After incurring the wrath of its fanbase, and a promise from its largest Apple-related subreddit to stay down, Reddit’s CEO is telling employees that the protests in response to the site’s decision to charge developers for access to its API will pass.
In April, Reddit told developers they would need to begin paying for API access in mid-June. Developers have pushed back, stating that access costs would be untenable, with some developers stating the change could cost them millions of dollars per year.
As a result, many subreddits have chosen to go dark in protest.
Reddit’s largest Apple community, r/Apple, has chosen to stay dark indefinitely rather than the 24 to 48 hours other subreddits have suggested.
While I can’t speak for the entire r/Apple mod team I can say that we have voted to stay closed indefinitely due to Reddit’s CEO’s poor decision-making. https://t.co/JyIT2qYbf4
— Aaron (@aaronp613) June 13, 2023
Despite this, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman tells Reddit employees to weather the storm, as he anticipates that the blackouts will pass by Wednesday.
“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,” Huffman says in an internal memo seen by The Verge. “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 he’s certain that the outrage will ease up in time, he warns staff about wearing anything Reddit-related in public.
“I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public,” the memo said. “Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.”
The API changes have hit many developers hard, as Reddit plans to charge developers $0.02 per user for accessing its service.
Because of these prices, many apps have announced that they will be shutting down.
For example, Apollo, one of the most popular Reddit apps, will be shutting down on June 30.
If it were to continue to operate as normal, Apollo would face an estimated annual cost of $20 million in API fees annually.
