Mods used third party tools to help them with their unpaid work. These tools relied on access to the reddit api.
Then reddit charged ridiculous prices for api access, which would mean the apps would need money, so mods would need to pay to do their unpaid work or use the inferior reddit interface.
Given these choices, some mods decided to leave instead.
There was some magic internet data thing where third party apps (like various reddit apps not owned by reddit) access and use reddit to power their apps, free of charge. That's API. Pretty much all voluntary reddit mods use third party apps to mod. Reddit started charging for the API, making third party apps useless, forcing everyone into the Official Reddit App. A lot of people boycotted or quit.
It was a thing last... summer? Where reddit announced they were going to start charging for every call a third party program made using the API. This was done with the intent of shutting down 3rd party reddit apps and to get users on the official one so reddit could make more money. However, it also destroyed a bunch of 3rd party tools that mods more or less needed, and which reddit had been promising to implement themselves for years with no progress. There was a brief protest where mods of many subs shut them down (mostly for less than a week, though some are still down IIRC). A bunch of users and moderators left reddit and went to other sites.
Can someone explain me this "Reddit API" thing?
Mods used third party tools to help them with their unpaid work. These tools relied on access to the reddit api.
Then reddit charged ridiculous prices for api access, which would mean the apps would need money, so mods would need to pay to do their unpaid work or use the inferior reddit interface.
Given these choices, some mods decided to leave instead.
There was some magic internet data thing where third party apps (like various reddit apps not owned by reddit) access and use reddit to power their apps, free of charge. That's API. Pretty much all voluntary reddit mods use third party apps to mod. Reddit started charging for the API, making third party apps useless, forcing everyone into the Official Reddit App. A lot of people boycotted or quit.
It was a thing last... summer? Where reddit announced they were going to start charging for every call a third party program made using the API. This was done with the intent of shutting down 3rd party reddit apps and to get users on the official one so reddit could make more money. However, it also destroyed a bunch of 3rd party tools that mods more or less needed, and which reddit had been promising to implement themselves for years with no progress. There was a brief protest where mods of many subs shut them down (mostly for less than a week, though some are still down IIRC). A bunch of users and moderators left reddit and went to other sites.
Others have covered it but the API pricing was $12,000/50 million requests, which is absurd bordering on comical.