Reddark! A comprehensive review of the Reddit blackout protest incident! Would a successful boycott render blockchain meaningless?

On June 12th, in the United States, the fifth-largest social media platform Reddit saw over 55% of subreddits similar to Dcard's "OO board" gradually closing or becoming read-only. A protest movement named "Reddark" is spreading, as Reddit is now charging exorbitant fees for its previously free and open API interface.

Event Overview

In April of this year, the "US version of PPT" Reddit decided to implement a new policy of charging for its API development and usage here, which means that its API is transitioning to a paid model for third-party applications. Reddit was also in discussions with several third-party app developers at the time.

Note: The owners of each subreddit are referred to as "moderators" below.

Trigger Point

Christian Selig, the developer of the popular third-party app Apollo based on Reddit with over 100,000 positive reviews on the Appstore, announced in his own subreddit here that his app will be shutting down on June 30, sparking resistance from various communities and moderators.

Many moderators protested by either closing or restricting access to their subreddits. They stated that they would not return to Reddit unless the issue is resolved properly. The slogan " Reddark" quickly spread, with about 4,900 subreddits closed to date, accounting for over 55% of the total, affecting tens of millions of users.

It is understood that Reddit's somewhat non-intuitive interface design has led to a large number of developers creating third-party apps for it. Approximately 60% of users access Reddit through the Apollo interface, 15% through other third-party apps, meaning that over three-quarters of users do not use the Reddit app itself.

Main Issues: Pricing and Deadline

In terms of pricing, Reddit stated that 1,000 API requests will cost $0.24, estimating that Apollo's approximately 7 billion API requests per month would cost nearly $2 million, far exceeding what Apollo can afford.

Additionally, Christian pointed out that there was only a short 30-day period from pricing announcement to policy implementation, in contrast to Apple's 30-month adjustment period when changing partner APIs:

What is an API?

Christian explained in the post that everything users do on Reddit is an API request. This includes voting, commenting, loading posts or subreddits, viewing messages, blocking users, etc. After the implementation of the fee policy, all API requests made by users will incur charges to the app's developers.

Christian stated that he could accept it, but the pricing was completely unreasonable.

Reasons for Reddit's Shift to Paid API

According to the official announcement in April and Engadget's report, the reason for implementing this policy is due to the recent rise of generative AI companies freely accessing Reddit's conversation content to train large language models, indirectly profiting from Reddit.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman explained:

Reddit's database is very valuable, but we don't need to provide it for free to the world's largest companies.

If the Boycott Succeeds, Is There No Need for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency?

As reported by Coindesk's editorial here, the challenges and protests faced by Reddit this time may have an impact on the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

The article mentions that Reddit's actions demonstrate that companies can unilaterally make decisions that significantly impact users, highlighting the importance of transparency, open source, and user control advocated by blockchain. Therefore, someone may establish a decentralized Reddit in the future.

On the other hand, if this protest succeeds, it may have negative consequences. It is relatively difficult to build successful social applications on the blockchain, requiring professional developers and users to jointly maintain the network and its applications. Therefore, the author believes that protests may be easier and more effective than blockchain:

Mass protests are on the rise in the United States, and people may use these actions to counter companies like Facebook and Google to improve privacy standards and other issues.

However, he also emphasized that cryptocurrencies offer new choices, as their value comes from users and can ensure clear economic costs of interactions on the network.