The communities went on strike in protest of Reddit’s reform, where the service aims to fund app developers.
Reddit is in a tight spot when it comes to its reform. bilalulker / Alamy Stock Photo
The popular online discussion site Reddit has gone silent. The administrators (moderators) of the largest communities have set the communities to private, and you can no longer participate in them.
The number of users in the communities varies from a few thousand to tens of millions.
It’s a protest against Reddit’s upcoming overhaul, where they’ll start charging third-party app developers to run the service in-app.
According to Reddit’s representative, the reform is intended to cover the service’s costs of several million. The reform is supposed to enter into force on July 1.
According to the BBC the payments to one application developer are estimated to be up to 19 million euros. The assessment was given to the BBC by the developer of the Apollo application Christian Selig. Apollo is one of several applications that act as the service’s user interface.
According to Business Insider about 7,300 communities ended up muting conversations on Monday. According to the tracking on Twitch, on Tuesday the number had already increased by about 8400 to the community. There are a total of 8733 communities in the service.
The privacy policy is valid for 48 hours. Commenting on the situation to the BBC, the administrator stated that, if necessary, the silence can still last as long as the service withdraws from the reform.
– Based on the conversations between Reddit representatives and chat moderators, I don’t think the service will withdraw from the reform, one community moderator commented on the case.
Reddit’s communities discuss a community-specific topic and function like a discussion board.