Reddit alleges that the site experienced a crash due to the actions of protesting communities
Reddit experiences service disruptions following protests against its new policy to charge third-party apps for data access.
After thousands of Reddit communities launched a protest against the platform’s decision to implement fees for API access, Reddit encountered outages for several hours. In response, Reddit released a statement to NBC News, acknowledging that the transition of numerous subreddits to private caused anticipated stability issues and that the team was actively working to resolve them.
During the outage, Reddit’s front page displayed empty posts with the message, “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic.” Users were unable to load posts until the platform resumed normal operations.
The hashtag #RedditBlackout began trending on Twitter as news of the blackout spread. By Monday, there were over 4,238 tweets associated with the hashtag, and Reddit garnered more than 112,000 searches on the social media platform. Users started noticing technical issues on Reddit as early as 9 a.m., and one tweet about the Reddit outage received over 80,000 views within an hour, with the user noting the irony of Reddit participating in its own blackout.
The popular third-party app Apollo announced its intention to shut down on June 30 due to the new API terms, as its creator, Christian Selig, estimated the costs would exceed $20 million per year. Selig mentioned that Reddit would charge developers $12,000 for 50 million API requests.
Reddit’s API pricing changes follow a similar move by Twitter in March, where the social media platform began charging developers for access to its API, discontinuing free access that had been available until February.
