The moderators of tons of of Reddit boards, referred to as subreddits, closed off entry to their teams on Monday to protest the corporate’s plan to cost for entry to the info that exterior builders must run apps on the positioning.

Many mentioned the brand new pricing scheme may kill off a few of the hottest third-party apps that many customers depend on to browse and touch upon the positioning. Others mentioned the fees had sowed uncertainty in regards to the instruments that moderators use to handle discussions. An estimated 57 million folks a day go to the platform.

Reddit introduced in April that it might start to cost some large-scale customers for entry to its software programming interface, or A.P.I., the tactic by means of which exterior entities can obtain and course of the social community’s huge number of memes, gifs, movies, and dialog threads.

Reddit mentioned it not needed to provide away such a worthwhile asset to corporations like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, which have been utilizing Reddit’s knowledge to develop synthetic intelligence programs that many in Silicon Valley see as the subsequent large factor.

“Reddit must be a self-sustaining enterprise, and to try this, we are able to not subsidize industrial entities that require large-scale knowledge use,” Steve Huffman, Reddit’s chief govt, mentioned on Friday in an “Ask Me Something” dialogue on the positioning.

However the fees have set off a significant backlash among the many volunteer moderators of the positioning’s numerous communities, who mentioned they’d shut off entry to their teams for a minimum of 48 hours, starting Monday, in what they known as a coordinated protest.

Moderators of a few of Reddit’s hottest subreddits — together with r/humorous, with greater than 40 million members, and r/gaming, r/Music and r/science, with greater than 30 million members every — have been participating within the protest by setting their pages to personal and posting messages denouncing the brand new phrases and pricing.

Moderators of many smaller teams had additionally gone darkish as a part of the demonstration.

For a quick interval on Monday, the protest made it troublesome for some customers to entry Reddit as “a big variety of subreddits shifting to personal triggered some anticipated stability points,” a Reddit spokesman mentioned, including that the issues had been resolved.

The builders of a number of well-liked apps mentioned they must shut them down due to the brand new pricing system.

Apollo, an iOS app broadly praised inside the cellular developer neighborhood for its design interface and wealthy options, plans to close down on June 30, in line with a put up on Reddit by its developer, Christian Selig. He mentioned that Apollo must pay $20 million yearly below the brand new pricing scheme.

“I hope it goes with out saying that I don’t have that form of cash or would even know the right way to cost it to a bank card,” he wrote.

Not less than three different Reddit apps — rif is enjoyable for Reddit, ReddPlanet and Sync — additionally introduced plans to close down on June 30, citing what they known as unreasonable prices, the tech information website The Verge reported.

The moderators of r/blind, a hub for blind and visually impaired customers with greater than 20,000 members, mentioned the fees may threaten the third-party apps that translate Reddit textual content into speech and that enable blind and visually impaired customers to take part in discussions on the positioning.

Noah Carver, one of many r/blind moderators, mentioned in an announcement on behalf of his group: “The proposed adjustments to Reddit’s A.P.I. won’t solely isolate blind customers from a social community utilized by tens of millions of individuals, thus disconnecting us from the broader world; they may also largely decimate communities for blind folks — and disabled folks generally — which have thrived on Reddit regardless of the corporate’s perceived indifference.”

Since its founding in 2005, Reddit has been identified for embracing freedom of speech, freedom of code and freedom of knowledge, which allowed customers to construct instruments and apps across the website, mentioned Sarah Gilbert, a postdoctoral affiliate at Cornell College who research content material moderation and knowledge ethics. She can also be a moderator of the r/AskHistorians subreddit, which joined the protest.

Ms. Gilbert mentioned the pricing plan may undermine the platform’s volunteer-driven tradition, which units it aside from different social media websites.

“It’s not nearly folks being sad that they will’t have their favourite app anymore,” she mentioned in an interview. “It’s in regards to the lack of neighborhood or worry of the lack of neighborhood.”

Tim Rathschmidt, a Reddit spokesman, mentioned the corporate had been involved with varied Reddit communities to “make clear any confusion round our Information A.P.I. Phrases, platform-wide insurance policies, neighborhood assist sources, and timing for brand spanking new moderator instruments.”

He mentioned that Reddit spends tens of millions of {dollars} on web internet hosting charges and “must be pretty paid to proceed supporting high-usage third-party apps.”

“Our pricing relies on utilization ranges that we measure to be akin to our personal prices,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Rathschmidt added that some apps are extra environment friendly and require considerably fewer A.P.I. calls and that “Apollo is notably much less environment friendly than different third-party apps.”

“The overwhelming majority of A.P.I. customers won’t must pay for entry; not all third-party apps utilization requires paid entry,” he wrote, including that entry is “is free for moderator instruments and bots.”

Responding to considerations about accessibility raised by teams like r/blind, Mr. Rathschmidt mentioned that the corporate had supplied exemptions from the brand new costs to noncommercial apps that deal with accessibility points. A number of of these builders have signed agreements with Reddit, he mentioned.