Reddit has been wearing a big red bullseye target for the online communities since it announced its new API pricing, and it has been disastrous for the company ever since. However, its CEO remains optimistic, saying that the aftermath is just temporary.
Reddit CEO Says It Will Pass
CEO Steve Huffman will not budge as subreddits have gone dark in the last three days. The new API pricing is here to stay with Huffman instructing Reddit employees that the blackout is temporary, and that they should just ignore the "noise."
These statements were from an internal memo, which also stated that employees should be careful with wearing "Reddit gear" in public since some people are upset about the situation and the workers may become the "object of their frustrations," as reported by The Verge.
Huffman confidently expressed that the protests have not caused any significant revenue impact, with several subreddits going back to normal by Wednesday. Of course, that's not the case for the subreddits that will be private indefinitely.
Almost 8,000 forums have already participated in the protest, many of which decided that they will not go back online until Reddit rescinds the API policy change. This puts doubt on the Reddit employee memo saying that things will be fine eventually.
Still, the Reddit CEO believes that it will pass, calling it "among the nosiest we've seen." It was made known that the teams in the company are already trying to resolve matters and that like all blowups, it will also come to an end sooner or later.
For those who are hoping that the protest is changing the CEO's mind, Huffman says that they "absolutely must ship what we said we would." He added that the long-term solution is improving the product, with upcoming critical mod tool launches to improve on for the short-term.
The memo notes that the company is still talking with other third-party app developers, even though two of the biggest apps such as Apollo and RIF are shutting down permanently. While accessibility apps will be exempted from the policy, others will still have to pay the price.
Major Outage Shows That Reddit is Not Fine
The company has already experienced a major outage due to the increased number of subreddits going private simultaneously. It lasted for about three hours with more than 43,000 people online reporting that they experienced issues.
Subreddits with more than 30 million members are still private, with r/Pic being restricted to where users can only read and comment. However, some of the subreddits that joined the protest have already gone public as well.
According to the live status updates from the Reddark livestream on Twitch, subreddits like r/Frugal with more than one million members have gone public, as well as r/space and r/NotTheOnion with more than 20 million members.
Despite the number of subreddits going back to normal, some are just now going private or restricted such as r/asmongold and r/TwoBestFriendsPlay. Some are still planning to remain private or restricted indefinitely.
