Redditors get creative with their protest as company threatens action

Reddit communities have taken up alternative forms of protest after CEO Steve Huffman decided not to change its API rules that could damage third-party apps on the platform.

Many Reddit communities, also known as subreddits, are making changes to their rules, from relaxing them, and completely changing the community format to even introducing ridiculous rules such as removing posts with the letter ‘k’ in it.

Out of more than 100,000 active subreddits, nearly 9,000 decided to go dark on June 12, while some returned to public settings after 48 hours, others have remained private until the company meets their demands, which include lowering the charges for third-party app developers beginning July.

Despite these protests, Reddit seems adamant about carrying on with their policy, stating that hosting third-party apps is too expensive and has been accused of removing moderators from communities that are continuing their protests.

Therefore, to continue their protest without “violating” any Reddit site-wide rules, communities are picking up new methods.

According to a report by TechCrunch, some of the protesting methods include:

r/Shitposting has reportedly banned posts with the letter k after one of their admins named Kevin was removed. The description of the community has also changed to “Kevin saw the API changes, felt overwhelming disappointment, and decided to go to the store. We don’t know when he will return.”
 

Some of the largest communities on the platform such as r/aww (34.1 million members), r/pics (30 million members) and r/gifs (21.1 million members) have decided to only post memes and gifs of John Oliver. A move that was supported by the actor & comedian on Twitter. Other communities such as r/Showerthoughts, with 27.5 million members, has chosen to remain private.

Why are Redditors protesting?

This move is a part of the ongoing protests by Redditors on the API rule changes that were announced by Steve Huffman in April this year, to begin from July 1st.  

In the announcement, Hoffman had stated that the policy on API, or application programming interface, would change so that the company would begin profiting from businesses that use the platform’s data to create or hone artificial intelligence tools.

For context, third-party apps have been using Reddit’s open API to collect data or even create apps. Major apps had initially stated that they would leave the platform on the eve of the implementation of the new policy, however, Hoffman has stated that the company is in talks with these apps.