Reddit has stopped working for millions of users around the world.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/reddit-down-subreddits-protest-not-working-b2356013.html

The mass outage comes amid a major boycott from thousands of the site’s administrators, who are protessting new changes to the platform.

On 12 June, popular sub-Reddits like r/videos and r/bestof went dark in retaliation to proposed API (Application Programming Interface) charges for third-party app developers.

Among the apps impacted by the new pricing is popular iOS app Apollo, which announced last week that it was unable to afford the new costs and would be shutting down.

Apollo CEO Christian Selig claimed that Reddit would charge up to $20 million per year in order to operate, prompting the mass protest from Reddit communities.

In a Q&A session on Reddit on Friday, the site’s CEO Steve Huffman defended the new pricing.

“Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect,” said Mr Huffman, who goes by the Reddit username u/spez.

“For the other apps, we will continue talking. We acknowledge that the timeline we gave was tight; we are happy to engage with folks who want to work with us.”

In response to the latest outage, one Reddit user wrote on Twitter: “Spez, YOU broke Reddit.”

Website health monitor DownDetector registered more than 7,000 outage reports for Reddit on Monday.

Some users were greeted with the message: “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic.”

Others received an error warning that stated: “Our CDN [content delivery network] was unable to reach our servers.”

Update: Seems to be resolved for most users

  • araquen@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Think of the “Lemmyverse” as the ground floor in relation to your Reddit experiences. Like a new MMO when comparing with the maturity of WoW. Some things will feel a little awkward for not having the polish, but there are other mechanics that are new and engaging. The more people who engage on Lemmy, Beehaw, et. al., and the longer the engagement, the better the experience will get. I think of it more like a diamond in the rough, instead of it being a “lesser” version of Reddit.

    The difference here is that your investment (of your time) can’t be undercut by a greedy CEO. A fediverse is “self healing.” It’s like setting up a mesh - one node could go bad but the network itself will survive.

    • Manticore@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is why I’m hoping Lemmy can resist against some of the Reddit-specific culture that I think would dampen the experience here. Animosity towards emojis, creating echo-chamber communities/subreddits, the air of smug self-righteousness, discussion as something one can ‘win’ etc.

      Redditors in general aren’t bad, but a lot of vocal users had it in their heads that they were somehow better than people who used other platforms, and staked lines to maintain that cultural divide. Some of them concluded they were better than other redditors; turning communities into Us vs Them tribalism, until they would fracture into r/subreddit and r/truesubreddit.

      Lemmy is not Reddit. It had a culture and it had users before the API shuffle; it’s an opportunity to start fresh. It’s not appropriate to expect Lemmy turn into Reddit, with all the unpleasantness that entails, and at the expense of the lemmings that were already here.

      I’m quite honest about it; I spent years on Reddit too. I’m a redditor. But being here on Lemmy has been such a wonderful breath of fresh air, the ‘I disagree but I’ll respectfully explain why’ that Reddit was missing for years. I can feel how miserable modern Reddit is in comparison and I really hope we don’t recreate it.

      • crank@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        until they would fracture into r/subreddit and r/truesubreddit.

        You know, as a person who has never been in a “true” subreddit or a cj sub or a meme sub, I really do not mind those who wish to be so. They are doing their own thing. They have their own norms and expectations and that is where they go to be comfortable. So what?

        And do you really think100% of those people literally only went to those subs and never contributed anywhere else? Nah, they were on the needlework sub posting their stitches or posting pictures of clouds or whatever.

        We do not all have to be in one big group… I do not understand this fantasy. It is really OK to have different venues for different ideas and ways of being; that is one of the magics of online life in fact. It is possible to have little weird niches, even of smugness. One of the joys in life, which is dripping from the above comment and countless others I have been reading here. :D

        • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.devEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Having mega-sites and mega-communities creates not a sense of community but a sense of knowledge.

          There’s just SO much content that the good stuff just rises to the top eventually.

          • Viclan@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I also think the abundance of content is a part of the issue, but with no clear solution. People are bombarded with a thousand stories about a thousand different things going on in their country, the world, their city, etc… But we know that Humans can only reasonably maintain around 150-200 close personal relationships max that you would be able to converse with and empathize with and what not, Dunbars number.

              I think this is part of the problem why people see everything in black and white imo, there's an abundance of information out there and our society currently is in a state where everyone has to have an opinion on every conceivable subject but that's just not feasible. And when there's so much information to parse through humans tend to group things together as we love our patterns. So if you believe an idea from this group of people, you must believe the 100 other possible interpretations of correlated subjects and what not, or at least that's how people tend to view others expressing certain viewpoints.

I struggle with this and people who espouse hateful ideas and disinformation against Trans people, a lot of people may not know any better or believe that there's this widespread push to transition people as young as possible which just isn't the case. It's something I find hard to extend grace on, it feels morally wrong to prevent people from making informed decisions between themselves and their healthcare specialist and besides that it is such a tiny portion of the population to be focusing on when there are much bigger widespread issues that affect us all. But its also something I feel is fueled a bit by this same issue we are discussing, I'm honestly not sure how you would work against this besides smaller and more tight-knit communities but then you have echo chambers, not that it wasn't a problem in some subreddits as well. Very interesting thing to think about! Love hearing everyones thoughts!