Reddit API protest: 80% of top 5,000 communities are now operational

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman came out strongly against third-party apps using its API for free

The Reddit blackout that began on June 12 in opposition to the company's revised third-party app policies appears to have subsided a little.

In a blog post on its website, the company stated that as of June 15 more than 80 per cent of its top 5,000 communities were operational and were anticipated to continue functioning in a similar manner.

The number is down from the 8,000 communities that went dark when the protest first began.

However, Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman has told his employees in an internal memo they must “block out the noise” and that this blackout of subreddits will eventually pass, a report by The Verge said.

“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,” the memo read.

It added that Huffman told his staff that the blackout had little effect on business profits.

“The only long-term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail,” it cited Huffman as saying. A modding tool is a software that helps you create, manage, and install mods for a specific game or engine.

Huffman came out strongly against third-party apps using Reddit’s API for free as they used the data to build their own business.

API, or application programming interface, is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and is an accessible way to extract and share data within and across organisations.

“I didn’t know — and this is my fault — the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities,” he told The Verge.

Why the protests?

Reddit announced in April that it would change its API pricing policy in an effort to make money from businesses that use its data to create and hone artificial intelligence tools.

An API is used every time someone sends a mobile payment or makes use of a ridesharing app. Third-party apps have been using Reddit's open API to collect data or create apps.

So, Reddit’s decision to charge for its APIs starting July 1 meant it would cost big third-party apps such as Apollo and Rif more. Consequently, these two third-party apps have announced that they will shut down a day before the deadline.

Reddit users as well as many of its subreddits demanded a protest against the company's decision to charge for its API.

However, the memo from Huffman stated that talks with Rif and Apollo are still going on.

"While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple of others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others," the memo said.