After a month of outrage, protests, and unrest from the community, Reddit has finally flipped the switch to shut down some third-party apps.

Apollo, an iOS app that became a rallying point for the recent protests against Reddit’s imminent API pricing, no longer loads any content from the platform. When I open it up, all I see is a spinning wheel. Developer Christian Selig confirmed to me that Reddit is the one that turned things off, not him: “would have been nice to have been given a time,” he says in an email to The Verge.

BaconReader, another popular app, shows an error message for me: “Request failed: client error (429).” When I tap the “Tap to refresh” link, I just get the same error message.

Sync, an Android app, has stopped working too, displaying this message: “Error loading page: 401.” We’ve additionally found a tweet showing an error in a fourth app, reddit is fun (RIF), but one Verge staffer can still see content on the app when not logged in. He wasn’t able to log into his account, though.

We knew this moment was coming: shortly after Selig testified in May that the API pricing would cost him about $20 million per year, he said he’d be shutting it down at the end of June. (The timing stung; a few days before, Apple had featured Apollo during its WWDC 2023 keynote.) Other developers said they’d need to close down as well.

Users were outraged at the company’s treatment of Selig and the developers of some other popular third-party apps, organizing protests to try and get Reddit to budge. But despite more than 8,000 communities going dark, Reddit held its ground, and now some apps are officially kaput. (Not every app is going away: Narwhal, Relay, and Now will still be available, though they will eventually become subscription-only.)

When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt pointed to the company’s fact sheet about its API changes, which was just updated on Friday, as well as a Friday evening post from a Reddit admin confirming that the new API rate limits would be enforced “shortly.”

This week, I asked Selig if he planned to still use Reddit after he shuts down Apollo. “Honestly, not sure,” he said. “I’m certainly using it a lot less.”

In a comment shared by r/Apple moderator @aaronp613, Reddit cited its Moderator Code of Conduct and said that it has a duty to keep communities “relied upon by thousands or even millions of users” operational. Mods who do not agree to reopen subreddits that have gone private will be removed.

If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.

Between Monday and Wednesday of this week, the majority of popular subreddits on the Reddit site participated in a “blackout” and went private or stopped allowing new posts to be made in order to protest planned API changes that will cause the shutdown of popular third-party Reddit apps like Apollo.

The move was aimed at pushing Reddit to enact fairer pricing for developers and to give developers more time to adopt the API changes, but Reddit opted to wait out the protests rather than make adjustments.

As a result, some subreddits such as r/Apple made the decision to continue the blackout indefinitely, which means millions of Reddit users no longer have access to those communities. It seems Reddit plans to forcibly end further blackouts by removing entire moderation teams that are participating.

On Monday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said that the blackouts had not caused “any significant revenue impact so far” and that while there was a “lot of noise” amid the planned two-day protest, it would “pass.” In an interview with The Verge today, Huffman further said that Reddit’s API was “never designed to support third-party apps” and that the apps don’t add much value to the site. Reddit created its API for “tools, bots and enhancements to Reddit,” according to Huffman.

Huffman confirmed that the blackouts have made no change to Reddit’s API pricing plan. “That’s our business decision, and we’re not undoing that business decision,” said Huffman. Huffman said in the interview that Reddit will not force communities to reopen, which contradicts the messaging that moderators are receiving.

Reddit also just published a blog post with “key facts” about the API updates. In the post, Reddit says that “dissent, debate, and discussions are foundational parts of Reddit,” and that it respects the right of its community to protest, so long as mods follow the Moderator Code of Conduct. The Moderator Code of Conduct is what Reddit is citing in messaging to moderators about moderation teams being removed from closed communities.

Moderators and Reddit users are unhappy with Reddit’s decision to charge an unreasonable amount for its API, and for the short 30-day timeline that third-party developers have been given to adopt the new API fees.

Apollo developer Christian Selig determined that adopting the API would cost him $20 million per year, leading him to decide to shut down his app on June 30, a day before Reddit begins charging. As of July 1, there will be few if any third-party apps for viewing Reddit content, pushing Reddit users to either the Reddit website or the Reddit app.

This article, "Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Previously, sharing a link to a Reddit post via a messaging service such as Apple’s Messages app only displayed the URL address in the conversation thread, offering the recipient little idea of its contents.

By contrast, rich link previews display a visual preview of the post being linked to, including the subreddit name, total upvotes, and comments, providing the recipient with a clearer gist of the content they can expect to see if they decide to tap the link and visit the post.

In another update addition, it’s now easier for people to share content in the Reddit app to Instagram, thanks to a new Instagram Stories button in the sharing options. The new button automatically generates a similar preview of the post that appears on Instagram.

Outlining the new sharing features in a blog post, Reddit also mentions a new “one-tap screenshot-sharing experience that allows users to share content without saving images to their device – meaning they can link back to the content rather than only sending a screenshot.”

The new share options are accessible via a new custom share sheet which appears when Reddit app users tap the share icon under a post. The redditor’s most used sharing channels are displayed at the top of the sheet to make the sharing process more convenient without having to leave the app.

Alongside the update, Reddit says it is also making sharing simpler for publishers by introducing a new toolbox that makes it easier to display Reddit content on their own platforms. Publishers can learn more by referring to Reddit’s documentation.

This article, "Reddit App Improves Content Sharing to iMessage With Rich Link Previews" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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