Reddit users have expressed their dissatisfaction with a new pricing plan for the popular social media platform by making several communities go private on Tuesday.
The protest was triggered by a Reddit announcement that said it would charge app developers a percentage of their revenue for using its API (application programming interface), which allows them to access Reddit data and features.
Many app developers said they were blindsided by the announcement and that it would make their apps unsustainable. Some users also said they were unhappy with Reddit’s lack of transparency and communication.
As a result, some of the largest and most active communities on Reddit, such as r/AskReddit, r/IAmA and r/science, went private on Tuesday afternoon, meaning they were inaccessible to most users. Other communities followed suit or posted messages of solidarity.
The protest caused Reddit to experience technical issues and slow loading times. According to DownDetector.com, a website that tracks online outages, Reddit had more than 40,000 reports of problems on Tuesday.
Reddit acknowledged the issues on its status page and said it was working on a fix. It also said it was listening to the feedback from the app developers and users.
‘We know this is a big change for some of our developer partners and we want to work with you to make this transition as smooth as possible,’ Reddit said in an update on its announcement post. ‘We appreciate your patience as we work through this and we’ll share more updates soon.’
Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the world, with more than 50 million daily active users and hundreds of thousands of communities covering various topics. It is also known for its passionate and vocal user base, which has staged protests before over issues such as censorship, moderation and leadership.
