Sitewide Reddit protest to happen on June 12 with 48 hours of shutdowns

Last week, we heard from a prominent third-party Reddit app developer that some upcoming site changes would essentially kill off all third-party apps. In brief, Reddit will start charging developers for access to data APIs, which have been free until now. However, the amount of money Reddit will charge is allegedly so high that almost all third-party apps would instantly become unsustainable.

The Reddit community is not happy with this, to put it mildly. Over the weekend, momentum began towards a sitewide Reddit protest. Now, there is a plan of action: starting June 12, prominent subreddits will go dark in protest of the API changes. Most subreddits involved in the protest will plan to be dark for 48 hours. However, some smaller subreddits plan to go dark indefinitely until the planned API access changes are dropped or altered satisfactorily to keep third-party apps alive.

Some of the most notable subreddits that plan to take part in the protest are:

There is a semi-up-to-date list of all subreddits involved in the protest.

Of course, there is the chance, however small, that Reddit could prevent this protest by making changes to its planned policy before June 12. Android Authority has reached out to the company for a statement on this matter, but didn’t hear back before publishing. We will be sure to update the article if and when we get a response.

In the meantime, you should plan on at least some of the subreddits you follow to be offline on June 12. Time will tell if this Reddit protest keeps third-party apps alive or not.