If you hopped on Reddit to scroll through your favorite forums this week, you may have encountered “private” or “restricted” messages. That’s because thousands of subreddits chose to go dark in an ongoing protest of some controversial changes announced by the online discussion network.
The blackout, which began Monday, emerged out of outrage over Reddit's upcoming changes to its application programming interface (API) access — notably the company's plan to start charging high usage third-party apps, who have long-used the Reddit data at no cost to build resources for users not available through the official site or app.
