A small selection of the subreddits participating in the Reddit blackout. Courtesy of Reddit

By Mira Fox June 12, 2023

A large swath of Reddit, one of the largest social media networks, went dark Monday to protest the platform’s new decision crackdown on third-party apps, which went into effect this week. Over 7,000 subreddits, including r/Judaism and r/Jewish as well as some of the site’s largest communities with tens of millions of members, were participating in a 48-hour blackout to protest the policy, which is shutting down the third-party apps that users depend on to moderate posts and ensure accessibility for blind or deaf users.

In a statement pinned to the top of the r/Judaism subreddit last week, mods announced that the subreddit would join the protest. The post explained that the subreddit’s admins depend on third-party apps and bots to moderate posts for antisemitism. Currently, visitors to r/Judaism are met by a message explaining that the subreddit is set to private “in protest of API changes and disability access.”

The cross-Reddit protests are in response to the company’s new plan to charge for access to its API, or application programming interface, the site data that third-party apps use to operate. In an AMA — “ask me anything” — post to Reddit, the company’s CEO, Steve Huffman, said that apps that required large amounts of API access would now have to pay. (Despite inviting questions, Huffman only answered two of the thousands posted.)

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Huffman promoted new, internal moderation tools that Reddit is working on launching — but are not yet available. With the changes going into effect Monday, that means subreddits like r/Judaism could be exposed to neo-Nazis and hate speech if they reopen to the public. 

In the comments on Huffman’s AMA, Sarah A. Gilbert from the Coalition for Independent Technology Research pointed out that Reddit has been promising moderation updates for eight years without delivering anything that met moderators’ needs.

Unlike most other major social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Reddit is largely moderated by its users. While Twitter and Meta spend hundreds of millions of dollars on moderation, Reddit delegates that work to volunteers, users who are deeply devoted to the unique community or subculture that their subreddit cultivates, and understand its subtle norms.

Though Reddit has some overarching policies, each subreddit makes up its own rules and volunteers moderate posts and discussions, locking or deleting posts and comment threads that break its rules.

Especially on larger subreddits, which can have millions of members, mod work is arduous, even with automation and moderation bots and tools. Gilbert, who moderates r/AskHistorians, a subreddit where users can get queries answered by professional historians, wrote that mods don’t just police posts, but also spend hours and significant emotional labor talking to their users and crafting policies that serve their communities.

Moderation rules are variable based on the unique cultural norms and goals of the subreddit, which is part of why the customizable third-party tools are so essential. In r/AskHistorians, rules aim at ensuring accuracy and preventing Holocaust denial. Others, devoted to “snarking” on a topic or person, allow plenty of insults and offensive jokes, yet have careful rules to prevent harassment.

In r/Judaism, discussion ranges widely, including personal dilemmas, halachic questions and memes. While a bot can catch flagrant antisemitism, the moderators also catch numerous proselytizing posts from Christians. Without the third-party tools, the mods wrote in their post before the blackout, the site could easily be overtaken by white supremacists, or simply by missionaries — either of which would destroy a community that has become an important place for Jews from across the religious spectrum and across the world to mix, share ideas and perspectives and simply connect

Thanks to the many distinct communities within the subreddits, Reddit has become a uniquely user-driven corner of the internet. Users feel that they built the site — which they quite literally did in most cases. And they are angry that their work to create safe and unique communities online is being undercut in the name of monetization.

Reddit is currently not profitable, and the new charges for API access are part of a plan to move toward profitability, which has already led to layoffs and hiring cuts. The company reportedly plans to become a publicly traded property, with an IPO rumored later this year. (Twitter also recently began to charge for API access.)

The subreddit blackout destabilized the entire site Monday morning, causing an outage across Reddit. Some subreddits say they plan to stay dark for longer than the 48-hour protest, with reopening depending on Reddit’s actions around API pricing. The vast majority of sites with over 500,000 members have gone private.

r/DankMemes, however, a subreddit with 6 million users is still letting people post dank memes — as long as they’re spoofing the API decision.

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