A few weeks ago, there was a lot of noise that Reddit users, Redditors, were going to protest against their own site. I guess Redditors thought that the protest would do something, but I think they’ve made no real impact in the end. What they’ve done instead is demonstrate a perfect case study on the dynamics of a super large website.
Reddit basics
Reddit is basically a massive collection of forums that focus on different topics.Let’s say you really like books. You read a lot, are always looking for new books to read, and like to participate in online forums. On Reddit, you and other people who live books can gather in a subreddit about books. The name subreddit is self-explanatory, it is a part of Reddit, a sub-Reddit.
A subreddit is typically referred as r/name_of_subreddit; r/ is a prefix.
Let’s call the subreddit on books r/books.
r/books discusses all topics related to books.
People can post about what they’ve read,
ask questions, write reviews, notify others of sales or new releases,
share links to different sites talking about books, and more.
Users can reply to posts by comments,
upvote or downvote (like/dislike) them,
or even give virtual gold, kind of.
There are subreddits for every topic you can imagine. Subreddits can range in size from less than 5 people to over 30 million. Users with accounts can join subreddits like subscribing to a YouTube channel.
Context
Reddit is basically a public company, they’ve been trying to make an IPO for a while now. They also have an API that allows people to make third party clients to access content. A decent amount of people use third party clients, because they think the official one sucks.
Recently, the executives at Reddit decided to charge a fee for accessing their API. This means that all third party client developers would have to pay a fee for their app to work, and that could be unsustainable for them. Reddit’s argument was that it’s unfair for third party apps to place significant load on Reddit servers for free. Lots of Redditors were against Reddit’s decision and decided to protest.
The protest would work by making subreddits go private, or limit activity. When a subreddit is private, outsiders (people without a Reddit account, or Redditors who didn’t join the subreddit) cannot browse the subreddit. Have you ever searched for something and see Reddit show up in the results often? If you clicked one of the results and the subreddit was private, you would turn back because you can’t browse it. Eventually, the lower activity would:
- Reduce traffic that goes to Reddit
- Lower their appearance rate on search engines
In other words: Reddit sees a big decrease in revenue. Redditors planned to initially protest by a “blackout”, with many subreddits going private. If everything went as planned for the Redditors, Reddit would likely backtrack on their decision quickly. A large fraction of the site’s traffic disappearing for a while is more important that the money made off third party apps.
Sounds great in theory, let’s see how it went in reality.
The Reddit Protest, June 2023
Chapter 1: Reddit goes dark
The protest was planned to last for 48 hours. Some subreddits were planning to extend the blackout if Reddit was stubborn. Some of the biggest subreddits (tens of millions of Redditors) went private or restricted mode, which meant no new posts were allowed.
Anyone that clicked on Reddit links during the early protest would have been unable to see anything, so they go to other websites. Even I was affected by this a few times. Reddit quickly slipped from the top results of Google queries. If this persisted, the Redditors would have an easy win. So far, they have the edge.
Chapter 2: Tension builds
The problem is, 48 hours is really nothing for a protest. It’s like having people protest against McDonalds for not being healthy by not buying their food for two days. The company is laughing at the protestors because they know:
- Not everyone will protest
- 98% of the protestors are going to come back anyways
A message from a Reddit executive found its way to the public soon after the protest started. The message basically said
we’ll just weather the storm, the protest will be over soon
And that made a lot of subreddits extend their blackout. The stakes just got higher for Reddit.
Chapter 3: Revolution
After the 48 hour protest, some subreddits were back online despite the leaked message. Others extended their protest. I guess Reddit executives must have not liked the state, because they started to deal with the remaining protestors.
Subreddits have moderators. These people have the power to delete posts, make the subreddit private/public, ban users, and other abilities. Some time after the initial 48 hours, some subreddits were forced to open up. Why?
Protesting moderators were forcibly replaced with pro-Reddit ones, which opened up the subreddit.
Reddit also basically sent ultimatums to several subreddits, threatening removal if they don’t open up. This power abuse is basically an authoritarian regime in action. What is the point of a moderator if Reddit can kick them off? Does the end user have any power? Is it impossible to stop the API changes?
Chapter 4: Defeat
You might think the protest would have died off by now, but it persisted for a little longer. Some subreddits sarcastically protested, such as the Steam subreddit (PC gaming platform Steam) only posting about the literal water vapour steam. Other subreddits went NSFW, which limits access and ads displayed.
But ultimately, Reddit won. They have the gun, and they put it to the figurative heads of Redditors. The website is back to normal, except for maybe a stickied message pointing people to join an alternative, such as a Discord server (ironic).
Post-battle analysis
Not a bang, but a (pathetic) whimper
Looking back at the “protest”, it was really quite sad; I guess I found a reason why Reddit is often associated with soyjaks. There’s probably a few hundred, thousands if I’m generous, people that actually left for alternatives, but everyone else was either lazy or a coward.
For this protest to have been effective, Redditors needed a lot more grit.
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Everyone, or at least 80 - 90% of users actually needed to protest. I’m willing to bet that only a small percentage, less than 40%, actually participated or even wanted to. There’s a reason why Reddit executives said they would outlast the protest
If some subreddits truly were wiped out because the community defied Reddit’s ultimatum, that would have been a bigger loss for Reddit than the subreddit. If a subreddit was forced open by FreedomTM-style invasion, people should have left
And not to mention, who actually was against the API changes to begin with? How many people do you think use a third party mobile client for Reddit? If I were to take a guess, I’d say less than 5% of all active users. Would someone using a browser or the official mobile app care about the protest’s motives?
It’s quite frustrating to see how the protest unfolded. Reddit is a company that clearly needs its users more than the users need it. It’s not like Facebook or Instagram where many people are dependent for the sake of contacting friends and family (very sad). Reddit is literally just a forum, it can easily be replaced or dropped entirely. 99% of existing subreddits have viable substitutes.
The (theoretical) weakness of centralized giants
The protest showed that talk is truly cheap. At least one positive point I can get out of this sad attempt of a protest is the now-proven vulnerability of Reddit and other massive websites.
The protest did have genuine effects on Reddit in the first 48 hours. Knocking a massive website off the first five results on Google is a big result, and people intentionally not visiting Reddit would definitely have negatively affected Reddit’s revenue. If only it persisted for longer and subreddits defied their ultimatum.
Any website is vulnerable to such a protest. If everyone collectively decided to actually boycott a service (insert your favourite: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc.), the company behind the service would panic quickly. But let’s be real, this won’t happen unless a superflare from the Sun destroys all electronic infrastructure we have. Everyone uses a service because everyone else uses it, and no one wants to leave because of that.
Anyways, I would like to applaud all the RedditorsTM for giving a fantastic case study on how a massive website and its users interact when a controversy strikes. It was fun to watch, and we gained knowledge of the typical outcome when people are outraged at something.