Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Writes Internal Memo To Staff, Says Subreddit Blackout Will Pass

The Reddit blackout, however, did not have a significant impact on the company's revenue.

Social discussion forum Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman, in an internal memo, has told employees that the subreddit blackout "will pass", says a report by The Verge. Huffman has also asked Reddit staffers to be "mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public" as the company faces a huge protest by thousands of Reddit communities against its policy to implement API pricing changes or charge third-party apps for data access. More than 8,000 Reddit communities, which have millions of subscribers, started protesting against Reddit's new API pricing changes that could kill off third-party apps.

Huffman wrote the memo, which has been obtained by The Verge after thousands of subreddits started going dark this week in protest. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year, the report added.

The blackout, however, did not have a significant impact on the company's revenue, according to Huffman. The company anticipates that many of the subreddits will come back online by Wednesday (June 14).

“There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” the memo reads. “We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.”

Last week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to discuss the platform's controversial API changes, confirming that the company is not planning to revive its coming API pricing changes that have caused multiple developers to announce they will be shutting down their apps.

Following the new API pricing changes at the social discussion platform, more than 6,000 subreddits have gone dark, including many of the platform's most-subscribed communities such as r/funny, r/aww, r/gaming, r/music, and r/science, meaning these communities are no longer publicly accessible, even to Reddit users who previously subscribed to them.

Many subreddits taking part in the protest are planning to go private for 48 hours, but some plan to remain private until things change.