Updated October 2026: This post has been expanded from its original June 2023 version with the full background to the Reddit API dispute, how the blackout unfolded, how Reddit responded, what happened to third-party apps, and lessons that still apply to online communities. It is a historical account; details describe the time it covers, not today.
On June 12, 2023, thousands of Reddit communities went dark at once. Volunteer moderators switched their subreddits to private, so that even long-time subscribers saw only a notice explaining the protest. Some of the site's largest communities joined, including r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music and r/science, along with thousands of smaller ones. Others stayed visible but stopped accepting new posts.
The protest was aimed at a business decision that most Reddit users had never thought about: the price of Reddit's application programming interface, or API, the channel that outside apps use to load posts and comments. This post explains why that price provoked one of the largest user protests in the history of a major social platform, how Reddit responded, and what the episode changed.
Why an API price caused a revolt
For most of its history, Reddit let outside developers use its API for free or nearly free. That allowed a whole ecosystem of third-party apps to grow, such as Apollo on iPhone, and Reddit is Fun (RIF), Sync and BaconReader on Android. Many long-time users preferred them to Reddit's official app, and many moderators relied on them, or on other API-based tools, to manage busy communities.
On April 18, 2023, Reddit announced that it would begin charging for API access. The timing mattered. Reddit was preparing to go public, and the explosion of AI chatbots had made large collections of human conversation valuable as training data. CEO Steve Huffman told The New York Times that "the Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,". The company argued that big commercial users of its data should pay for it.
The actual prices became clear at the end of May. On May 31, Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, said Reddit had quoted him $12,000 for every 50 million API requests, which works out to about $0.24 per 1,000 calls. At Apollo's usage, he estimated the bill at up to $20 million a year. Developers also objected to the timeline: the new pricing would take effect on June 30, giving them about a month to rebuild their businesses. Reddit said the pricing reflected its own costs.
How the protest unfolded
Events moved quickly in early June. On June 7, Reddit said non-commercial apps focused on accessibility, such as those for blind and low-vision users, would be exempt from the charges. The next day, Selig announced that Apollo would shut down on June 30, and the developers of RIF and Sync announced the same. On June 9, Huffman held an "Ask Me Anything" session to defend the changes, saying Reddit could no longer subsidize commercial entities that used its data at scale. Most users responded with hostility, and some communities started their blackout early.
The main blackout began on June 12 and was planned to last 48 hours. Organizers coordinated through communities such as r/ModCoord and r/Save3rdPartyApps, and a public list of participating subreddits grew to more than 7,800 names. By the morning of June 12, 9to5Mac counted more than 4,000 subreddits already dark, together representing hundreds of millions of subscriptions. Reddit itself suffered an outage that morning, with Down Detector logging more than 40,000 reports, though it was unclear how much of that was caused by the protest.
In an internal memo reported by TechCrunch, Huffman told employees the protest had not had a significant effect on revenue and that, "like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass." More than 300 communities, including r/aww, r/music and r/videos, responded by announcing they would stay dark indefinitely, and others extended their blackout by a week.
- April 18, 2023
Reddit announces it will charge for API access. - May 31, 2023
Apollo developer says pricing would cost up to $20 million a year. - June 7, 2023
Reddit exempts non-commercial accessibility apps. - June 8, 2023
Apollo, RIF and Sync announce they will shut down June 30. - June 9, 2023
CEO Steve Huffman defends the changes in an AMA. - June 12-14, 2023
Planned 48-hour blackout; thousands of subreddits go private or restricted. - June 16-20, 2023
Reddit warns it may replace protesting moderators and removes some mod teams. - June 30, 2023
New API pricing takes effect; Apollo, Sync, BaconReader and RIF shut down. - February 2024
Reddit discloses an AI data-licensing deal with Google and files for its IPO. - March 21, 2024
Reddit begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
How Reddit ended the blackout
Reddit's moderators are volunteers, but the company owns the platform and sets the rules they operate under. When the 48 hours passed and many communities stayed dark, Reddit began to use that power. On June 16, it warned moderators that it could replace them if they kept their subreddits closed. Some communities found creative workarounds. r/pics, r/gifs and r/aww reopened after members voted to allow only posts about the comedian John Oliver. Others marked themselves as "NSFW" (not safe for work), a label that limits advertising.
Reddit treated the NSFW tactic as a violation of its rules against mislabeling communities. On June 20, it began removing moderator teams from some of those subreddits and reopening them, though several teams were later reinstated. Facing the prospect of losing their communities entirely, most protesting subreddits reopened over the following weeks.
What happened next
Reddit did not reverse course. The new API pricing took effect on June 30, 2023, and Apollo, Sync, BaconReader and RIF shut down that day. Some other third-party apps survived by switching to paid subscriptions to cover the new fees. Some organizations reduced their presence on the site; Mojang, for example, stopped posting Minecraft updates to Reddit. When Reddit held its collaborative pixel-art event, r/place, in July 2023, users filled parts of the canvas with messages aimed at Huffman.
The blackout also briefly exposed how much the wider internet depended on Reddit. Many people add "reddit" to search queries to find real user experiences, and commentators said search results got worse while so many communities were offline. A senior Google executive later acknowledged that users were "not quite happy" with results after the blackout.
The company's broader strategy went ahead. In February 2024, Reddit disclosed a deal reported to be worth about $60 million that lets Google use Reddit content to train its AI models and improve services such as Search. The same week, it filed to go public. Reddit's shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 21, 2024, under the ticker RDDT. They were priced at $34, valuing the company at about $6.4 billion, and closed their first day at $50.44. In hindsight, the API pricing that set off the protest was an early step toward treating Reddit's archive of human conversation as a product to license.
Lessons that still apply
- Developers building on someone else's platform carry real risk. Access that is free today can be priced or withdrawn on short notice. Apps with diverse data sources and clear agreements are more resilient.
- Volunteer communities have limited leverage. Moderators did the work, but Reddit controlled the infrastructure and could replace them. Anyone running a community on a commercial platform should understand its rules on ownership and moderation.
- Keep your own copies. If a community or tool matters to you, export what you can, such as wikis, rules and contact lists, so you can move if you need to.
- User data has commercial value. Posts written for a community can end up licensed for AI training. It is worth reading a platform's terms to understand how your contributions may be used.
- Unofficial apps depend on the platform's goodwill. If you rely on a third-party client, be prepared for it to stop working when the platform's business priorities change.
Sources
- Wikipedia: 2023 Reddit API controversy
- 9to5Mac: Reddit goes down as subreddits go dark (June 12, 2023)
- TechCrunch: Hundreds of subreddits plan to go dark indefinitely after Reddit CEO's internal memo (June 14, 2023)
- Android Authority: Apollo for Reddit is shutting down (June 2023)
- NBC News: Reddit strikes $60M deal allowing Google to train AI models on its posts, unveils IPO plans (February 2024)
- Business Today: Reddit shares end trading up 48% on debut (March 22, 2024)
Top image: "Code on computer monitor (Unsplash)" by Markus Spiske, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized). Charts by Thank You Robot.
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