This article briefly:
Reddit's planned API changes spark protests from volunteer moderators.
The movement has received widespread support from various cryptocurrency subreddits on the platform.
Despite the backlash, Reddit will implement the controversial changes starting July 1.
Reddit, the widely acclaimed "front page of the internet," is in turmoil right now. Moderators and thousands of communities on the online platform are uniting to protest planned changes to the site's data access policy.
The major move caught the attention of Reddit’s massive cryptocurrency community, leading to an unlikely alliance between two different entities.
Reddit moderators protest API changes
Reddit has become a popular social media platform through the foundation of countless different subreddits. These forums are run by volunteer moderators and each focuses on a unique topic. However, this democratic governance model that represents the free spirit of the internet is now facing potential threats.
Protests broke out on Reddit on June 12, culminating between June 12-14 when more than 7,000 subreddits were made private. These included larger subreddits like r/music, r/gaming, r/science, and r/todayilearned. At the heart of the issue was Reddit’s decision to start charging third-party developers for access to its application programming interface (API).
Apollo creator Christian Selig claims that developers have to pay $12,000 for every 50 million API requests, so the cost of running his popular third-party browsing app could exceed $20 million per year under the new plan.
Many developers also see the move as signaling the end of third-party apps that had free access to the platform’s data.
“You could be looking at a bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars from Reddit that I can’t make a dollar from because they’ve covered my previous operating costs,” Selig affirms. “That’s where it gets really tricky.”
Furthermore, the issue of eliminating third-party apps stems from their important role in providing accessibility features. Moderators with disabilities rely heavily on these features. Despite this, Reddit has pledged to enhance its native accessibility features.
The company clarified that third-party apps developed primarily for users with disabilities would be exempted from the hefty API fees. However, many Reddit moderators were not happy.
“It’s cruel that a multi-billion dollar company is forcing people with disabilities (including severely disabled people) to simply ‘learn new tools’ and stop using the assistive tools they’re accustomed to — the tools they rely on — to access/manage the communities they rely on. ” wrote PotRoastPotato.
Crypto subreddits join protests in solidarity
One of the main drivers behind Reddit’s decision was the potential value of its data for generating artificial intelligence. As a platform for collecting and constantly updating all things on the internet, Reddit has data that can be turned into a gold mine for artificial intelligence algorithms.
Nonetheless, developers believe that Reddit is discontinuing third-party apps, leading to a massive protest by sub-Reddit moderators.
An interesting aspect of this story is the strong support the protests have received from the cryptocurrency community. Crypto-centric subreddits such as r/cryptocurrency, r/bitcoin, and r/ethereum have also joined the blockade. These subreddits join about 7,000 other communities that have gone private or switched to read-only.
However, not all cryptocurrency-related subreddits participated in the blackout. Subreddits such as r/altcoin, r/NFT, and r/dogecoin remained fully online, providing a platform for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to continue their discussions.
The outage led to a shift in online discussion, with many Reddit users turning to Twitter and decentralized Twitter alternatives like Bluesky and Nostr.
There has also been a surge in activity on the Discord social messaging platform, where many cryptocurrency enthusiast users and NFT projects have found a home. For example, during the Reddit outage, a Discord server called r/CryptoCurrency saw a large influx of users.
Reddit API changes will go live on July 1
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman responded to the backlash by considering changing the site’s content moderation removal policy, with the goal of allowing regular users to vote out moderators’ decisions if they’re unpopular.
“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you’re accountable to the voters,” Hoffman said. “So politicians need to be elected and business owners can be fired by shareholders. I think on Reddit, the analogy is closer to landed aristocracy: whoever gets there first stays there and passes it on to their descendants, and that’s not democratic.”
However, his comments were met with more skepticism. Some saw them as a threat, as evidenced by a statement from an r/gaming moderator.
"Our entire community is behind us in opposing this change," one Reddit moderator said. "It feels good to have the power to say, 'If you push these changes, we will not continue to moderate our communities.' If it's pretty much the entire site, are they going to destroy what they've built in all of these communities just to push this very unpopular change that both Reddit's administrators and users are vehemently against?"
While the debate continues, Reddit has released a full roadmap of the upcoming changes. Titled “ Accessibility Update for Mod Tools: Part 1,” it details the changes that will begin on July 1.
Still, the social media giant promised to share another update on June 30.
How administrators can access the audit tool (before July 1)
ModQueue (view and manipulate posts and comments, filter and sort content, add removal reasons, and bulk manipulate items) (as of July 1)
ModMail (inbox, read, reply to mail, create new mail, private mod notes) (before July 1st)
User settings (manage mods, approved users, muted users, banned users) (before July 1st)
Community setup (late July)
Ban circumvention settings (late July)
Additional user settings (late July)
Remaining module surfaces (August)
As the battle between Reddit and its moderators intensifies, third-party applications and artificial intelligence in its ecosystem have sparked heated debate. The crypto community’s support highlights Reddit’s importance as a key cryptocurrency discussion space.
