THOUSANDS OF REDDIT COMMUNITIES GO DARK TO BOYCOTT THIRD-PARTY APP CHARGES

Thousands of Reddit discussion forums have gone dark this week to protest a new policy that will charge some third-party apps to access data on the site, leading to worries about content moderation and accessibility.

More than 8,000 subreddits were dark as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a tracker and live Twitch stream of the boycott. Participants ranged from small forums to large communities with tens of millions of subscribers - including the r/funny, r/music and r/todayilearned pages seen on the online discussion site. "Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself)," other subreddits wrote in posts seen on the platform's homepage.

The new fees are part of broader changes to Reddit's API, or application programming interface, that the company announced recently.

Organizers of the blackout, which began Monday, say Reddit's changes threaten to end key ways of historically customizing the platform which relies heavily on the work of volunteer moderators. Subreddit "mods" often use tools outside of the official app to keep their forums free of spam and hateful content, for example, as well as improve accessibility.

Reddit, a subsidiary of New York-based Advance Publications, says supporting large, high-usage third-party developers to access its data is too expensive. The company also notes that the new fees will only apply to eligible apps that require high usage limits, and the majority of API users will not have to pay for access.

Here's what you need to know.

WHAT IS API? AND HOW IS REDDIT CHANGING ACCESS TO THIRD-PARTY APPS?