Changes to the Reddit API are forcing beloved apps like Apollo to shut down, and Redditors aren’t happy.
Reddit’s new API updates announced in April could change the platform forever — but maybe not in a good way. Ever since Apollo for Reddit developer Christian Selig revealed he’d be on the hook for $20 million per year due to the changes, Redditors have been furious over how the updates might affect third-party apps.
Thousands of Reddit’s communities, including some of the biggest, most active ones like r/funny, r/gaming, r/gadgets, and r/todayilearned, have now gone dark as a part of a coordinated protest. As the protest spread to more subreddits on Monday morning, Reddit.com started crashing, with an outage affecting the main homepage.
While Reddit announced it would exempt accessibility-focused apps from the pricing changes, things are looking more grim for other developers. On June 8th, Selig announced he would have to shut down the Apollo app at the end of the month, and soon after, other developers said they’d be shutting down their apps, too.
CEO Steve Huffman hosted an AMA about the changes on Friday, and based on that, it seems like Reddit won’t budge on the changes.
Here’s our coverage of the changes at Reddit.