Reddit's blackout - or black eye?

Reddit’s recent decision to remove access to third party APIs – the ‘blackout’ comes into full effect tomorrow – has either left it unscathed or existentially threatened, depending on who you ask. However, there’s no denying that it highlights a now decades-old issue for our social media platforms: the undervalued value-add of participants providing free labour to maintain these online communities. And that’s without even mentioning the contributors that create nearly the entirety of the content.  

The super-users that generate so much of the user-generated content make up but a small portion of the sites’ visitors compared to the ‘lurkers’ that consume the material but post little in return. Consequently, it is neither unlikely nor unsurprising that the ‘blackout’ did not appear that apocalyptic on paper; a comparatively small number of people used these APIs and many of those that did may not have felt a strongly principled investment in the issue.  

What the executives may have misunderstood (the clock is ticking but the signs aren’t encouraging) is the impact of their decision – and their attitude – on this small group. Between the inflexible position on the APIs, an AMA (Reddit’s famous Ask Me Anything discussions) with the CEO where there was lots of asking but no particular answering, and threatening messages sent to their volunteer moderators, Reddit management have awakened an awareness in their most crucial group of users – the moderators and content creators that constitute and maintain their entire service through unpaid emotional labour. That awareness can be summed up as, ‘You aren’t paying me to do any of this.’ Vitriolic and polarised users of r/TheDonald subreddit can be amped up by ideological divisions due to bans and restrictions, but can Reddit overcome these high participation users’ growing perspective that they are being exploited by someone who’s suddenly not shy about being a bit of a jerk? 

While you may or may not be a user of Reddit, there’s reason to be concerned about the impact this could have on our journalism and media. Even Google admits that their search engine has become sufficiently unreliable that people need to type ‘Reddit’ at the end of their questions to get the answers they seek, a fact put on unsightly display when Reddit’s blackout prompted negative feedback directed at Google itself. Subreddits such as r/WorldNews keep live feeds rolling so journalists, academics, and on-the-ground citizens can discuss not just the fact of, say, the conflict in Ukraine, but the lived experience of it, and these rely heavily on careful moderation. To emphasise this, subreddits have turned to posting unmoderated pornography or digitally remastered images of comedian John Oliver – who has enthusiastically obliged.

Among other things, this saga highlights the risks, both for the users and the companies themselves, of extremely concentrated ownership of our news media environment. 

Tim Koskie, CMT researcher

This article is from our fortnightly newsletter of 30 June 2023.

Read it in full here.

Subscribe to have it direct to your inbox.