Reddit has been under fire since the company announced the new API pricing that could literally cost third-party developers millions of dollars every month. This led to a site-wide protest as moderators of various subreddits announced their intention to go dark starting June 12 to protest the new API pricing.
Now, in an internal memo, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent protests noting that "like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well". Huffman further mentioned that the blackout did not have a significant impact on Reddit"s revenue and that the company expects many of the subreddits to come back online on Wednesday.
He also clarified that the company intends to go ahead with the plan and there are no changes whatsoever.
The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. 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.
Not only that, but the memo also addressed the safety of the staff. Huffman acknowledges that there is frustration around and urges employees to not go outside wearing Reddit gear.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.
Reddit"s CEO had earlier noted that the company plans to exclude accessibility-focused apps from the new pricing structure. He also addressed the concerns around existing third-party apps, two of which, Apollo and Reddit is Fun will be shutting down on June 30.
Huffman confirmed that the company is in talks with other apps to find a common ground but at the same time, Reddit plans to move forward with the changes.
You can check out the full memo below
Hi Snoos,
Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.
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 most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. 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.
While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.
Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.
Most of Reddit has gone dark since yesterday to protest these changes. This includes many of the Microsoft and Tech oriented subreddits and more than 8,000 subreddits in total, including r/memes, r/aww, r/funny, r/gaming, and r/music. Following the start of the protest, Reddit had a brief outage as it tried to deal with an influx of users on the platform.
Source: The Verge