums are in no way a possible analog of the content produced in the /r/GuildWars2 subreddit. It was precisely the variety and sort of auto-sorting (by upvotes/downvotes) of quality content that is the reason I have been using Reddit for the last 10 years.
Times change, but this is hitting me rather hard, even if Hearthstone/GW2 aren’t exactly my #1 interests currently.
Having said that, broadly speaking, I support the protest and blackout. Enshittification is apparently inevitable, but that does not mean we should go quiet into that good night. The prospects for success are low, but they aren’t zero, and doing nothing gets you nothing. Let’s just see what happens.
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