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Millions of Reddit users hit by 2-hour outage during ‘Blackout Day’: More than 7,000 sub-Reddits have been set to private in protest of new changes to the platform
- Reddit was hit by a global outage on Monday that affected the site and app
- It’s because users are protesting new developer fees and have taken forums private
Reddit has been hit by a global outage affecting millions of users as forums “go down” to protest the website’s increased developer costs.
Problems with the website and app surfaced on DownDetector, a site that monitors online outages, at 10:25 a.m. ET — but the reports subsided about two hours later.
It’s unclear why Reddit was down Monday, but it happened as more than 7,000 sub-Reddits were switched to private during the largest user-led online protest.
The movement is frustrated with pricing changes in developer fees, which can run into the millions of dollars for some users.
The protest will last 48 hours, but some users have warned that they will not make pages public if Reddit does not reconsider increased pricing plans for apps that provide access to the site.
Users flocked to Twitter to inquire about a possible Reddit outage, with one tweeting, “Nice to see even Reddit itself join the Reddit Blackout today.”
Reddit has been hit by a global outage affecting millions of users as forums ‘go down’ to protest the website’s increased developer costs
The massive outcry comes in response to Reddit’s announcement that it would request access to its application programming interface (API) from third parties with “additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights.”
And the increased prices will take effect on July 1.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed users’ “frustrations” in a Friday post to the site, explaining how the changes will work.
“As of July 1, 2023, the rate for apps requiring higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user/month for a typical third-party Reddit app),” Hoffman wrote.
He continued, “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining company and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that need large-scale data usage.”
While Hoffman looks forward to Reddit’s future, the move could force some app developers to quit.
Christian Selig, the developer of Reddit client app Apollo, said the higher prices would cost him as much as $20 million a year, Variety reports.
He further explained that this means that Apollo plans to cease operations on June 30.
The social news website went offline as more than 6,500 subreddits went down in one of the largest user-driven protests over new developer fees
However, Monday’s outage has been plaguing users worldwide.
DownDetector, a website that monitors online outages, showed more than 40,000 problem reports in the US at 10:41 a.m. ET.
Other parts of the world such as the UK, Europe and Asia are also experiencing problems with the platform.
However, Reddit has been experiencing outages almost every day for the past few weeks – the most recent was Sunday and before that was June 7th.