Reddit CEO remains nonchalant about ongoing massive subreddit blackout and third-party clients sunsetting, pursues possibility of users voting out mods

Earlier this week, thousands of subreddits went dark owing to a Reddit API policy change. Developers and users alike are not taking kindly to new Reddit rules that mandate US$0.24 for every 1,000 API calls. The pricing is so ridiculous that developer of the popular iOS Reddit client Apollo for Reddit, Christian Selig, estimated that he would have to cough up a whopping US$20 million a year to keep his app running.

Talks between Reddit and the developer community seem to have hit a roadblock, and Selig announced that Apollo will shut down on June 30. Other popular third-party apps that would see sunset include Reddit is Fun (RIF), Sync, Pager, and ReddPlanet.

Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, however, downplayed the whole situation of nearly 8,000 subreddits going dark. In a memo to employees (accessed by The Verge) he said,

"We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well....

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so."

The CEO seems to be quite nonchalant about the protests, however. According to Huffman, 80% of Reddit's top 5,000 communities are now open again. However, popular communities like r/funny are still inaccessible even to members.

In the r/Save3rdPartyApps subreddit, moderators said, "The Fight Continues" and discussions with Huffman on core concerns did nothing to alleviate concerns.

"What I’m suggesting as a pathway out is actually more democracy. We’ve got some old, legacy decisions on how communities are run that we need to kind of work our way out of", said Huffman. "I think most will get there through their own natural decision-making process, and so we’re letting that play out,” he said.

Huffman implied that he would pursue a more democratic system wherein ordinary users can vote out mods if their decisions aren't popular.

However, mods feel Reddit is mistaken if they think the protests will fizzle out on their own. So far, it looks like Reddit won't be reversing its API monetization changes anytime soon.

Unlike other social media, Reddit's growth can be majorly attributed to the volunteering of people across its communities and third-party apps. Third-party Reddit apps provide a level of customization and user-friendliness that the official client has yet to match.

High API access costs is why there are no good free third-party Twitter clients. The new Twitter API policy that came out in March provides a free access tier, although it is primarily intended at bots and allows for only 1,500 tweets per month along with login access.

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