User protest toppled Reddit; to understand

HE Reddit backs up and running after user goes offline due to “strike”has shut down several of the platform’s main communities. Thousands of subreddits have been private and are expected to remain so indefinitely.

Reddit spokesman Tim Rathschmidt admitted that it was the power outage that crashed the site. “Significant number of subdirectories moved to private caused some expected stability issues.” Border.

The situation was resolved only yesterday, but Rathschmidt said the company will “monitor the situation closely”.

According to this Down DetectorReddit went offline around 11:00 am (Brasília time) yesterday and started working again around 2:00 pm.

Out-stream communities

The Redditor protest affected many main channels on the forum such as r/funny, r/aww, r/gamming, r/music, r/science, r/pics, r/todayilearned, r/book, r/food. and er / memes. There are all these channels at least 20 million members.

Brazilian subreddits also joined the movement and joined the closure, preventing people from entering and discussing topics. These include r/brasil, r/rpg_brasil, r/AMABrasil, and r/FortniteBrasil.

The move is being tracked by reddark.untone.uk, a page that compiles all communities that have temporarily shut down their activities.

Reddark took advantage and opened a livestream on Twitch that broadcasts the number of sub-series being shut down in real time. Around 11:30 am this Tuesday (13) there are already over 8,400 closed forums.

What’s going on on Reddit?

Some kind of redditor strike a response to the forum’s decision to make third-party software harder and fee for application programming interface (API) access. Everything has been decentralized and the movement has no leader for now.

In the r/Save3rdPartyApps subreddit, one of the forum owners gave a great explanation of what’s going on and what the groups’ requests are. The user, identified as “Toptomcat”, begins by announcing that on May 31, 2023, Reddit had raised the price of third-party apps to use its API, leading to the community shutdown.

“The two-day cut is not the goal and it is not the end. If things reach the 14th with no signs that Reddit has decided to fix what’s broken, we’ll use the community and buzz we’ve built since then as a tool for future action”says part of the text.

Don’t Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!
In Save3rdPartyApps by u/Toptomcat

Those responsible for apps using the Reddit API say the blackout was done because the moderators “couldn’t do what they did with the dangerous tools found in the official app.”

“This is not something any of us do easily: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to continue doing what we love,” they say.

Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, a third-party application highly appreciated by users, was one of the speakers on the subject. According to him, the new values ​​Reddit has implemented will mean that the Apollo team will have to spend US$20 million per year (about R$97 million at current exchange rates). Selig announced that payment of the amount is considered impossible and if nothing changes, Apollo should be taken off the air on June 30.

Apollo will close on June 30. Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so much for all your support over the years. ?? https://t.co/HOJaLMW8fx

— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) 8 June 2023

Reddit challenge

Like many other major technologies, Reddit is going through some major overhauls. Earlier this month, the company announced the layoffs of 90 employees, representing about 5% of the company’s workforce.

“We performed solidly in the first half and this restructuring will position us to take that momentum into the second half and beyond,” CEO Steve Huffman wrote in an email to employees.

In addition to the layoffs, Reddit has cut its hiring target from 300 to 100 employees in 2023. There are about 2,000 people working for the brand, which now owns the internet’s most popular forum.

Spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said of the redditor movement: Border The vast majority of developers using the API will not have to pay for access and the Data API is free for certain uses.

He also stated that the API is free for mod and bot resources, adding that Reddit is discussing the issues “with various communities”.