What's Happening at Reddit?

Question

Could someone kindly provide a brief summary or explanation of the recent news involving Reddit? It seems to be generating a lot of attention, but I'm struggling to piece together the key points. I'm curious to learn more about the underlying problem or controversy that has sparked these discussions.

enumjorge · Accepted Answer

For years, Reddit has given 3rd parties access to their APIs. Two uses of said APIs that are relevant to what’s going on are third-party mobile apps like Apollo (which has built a large user base) and tools that help mods moderate their subreddits. Reddit recently announced they will be charging very high fees for access starting July 1st.
The fees are so high that the developer behind Apollo said his bill would be $20M per month. As a result he announced he’d be shutting down the app. Many users are upset because they feel that these third-party apps provide a much better user experience than the official web and mobile apps.
There’s also some bad blood because at one point the dev behind Apollo was in negotiations with Reddit that went sour. Reddit CEO accused him of trying to extort the company, but Apollos dev released the recording of a conversation he had with the CEO where the CEO admitted the extortion had been a misunderstanding.
As for the mods, they will lose access to tools that make moderation easier. Mainly because of this, but also due to the Drama with third-party apps as a form of protest, several sub Reddit’s, some of which are among the largest communities on the site, decided to go private.
Those are the general highlights. Someone can jump in in case I missed anything.

ianpurton · Answer

Reddit wants to charge for it's API.Some users are annoyed as they are using 3rd party apps to help with moderation.They can protest by making subreddits private.But Reddit has been a clunky, ugly, painful user experience for many years and has succeeded despite that, so I guess Reddit will win.

skilled · Answer

Here is a good summary,https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

7373737373 · Answer

Greed, mostly

What's Happening at Reddit?

Reddit wants to charge for it's API.
Some users are annoyed as they are using 3rd party apps to help with moderation.
They can protest by making subreddits private.
But Reddit has been a clunky, ugly, painful user experience for many years and has succeeded despite that, so I guess Reddit will win.

Here is a good summary,
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

Greed, mostly