Reddit CEO Assures Employees that API Protest Will Pass
Reddit users may find that their preferred subreddit is currently unavailable due to over 8,000 communities going private in protest of Reddit’s API policy changes. The moderators of some of these subreddits have stated that they will reopen access on Wednesday, while others plan to continue their protests indefinitely. Despite this, Reddit’s co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, appears unconcerned.
According to The Verge, Huffman told staff to block the noise from the collective action. He noted in the memo that it didn’t have a “significant impact on revenue” yet, and said Reddit would “figure it out.”
Reddit was down from many users for a while on Monday, shortly after the protest began. “A significant number of subreddits going private caused expected stability issues,” the company told ReturnByte at the time.
Huffman wrote that while Reddit expected the protest, “it’s still a challenge, and we have our work cut out for us.” He noted that some Reddit employees “have been working around the clock, adjusting to infrastructure stresses, collaborating with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues caused by this outage.” Huffman thanked them for their efforts and said Reddit needed to stay the course.
“There’s a lot of noise about this. Among the loudest we’ve seen. You know our teams are involved, and like all Reddit blowups, this will pass,” he reportedly wrote. “We absolutely need to ship what we promised. The only long term solution is to improve our product, and in the short term we have a few critical mod tool releases that we need to nail down.”
In April, Reddit announced it would start charging for API access. Third-party developers have used the API to make thousands of applications related to Reddit, including moderation tools. Reddit users are concerned that the changes will significantly harm the community. We are already starting to see it working to some extent.
Apollo and RIF, two popular third-party apps that redditors use Reddit to use, will shut down on June 30th, just before API pricing changes go into effect. Apollo’s creator estimated that maintaining the app would cost him about $20 million a year. Huffman addressed the issue in his memo.
“While the two largest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, and a couple of others have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we’re still in discussions with some others,” Huffman wrote. “And as I mentioned in my post last week, we’re releasing apps focused on accessibility, and so far we’ve signed deals with RedReader and Dystopia.”
Meanwhile, Huffman cautioned staff against wearing Reddit-branded clothing in public until further notice. “Some people are really upset and we don’t want you to be the target of their frustration,” he wrote.
