Since early this morning, thousands of Reddit subforums have pledged to go dark in protest of new app pricing prompts from Reddit itself. The blackout is dubbed Reddark, named after the third-party app that initiated the movement. The protest appears to be a response to new developer charges that will make many third-party apps unsustainable, according to Reddit app developers.
Reddit has explained that it does have the option to block third-party app developers entirely if they do not agree to cover their costs, but the Reddit admin FlyingLaserTurtle explains that Reddit would like to work with developers to find a solution instead.
“We understand that third party apps are valuable for the Reddit ecosystem and we intend to work with all of the right-minded developers to help bring those apps to market in a way that covers our costs,” FlyingLaserTurtle explains. “I know some of you are going to be upset at that last bit—that we have a responsibility to cover our costs—but that’s just where we’ve ended up. Trust me, as a part of the team who deals with building and maintaining all of the services that matter so much to you, we know that it’s not a good decision to pull this money out of those services without putting something else in. We don’t want to be that company, but there are real costs to run the things you use on Reddit, and we just need to cover them.”
It appears that the first reports of outage began around 3:37 pm BST / 7:37 am PT / 10:37 am EST. The Reddark protest consists of thousands of subreddits going dark in a show of solidarity, much like Reddit protests in the past like TheFastestMan’s subreddit to end r/TIFU censorship. A very dedicated individual appears to have created a special Twitch feed that tracks growing numbers of subreddits going private in solidarity under the ‘Reddark’ movement.
At the time of this writing, private subreddits number more than 7,100 out of the 7,265 that have promised to stand in unison with the movement, and that number is still climbing. When combined with other private subreddits, the counts sit well over 16,000. Of the 2.8 million subreddits on the site, 7,000 may be just enough to convince Reddit to reconsider.
The combined subscriber count for the subreddits involved is well over two and a half billion, including subreddits with over 30 million subscribers each. These include r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music, and r/science among many others, which should help send the message that this is far from an inconsequential issue.
Of course, you don’t have to put up with these issues on PC – you can instead plump for one of the best gaming PCs. They’re pre-built machines from professional PC builders and perfect for plug-and-play performance, but if you want the portability and seamless gaming experience of a gaming laptop, then you can find that too.