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Reddit admits more moderator protests could hurt its business
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 23 February - 17:42
Reddit filed to go public on Thursday ( PDF ), revealing various details of the social media company's inner workings. Among the revelations, Reddit acknowledged the threat of future user protests and the value of third-party Reddit apps.
On July 1, Reddit enacted API rule changes—including new, expensive pricing —that resulted in many third-party Reddit apps closing . Disturbed by the changes, the timeline of the changes, and concerns that Reddit wasn’t properly appreciating third-party app developers and moderators, thousands of Reddit users protested by making the subreddits they moderate private, read-only, and/or engaging in other forms of protest, such as only discussing John Oliver or porn .
Protests went on for weeks and, at their onset, crashed Reddit for three hours . At the time, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the protests did not have “any significant revenue impact so far.”