Thousands of subreddits went offline on Reddit a few days ago to protest new API policies and pricing that would effectively kill the majority of third-party apps for the site.
Reddit management seems to have two options to deal with the new situation.
He could have announced that he would reevaluate the new policy so that the applications third parties to continue to exist alongside the official Reddit app, or it could continue with the implementation of the first decision.
Reddit continued to stand by its first decision, despite millions of users protesting the changes. Reddit CEO Mike Huffman wrote a memo to all employees asserting that the protests will stop soon and that Reddit will not change course.
But when the blackouts (protests) didn't stop after the first two days, Reddit decided to pressure the moderators of the subreddits whose owners had made them private to cut off access to millions of visitors.
A private subreddit on Reddit is only accessible by registered members. The only choice to join a group is to private message a group moderator and ask them to add you.
After pressuring the moderators, Reddit is now threatening to shut down some communities if they don't change the group to public.
"Compared to the site's average daily traffic last month, the 52.121.649 visits Reddit saw on June 13 represented a drop of the order of 6,6%" reports Engadget (citing data from Similarweb).
“As more subreddits continue to protest the company's plans and its leadership does not consider policy changes that could alter its relationship with moderators, the platform could see a slow but gradual decline in daily active users. This does not bode well for Reddit which is close to going public.”
In fact, the Financial Times reports that Reddit “acknowledged that a number of advertisers had postponed some premium ad campaigns to wait out the problems faced by service".
Fraser Raeburn, a University of Sheffield historian who helps moderate the subreddit “r/Askhistorians” (with 1,8 million subscribers) said:
"If they refuse to budge in any way, I don't see Reddit surviving as it exists right now." "They are playing with fire".
But many others seem to think the same. The EFF's deputy director of community organizing said:
“This tension between these communities and their host has fueled more interest in the Fediverse as a decentralized haven…”
Reddit-like fediverse services are numerous and larger Lemmy and Kbin.
