Hackers breach Reddit, demand $4.5M, drop new fees plan.

A Hacker Group Demands $4.5 Million Ransom from Reddit

A hacker group known as BlackCat claims it has stolen confidential information from Reddit and is demanding the company pay a $4.5 million ransom and drop plans to charge third-party developers to use its data.

Reddit confirmed the February hack, saying business information — but no user data — was stolen. At first, BlackCat was demanding just the ransom, but after news of the third-party developer fee went viral, the group added that demand.

The social media platform this month announced it will charge high fees for the use of its data starting July 1. The people who run third-party apps like the popular Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and ReddPlanet say they will have to close up shop.

Apollo’s developer, Christian Selig, has estimated it would cost $20 million a year to adhere to the new application programming interface (API) policy to keep the app running, one website reported.

“I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable,” Selig told Artechnica. “I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”

Moderators made more than 9,000 subreddits private, meaning they’re inaccessible to regular users. The blackout was set to last 48 hours, but some moderators still have their subreddits private.

Just days before the blackout, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the fees are needed to generate revenue, and providing its API for free is too costly. “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” he said in a post on the platform.

But in 2021, Reddit claimed it had a valuation of about $10 billion after raising more than $400 million from longtime investor Fidelity Investments. The company planned to go public but has not done so.

Huffman last week dissed the moderators who have kept their subreddits private, comparing them to wealthy aristocracy and threatening to figure out a way to oust them with little discourse.

“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” Huffman told NBC, The Washington Post reported. “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

But the moderators are digging in. A group that organized the blackout on the r/ModCoord subreddit said in a statement that Huffman’s comments show Reddit’s communication about the plan to charge for data “has been poor from the very beginning.”

“They have attempted to gaslight us that they want to keep third-party apps while they set prices and timelines no developer can meet. The blowback that is happening now is largely because Reddit launched this drastic change with only 30 days notice,” Reddit user BuckRowdy, a moderator of the subreddit coordinating the protest, wrote on Thursday.

“We continue to ask Reddit to place these changes on pause and explore a real path forward that strikes a balance that is best for the widest range of Reddit users.”

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

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