Soon there will be a strike on Reddit: what matters

Whether you’re looking for advice on relationship issues, want to discuss your favorite video game with like-minded people, or just pass the time with funny pictures and memes, Reddit has it all.

The American platform allows its users to open so-called subreddits and exchange ideas with others. You can also share news articles and links to other websites or upload your own photos and videos.

Anyone who has been on the platform in recent days and weeks could hardly get around the topic. Both English and German subreddits are calling for a strike on the platform from June 12 to 14. But what is the reason for the strike?

Reddit wants to make big changes

Reddit was founded in 2005 as a rather niche platform where users could exchange information on specific topics. Over time, however, Reddit has grown in popularity and now seems more like a social media platform than an online-only forum.

However, Reddit has long maintained this image of a rather “nerdy” platform. The official app was only released in 2016, until then you could only access the site in the browser – or with so-called third-party apps, ie applications from third-party providers.

Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Narwhal, or Bacon Reader are some of the apps you can use to access Reddit outside of your own official app. Reddit wants to make these apps so expensive from July 1 that it no longer pays for the operators to continue to offer them.

For example, Apollo announced that Reddit plans to charge them $20 million annually. Narwhal also says their app will be dead in 30 days if Reddit makes good on the announcement.

What do the voluntary «mods» want to do?

Reddit is one platform moderated by the users themselves. It’s the moderators’ job to remove posts that don’t fit the subreddit’s topic or that violate Reddit’s policies.

Among other things, the “mods” do this with the third-party applications that provide tools that the official Reddit app does not have. So if these third-party apps were to disappear, moderation would become more difficult.

Hundreds of subreddits have already joined the strike. Including the largest German-language subreddit r/de with 1.2 million members.

The Swiss subreddits r/Switzerland and r/AskSwitzerland have also announced that they will go into lockdown.

Many major international subreddits also want to attack the platform, such as r/aww, which shares cute photos and videos, and r/gaming and r/Music, all of which have over 30 million members.

Some subreddits only want 48 hours offline, others want to continue the warning until the third-party app issue is finally resolved.

Sources