Reddit—Reddit imposed prohibitive API pricing killing third-party apps with 30-day notice despite community protest
On April 18, 2023, Reddit announced it would charge for API access at rates that would cost major third-party app Apollo $20 million annually, forcing it to shut down on June 30, 2023. Despite 8,500+ subreddits going private in protest (June 12-14) and accessibility concerns from r/Blind moderators, CEO Steve Huffman refused to negotiate or revise pricing. The rapid 30-day implementation timeline was criticized compared to industry standards. Third-party apps were widely used by moderators for organization, spam blocking, harassment detection, and by disabled users for accessibility. The change prioritized Reddit's IPO preparation over community welfare and platform accessibility.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Open Internet & Web Freedom | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| User Autonomy | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.850 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.68)
Evidence (2 signals)
8,500+ subreddits went private to protest Reddit API pricing, affecting r/funny, r/gaming, r/science
From June 12-14, 2023, an estimated 8,500 subreddits went private or restricted posting to protest Reddit's API pricing changes. Major communities participating included r/funny, r/science, r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music, r/todayilearned, r/art, r/DIY, r/history, r/sports and r/food. The r/Blind community criticized Reddit's lack of response on making the official app accessible, stating they could no longer moderate on mobile because the third-party apps they used would no longer work.
Reddit announced API pricing that would cost Apollo $20M annually, forcing app shutdown June 30
On May 31, 2023, Apollo developer Christian Selig publicly disclosed that Reddit's new API pricing would cost his app approximately $20 million per year based on seven billion requests per month ($1.7M monthly). Selig announced on June 8 that Apollo would shut down on June 30, 2023 due to the prohibitive pricing. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The New York Times the pricing was justified, saying 'The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable, but we don't need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.'