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After fan outrage and a promise by the biggest Apple-affiliated subreddit to stay out of the way, the CEO of Reddit tells staff that the protests are in response to the site's decision to charge developers for accessing its API will pass.
In April, Reddit told developers that they would need to start paying for API access in mid-June. stated that the change could cost them millions of dollars a year.
As a result, many subreddits decided to go offline in protest.
Apple's largest community on Reddit, r/Apple, chose to stay in the dark indefinitely, rather than the 24-48 hours suggested by other subreddits.
While I can't speak for the entire r/Apple development team, I can say that we voted to remain closed indefinitely due to bad decisions by Reddit's CEO. https://t.co/JyIT2qYbf4
— Aaron (@aaronp613), June 13, 2023
Despite this, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is asking Reddit staff to wait out the storm as he expects the power outages to pass by Wednesday.
“There's a lot of noise in this case. One of the loudest we've ever seen. Please know that our teams are working on this, and like all explosions on Reddit, this one too will pass” – Huffman. says an internal memo seen by The Verge. “We must definitely release what we promised. The only long term solution is to improve our product, and in the short term we have several upcoming critical tool launches for modifications that we need to work on.”
While he is confident the outrage will subside over time, he cautions employees against wearing anything related to Reddit in public.
“I'm sorry to say this, but please remember to wear Reddit clothes in public,” the memo reads. “Some people are really upset and we don't want you to be the object of their frustration.”
The API changes have hit many developers hard as Reddit plans to charge developers $0.02 per user to access their service.
Because of these prices, many applications have announced their closure.
For example, Apollo, one of Reddit's most popular apps, will shut down on June 30th.
If it continues to operate as usual, Apollo is estimated to face an annual API cost of $20 million.
