In an effort to express their displeasure with the way the site is being run, thousands of Reddit communities have "gone dark.".
Developers of third-party apps that are used to browse the social media platform will now be subject to contentious fees, according to Reddit.
But some of the largest subreddits' moderators have retaliated by locking down their communities for 48 hours.
Reddit depends heavily on user-generated content, but on Monday, 3,500 or so subreddits were forced to close.
The term "subreddit" refers to a forum on the Reddit platform, which is really just a group of people who get together to talk about one topic in particular.
Instead of following specific users on other platforms, Reddit users, or Redditors, typically join a variety of subreddits, and posts from these communities appear in their feed.
Tens of thousands of unpaid moderators, also known as mods, help to maintain the website along with a few paid administrators.
These moderators may put in one or two hours a day to make sure that their subreddit doesn't get overrun with irrelevant or illegal comments or other content.
On the plus side, Reddit does not charge any hosting fees to users who want to create their own communities around interests they have.
Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, addressed the blackout in a post to the website on Friday, stating that it "needs to be a self-sustaining business.".
He said, "We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, occasionally, going private.
"It is our collective responsibility to make sure Reddit is a welcoming environment where people can feel a sense of community and belonging. ".
Additionally, he stated that Reddit would restrict access to explicit content from third-party apps while maintaining it on the website.
The blackout affects 3,489 subreddits in total, including five of the ten most popular ones on the website, r/gaming, r/aww, r/music, r/todayilearned, and r/pics, which each have memberships of more than 30 million.
The protest was about "strength in numbers," a moderator for one of these subreddits told the BBC.
"Reddit may intervene if it were just one subreddit going private," they said.
However, you feel much more pressured if it takes up half the website.
"Despite the fact that this is a completely volunteer position for which we are not paid, we do like to take it seriously. ".
They claimed that the only way to send a message to Reddit admins was to hurt the site's traffic because they wanted them to understand that they depend on moderators to run the site.
"Our entire community is with us in opposition to this change," they declared.
"It feels good to have the ability to threaten to stop moderating our communities if you force these changes through.
Would they destroy the communities they've created if it's almost the entire website in order to impose this wildly unpopular change that both Reddit moderators and users are overwhelmingly opposed to?
Reddit has an official app, but it was created in 2016, many years after the website was founded and calls itself "the front page of the internet.".
In order to allow users to access the platform on their mobile devices, third-party apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync, and ReddPlanet were created.
Reddit has introduced a number of fees to the programmers who wish to continue using its Application Programming Interface (API), the back-end code that enables external apps to find and display the content on Reddit.
Reddit's new API pricing has prompted all four of these apps to announce their closure.
These fees have drawn harsh criticism for being excessive; Apollo developer Christian Selig estimated it would ultimately cost him $20 million (£15 point 9 million) to keep the app running.
Apollo was "notably less efficient" than other outside applications, a Reddit representative told the BBC.
In order to continue supporting third-party apps, they claimed that the social media platform must be fairly compensated despite spending "multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees.".
They claimed that their pricing was determined by usage levels that were compared to their own costs.
The spokesperson added that not all apps from third parties would require a subscription. Reddit had previously declared it wouldn't charge developers for creating apps that make the site more user-friendly.
The BBC, however, was informed by the moderator that they thought the blackout might last until Reddit reversed the changes.
"For many communities, the current strategy is. They threatened to extend the blackout's initial forty-eight hour duration or keep access to their subreddits restricted so that no one could post.
"Every community functions differently, and various moderators have different perspectives on what is currently taking place, so it does vary.
But based on recent conversations between moderators and Reddit admins, I don't think they intend to go back and change these things. ".
Additionally, some communities—including the 32 million-member r/Music—claim that their subreddit will remain inaccessible indefinitely unless Reddit changes its policy.
