Millions Of Users Are Preparing To Boycott Reddit Next Week Over Their "Greedy" Price Hike

Uproxx - It all started a few days ago, with a post from the developer of Apollo, a popular third-party mobile app used to access Reddit, in the Apollo subreddit. The post currently has over 154,000 upvotes (which is a lot) and is titled, “Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing. Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as-is.” The post goes into greater detail and notes that Apollo would likely cease to exist under this model, which would be prohibitively expensive. Developers of other third-party Reddit apps have shared similar posts.

Since then, there has been a movement to protest this. A June 2 post from the newly formed r/Save3rdPartyApps subreddit is leading the charge and it does a great job at summarizing the situation. It states:

“A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.Even if you’re not a mobile user and don’t use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .This isn’t only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.”

Even if you are not a frequent Reddit user I have to imagine you are familiar with the platform. As one of the most visited sites on the internet it serves as a sounding board for fans a freaks alike. Whether you want to share fan theories on Succession or make merch suggestions to the Anus boys, Reddit is the place for you.

Fun fact: Reddit is also how I found out that I am ugly and gay and everything I do actually suck. Thanks Reddit!

But now the internet's gossip-filled lunch room is facing a boycott from millions of users over their policy change regarding third-party apps. API calls used to be free and now they will be charging a fee (a model made mainstream by Twitter), which will likely drive most of those apps out of business.

If you aren't fluent in nerd I will help you out: Some people make apps that present Reddit in a different, more digestible and customizable format, and to do so they need to have their app talk to Reddit's database. It used to be free for the two to talk and now it costs money. You know, kind of how that girl on OnlyFans you have been messaging has convinced you to bump up to the premium subscription even though it's not in your budget.

And never mind the fact you can probably find all her content for free on Reddit, that's besides the point right now. (Also, you're welcome.) Some of the Sub-Reddits posting about the boycott have millions of active users so the dip in the site's traffic could be enormous when the boycott goes into effect.

Apparently the only thing Reddit users hate more than people who try and present their creativity and passions to the world is the actual Reddit app itself. The hardcore users seem to prefer apps like Apollo, Narwhal, and a handful of others that give them customization options not available on the native ap.

Now will any of this matter to Reddit? I guess that remains to be seen but theres already threads of people talking about moving over to 4chan and 8chan. It will be very interesting to see all those BTS fans mixing it up with the incel communities on those sites if this stretches out for any length of time. 

But maybe it won't matter at all and most people just mindlessly scroll Reddit while taking a dump and don't even know these 3rd party apps exist at all and it's just typical Reddit being dramatic. But here's hoping Reddit gets their shit together so everyone can go back to shitposting. The world needs checks and balances and my self-esteem would get way too inflated without you lunatics keeping me grounded.