Protests against Reddit's planned changes to third-party APIs began today, and even though nothing has been reversed just yet, it's probably fair to say the immediate impact they've had was a big success. So many subreddits participated in the planned blackout, which will continue on into the week, Reddit crashed and was effectively inaccessible for more than two hours.Reported by , when visiting Reddit on Monday morning, you were met with a sea of blank posts with nothing but a “something went wrong, don't panic” message in each. While most of you likely didn't panic when met with that sight, higher-ups at Reddit HQ probably did. Although they knew the blackout was coming, they probably didn't imagine it having quite that big an impact right off the bat.Even though the issue has been resolved and Reddit has been back online for a number of hours at the time of typing this, the blackout continues. There's a Twitch stream tracking the number of subreddits participating in the protest courtesy of (thanks, ). 7,857 communities have gone dark right now, although that numbe𒅌r increases every time I check back.
The blackout is scheduled to roll on until at least Wednesday, although a number of moderators have mಞade it clear they plan to continue p༒rotesting until something is done. As for what that something will need to be, and what exactly everyone is so upset about, Reddit recently announced plans to charge third-party apps for access to its API.
If that sounds familiar, it's the same controversial decision Twitter made earlier this year. One of ꧂the most vocal people during all this has been Apollo creator Christian Selig. Selig revealed Apollo will shut down at the end of June as the cost of running the app with the addition꧃al cost of paying Reddit for API access is simply not affordable. According to , Apollo made seven billion Reddit API requests in May alone. Helig claims it would cost Apollo $20 million per year should Reddit go ahead with its plans.
Apollo won't be the only third-party app affected by the changes, but it remains to be seen whether Reddit will backtrack. A⛎lthough the blackout had a big impact on the site shortly after it went into effect, the subreddits participating will likely need to continue standing firm if they really want to make Reddit rethink its plans.