Yesterday, June 11, thousands of Reddit communities, including video game subreddits, became private after Reddit managers decided to charge application developers to access the site’s API.
CS:GO and Overwatch subreddits are private
The website designed to track communities that oppose large social networks, Reddark has revealed that more than 5,000 subreddits are now private. Among the subreddits that are now private are those for CS:GO and Overwatch.
With this large number of subreddits blocked, thousands of internet users have joined other social networks to express their annoyance with Reddit’s changes.
Reddark did a live stream to track what was happening with the subreddits in real time, where over 12K viewers tuned in to see how the closures were done.
Nearly 12,000 people are watching a real-time feed of subreddits going dark to protest third-party app changes.https://t.co/vZO00s7SXm#StreamerNews #TOSgg pic.twitter.com/l85nasUb4t
— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) June 12, 2023
Protesting Reddit’s recent changes
Thousands of pages are closed in protest of Reddit’s recent changes. However, some pages will remain closed for only 48 hours, so from June 13, they will be active again. Other pages, meanwhile, will remain closed until Reddit responds to the protest. The people who are protesting are hoping that the company will reconsider its position of charging third-party developers to have access to essential data for the continuity of applications.
According to information published by Subreddit Stats, 11 of the top 100 website pages are associated with video games. Nine of the 11 video game pages will be shut down for at least 48 hours, affecting more than 54.3 million people.
It is important to note that r/Games faces criticism for its decision to remain open. According to moderates, the site closure would not significantly impact, so they decided not to participate in the protest.
On the other hand, one of the largest gaming subreddits, r/leagueoflegends which has over six million followers, has also decided to stay open. Many Reddit users are wondering what the reason is for the moderators’ decision to opt out of the protest.
Updates to Reddit’s terms of service
On June 9, Steve Huffman, the CEO, and co-founder of Reddit spoke at length about the changes to the company’s terms of service. According to Huffman, Reddit’s owners want the company to become self-sufficient. On the other hand, Huffman emphasizes that Reddit can no longer subsidize commercial entities that need large-scale data usage.
Addressing the community about changes to our API
byu/spez inreddit
Let’s remember that Reddit is one of the most popular social networks today, where thousands of users search for information on different topics. We can only wait and see if the protest of thousands of pages works. Many people are skeptical about Reddit’s response to these actions.