6/8/23: 2000 hours Eastern US time update: I know I keep updating this post. It is a VERY fluid situation.

Reddit's CEO, /u/spez, is doing an AMA tomorrow starting around 1030 hours Pacific US time. I would say this:

Tomorrow I will delete this thread. I will start a new one. After the AMA is over, y'all can come over here and talk about what we want to do. Maybe I'll post a poll. If I'm allowed to share any information from the Reddit Mod Council, I'll do that too. Let's give the man a chance to talk. Right now, I can say this: The reddit admins are concerned, they want us to be healthy and stay open, and they are doing what they can. Messages are being heard by people. Whether that translates into action by the very top is open to question.

EDIT: Link to an infographic and a great mod comment about why you should care, even if you don't use a third party app. Thank you.

A few of the mods are talking about taking us dark June 12-14 with the other subs to protest the API changes. A lot of other subreddits representing hundreds of millions of subscribers are going dark for those three days.

If you aren't clued in, Reddit is going to start charging a ridiculous amount of money in July for API access which will kill 3rd party apps. Right now, about 75% of our traffic in this subreddit comes from mobile apps. Since the official reddit mobile app is a steaming pile of dogshit, I'm assuming most of you are using third party apps to read this message.

This means if you use any "third party" application to access reddit it will likely stop working in a few weeks. It will also affect how moderators take care of communities. We can't be at our desk all the time - a lot of actions are done on mobile. This should not affect you if you are using a mobile broswer.

Thoughts? There is some real concern that this is going to destroy communities on reddit, and I know we are concerned about our little corner of the world here.

RESPONSE EDIT: So, I am on the Reddit Moderator Council, which is what it sounds like. A small group of moderators picked by admins to communicate with admins directly on a constant basis. We have zoom calls and such. Most of what we discuss there isn't able to be freely shared until it is announced later. However, today one of the admins put a post in the mod council subreddit and said we could share this. I am personally not sure I believe all of it, but here you go. If this is all true, this is mostly good news. Still means 3rd party apps are going away, and that is a real concern for a lot of you.

Public: Share it with anyone.

Hello!

We’re sharing notes from a discussion we had this morning between Steve (aka u/spez) and moderators and developers from our Moderator Council, Partner Communities, and Developer community. The key action items we took away from the meeting:

• We are open to postponing the API timeline to launch mod tooling, if mods agree to keep their subreddits open. We will discuss this in the Council and Partner call tomorrow.

• Non-commercial apps built for accessibility will continue to have free API access.

• Mod bots will continue to have free API access.

• Pushshift will come back online for mod tools within two weeks; we are creating an approvals process to avoid impersonation.

• u/spez will post in r/reddit this week.

Please find our notes below:

Accessibility

• We will exempt any non-commercial accessibility-minded app, bot, or tool – and are in contact with those folks.
• We will close the accessibility feature gap in our apps. We can do better, and we will.
• Reddit needs an accessibility checklist. Our designers and devs all care about accessibility, but the accessibility support in apps is inconsistent. We should treat it like any other part of our UI.
• Free API Access
• Non-commercial users have API access. For rate limit concerns, exemptions are available. See next section.

Mod Tools

• We will exempt any mod tool or bot affected by the API change.

• Pushshift will come back online for mods, but will stop doing the things we had an issue with, like reselling user data to other folks. The agreement will take another week or two, and we’re in the process of finalizing.

• Mod bots should all have access – if not today, then soon.

• We want all accessibility and mod tools to maintain access.

• We understand that y’all prefer to use mod tools on 3rd party apps. We’re closing the gap as fast as we can, especially in critical areas like Mod Queue, which we should have in-app on iOS and Android by the end of the month.

Why charge?

• It’s very expensive to run – it takes millions of dollars to effectively subsidize other people’s businesses / apps.

• It’s an extraordinary amount of data, and these are for-profit businesses built on our data for free.

• We have to cover our costs and so do they – that’s the core of it. Apollo

• Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

• Prices we released work out to one dollar a month per user; if Apollo doesn’t put effort forth, it hits three dollars per month.

• (As mentioned in Mod Tool section above) Pushshift will come back online for mod tools within a week or two.

Blackout

• We respect your right to protest – that’s part of democracy.

• This situation is a bit different, with some mods leading the charge, some users pressuring mods. We’re trying to work through all of the unique situations.

• Big picture: We are tolerant, but also a duty to keep Reddit online.

• If people want to do this out of anger, we want to make sure they’re mad for accurate reasons, not over things that are untrue. That’s a loss for everyone.

Third Party Ads

• We didn’t know how prevalent 3rd party ads were on 3rd party apps – they’re trouble for us.

• When people see their ads next to the wrong content, they don’t get mad at the 3rd party app, they get mad at us. We can’t ensure brand safety due to the ad networks many 3rd party apps use, which aren’t strong on privacy and tracking.

Adopt-An-Admin

• Steve invited to AAA on AITA – agreed to do it last week of July or first week of August, will give honest look to do it sooner.

NSFW

• Regulatory environment around NSFW is changing rapidly and aggressively.

• The challenge is regulators and lawmakers (those who fine and sue), who don’t care about 3rd party apps and don’t understand them. They’ll come after us, not the 3rd party apps. Lawmakers don’t look at NSFW with nuance.

• We have work to do on our platform around age-gating and related stuff to be able to keep that content – we will fight for it. Sex is universal.

Devvit (Developer Platform)

• There are no plans to cut off the legacy API, but Dev Platform (Devvit) will be a better fit for most users of our API.

• When dust settles, it would be useful to talk with devs about what to put in Devvit for their bots to work there.

• The point of this is to give folks a more powerful way of extending Reddit – better than working on an old API, paying out of your own pocket, etc.

• If you’re building things to make Reddit better for redditors, we want to find a way to support you.

Reddit’s Priorities

• Mod tools

• Improvements to Reddit core

• Accessibility

• New dev platform

• Have Reddit be vibrant, healthy, sustainable

• Reddit is an open platform but it’s not free to run or operate and we need to be a self-sustaining business

Mod Takeaways

Communication

• The timing of communication has left moderators feeling blindsided, regardless of the conversations that have been taking place behind closed doors.
• The manner of communication has felt overly corporate and insincere, lacking consideration for the moderators affected by such changes.
• Confusion and misinformation has taken off, resulting in more anger and public outcry.

Timing

• The time given between the initial announcement, price announcement, and the July 1st cut off-date has put moderators and developers in a pinch, trying to assess what tools and bots they may lose.
• There was not sufficient time given for Reddit to close the tooling and accessibility gaps necessary for moderators to live without their 3rd-party resources.
• We are open to postponing the API timeline to launch mod tooling, if mods agree to keep their subreddits open. We will discuss this in the Council and Partner call tomorrow.

Mobile App

• While mod tooling needs addressing across all platforms, it lacks significantly in the mobile sector.