Reddit CEO Confident Blowback Is Temporary But Warns Employees About Wearing Company Logo

The current storm that Reddit has created for itself, "will pass", claimed the platform's CEO. In a memo issued to Reddit employees, he advised them to block out the "noise" but cautioned against wearing Reddit gear in public to avoid "user frustration".

This week has been one of the most tumultuous for Reddit. It faced a major disruption due to a large-scale protest by its users and community organizers. Reddit's implementation of a controversial policy caused adverse effects on third-party apps' functionality, but the CEO claims it will all blow over soon.

Reddit CEO Confident "Blackout" Is Temporary

In an internal memo sent to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback from the platform's users and forum organizers. The memo was in response to popular subreddits going dark this week.

As we had reported, several popular subreddits went dark or were converted into private forums in protest of the company's increased API pricing for third-party apps. Specifically speaking, more than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest.

The majority of the protesting communities have indicated they will be up and running from June 14, 2023. However, many have openly indicated that they will "stay private" indefinitely until Reddit makes changes.

In the memo, Reddit CEO has assured his employees that the blackout hasn't had a "significant revenue impact". Apparently terming the protests as a mere nuisance, he said:

"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. 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."

Reddit Employees Must Avoid Wearing Company Logo In Public

Although the Reddit CEO is confident about communities falling in line soon, he has warned employees about wearing Reddit items in public. Huffman advised not to wear "Reddit gear in public" as the anger directed at the API pricing changes could make them "the object of [users'] frustrations."

Reddit first announced it would be changing its API pricing in April. The company stressed it wanted to charge companies that were using Reddit data to train artificial intelligence tools.

It soon became apparent that third-party app developers that depended on Reddit APIs would have to pay a major price too. Even Twitter had recently taken an identical decision to charge apps that use Twitter APIs.

As quite a few major apps protested and threatened to shut down, outraged users organized widespread subreddit blackouts, which adversely affected the platform.