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Money, Mods, and Mayhem
The Turning Point
In 2024, Reddit is a far cry from its scrappy startup roots. With over 430 million monthly active users and more than 100,000 active communities, it’s a social media giant. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Reddit is learning this lesson the hard way.
The turning point came in June 2023 when Reddit announced changes to its API pricing. For the uninitiated, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it’s basically the secret sauce that allows third-party apps to interact with Reddit. The new pricing model threatened to kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer Christian Selig didn’t mince words: “Reddit’s API changes are not just unfair, they’re unsustainable for third-party apps.”
Over 8,000 subreddits went dark in protest.
The blackout should have reminded Reddit’s overlords of a crucial fact: Reddit’s success was built on the backs of its users. The platform had cultivated a sense of ownership among its community, and now that community was biting back.
One moderator summed it up perfectly: “We’re the ones who keep this site running, and we’re being ignored.”
I was using RedReader and last I checked it was still active. Originally I thought I’d still follow the local subreddit but I’ve had zero interest in using Reddit, the people who run it are contemptible.
You cannot access content marked NSFW through RedReader. Also, I think the only reason RedReader is still allowed is because it has better screen reader support or something.
Yeah, last I heard the corporate owners of Reddit allowed Android client and one iphone client, so they could claim they were “accessible” to the visually impaired.