Over 6,000 subreddits have gone private due to Reddit pricing changes

Over 6,000 subreddits have gone private, protesting Reddit’s upcoming API pricing changes, writes The Verge.

In particular, the communities with the largest number of subscribers on the platform joined the campaign: r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music and r/science. They are now no longer publicly available, even to Reddit users who were previously subscribed to them.

While many subreddits are going private, others (such as r/NintendoSwitch, r/Frugal, and r/StarWars) have instead decided to limit the number of new posts. Moderators will not allow new content to be added to these communities while the protest is ongoing.

As you know, Reddit announced changes to its API policy in the spring. They limit the number of API requests made by third-party clients. After that, the developer of Apollo said that Reddit could charge the app about $20 million a year, if it keeps operating on the current scale. Ultimately he was forced to announce the closure of Apollo as of June 30.

At the same time, other subreddits announced a protest on June 12. They declared their intention to “go dark”, i.e. go private, in response to Reddit’s new pricing policy. For its part, the platform has decided to make an exception regarding the prices for applications that are accessibility oriented.