Left-Wing Reddit Angers Its Userbase with Policy Changes, Causing Widespread Protests

The self-proclaimed “front page of the internet,” Reddit has seen hundreds of the notoriously left-wing platform’s most popular subreddits go private in response to recent policy changes resulting in the shutdown of multiple third-party apps.

The Washington Post reports that leftist social media platform Reddit recently announced a new policy requiring third-party apps to pay for access to its application programming interface (API), which has caused a great deal of controversy. Developers and users have reacted negatively to this change, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 1. As a result, there is an ongoing blackout protest and the shutdown of several popular subreddits.

Reddit announced two months ago that third-party apps, which give users access to Reddit through various interfaces, would have to start paying to access its API. The business claimed that roughly 10 percent of apps that make significant requests for Reddit data would be subject to the new pricing.

Apollo, a free Reddit browser, responded to the policy change by announcing it would shut down operations prior to the policy’s implementation. “The change would have cost $20 million a year because his app made roughly 7 billion requests for Reddit data each month,” said Apollo developer Christian Selig. Sync and RIF, two additional browsing applications, also announced closure plans for the end of the month.

The policy change was defended by Reddit’s co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, who claimed it was essential for the business’s long-term financial viability. “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” Huffman explained in a post.

The new regulation, however, has not been well received by all. Third-party apps, according to developers and some Reddit users, are essential resources for both users and moderators. They started a 48-hour blackout in protest, turning hundreds of subreddits private. Reddit relies on the volunteer work of moderators to run the subsections of its site, known as subreddits. Subreddits hold all of the content that users come to the site to view and interact with.

Concerns were raised by Sarah A. Gilbert, a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University and expert on Reddit. “We all want Reddit to succeed, and if that means having to monetize through the API — that’s not the issue — the issue is doing it in a way that enables people to moderate and to use Reddit freely,” Gilbert said. She also co-moderates r/AskHistorians, which participated in the blackout.

One of the unexpected outcomes of this subreddit blackout is the effect it has had on search engines like Google. In its current state, finding instructions or real content on Google has become extremely hard, leading many users to add “+Reddit” to the end of their search terms.

For example, “how to update my Macbook + Reddit” in order to receive instructions from actual people on how to complete certain tasks. Due to the subreddit blackout, this method of finding information has become obsolete.

Reddit has become notorious for its extreme left-wing bent. The company permanently banned “The_Donald,” a popular forum for supporters of Donald Trump. As Breitbart News previously reported:

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced on Monday that the company has banned “The_Donald,” which had at one point over 790,000 subscribers, over allegedly failing to meet “basic expectations” regarding content moderation.

Huffman said that the crackdown was part of “closing the gap between our values and our policies to explicitly address hate.”

“All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith,” Huffman wrote. “We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity.”

“To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit — but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception,” Huffman claimed.