Users of the world’s largest social media site are planning a rebellion.
With 430 million monthly active users, Reddit recently updated its policy for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a type of software interface that allows two applications to communicate with each other. The associated price increase will have a significant impact on the site’s access for users of third-party applications who rely on this site to access features not available in the official Reddit app, especially moderation, for many users. will be
In protest, more than 1,500 subreddits (including some of the site’s largest) have announced their intention to “go dark” for 48 hours starting Monday, June 12, setting their communities to private and disclosing their content. made it inaccessible. wider internet.
Stevie Chancellor, Assistant Professor of Science and Engineering, discusses the impact of the outage and the API changes that caused it on the Internet.
Dr. Stevie Chancellor
“Reddit’s decision to charge high fees for API access is detrimental to the creative use of its APIs and data. Think big AI models that use data collected from all over the internet to create commercial models. There are many legitimate parties that should have access to APIs, including researchers and students, people creating tools to make moderators’ jobs easier, and Redditors using third-party apps that provide more accessible functionality. .Browsing experience.
Our past research has shown that the moderator workforce is a significant part of Reddit’s actual monetary value. Reddit now has to grapple with the moderators’ job of keeping subreddits safe and friendly, as well as monetizing the key tools mods use to make life easier. In some ways, the challenge facing Reddit mirrors what Wikipedia experienced around a similar decision to create an enterprise API to discourage the rampant use of volunteer-derived resources by companies. ”
Stevie Chancellor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, College of Science and Engineering. As part of the GroupLens lab, she builds and critically evaluates AI to detect and intervene in dangerous mental health practices in her community online. Her work touches on many topics related to online mental health, including governance, content moderation, and ethical AI.
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