Many popular subreddits plan to extend their protest indefinitely over Reddit’s changes to its API pricing.

The protest began Monday and is supposed to conclude Wednesday. Application programming interface is data used by developers to create sister apps for fun or accessibility. As part of the discord, thousands of subreddits went read-only or private, meaning users could not post or interact normally with their communities.

More than 300 of the original protesting subreddits — comprised of hundreds of thousands of regular Reddit users — plan to stay dark.

The continuation of the protest comes after The Verge reported on an internal memo from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. In the memo, he mostly brushed off the protest and said that it has had no real impact on the company’s revenue.

Even if it didn’t hit the company’s bottom line, it affected its accessibility. For a few hours Monday, Reddit experienced a crash that left users unable to access the web or mobile versions of the site. Reddit acknowledged that the crash was likely caused by the subreddits going private at the same time.

Despite the outrage from users and developers, Mr. Huffman has remained adamant about the company’s decision to charge for API. In April, Reddit announced that it would begin charging developers 24 cents per 1,000 requests. Developers usually require several thousand a day. 

The cost has been too much for several popular developers. Third-party app Apollo announced it would shut down at the end of June after discovering that, with the new API pricing, the company would have to pay around $20 million a year to remain open.

Reddit’s revenue move comes amid reports the company may be going public this year. While the company has increased its overall visibility in the market, it has slowed hiring and cut at least 5% of its workforce.

• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.