Reddit is undergoing a restructuring process and, according to an email from the company's head Steve Huffman seen by the Wall Street Journal, one of the actions he is taking is the layoff of 90 employees. This amounts to about 5% of the company's current workforce, which totals 2,000 employees.
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Additionally, Reddit is slowing down its hiring this year and reducing the hiring of new employees to 100 out of the 300 staff it had originally planned to hire. Obviously, the social network wants to focus on achieving its larger goals. Huffman is said to have written in an email that Reddit “had a steady first half of the year” and that this restructuring will be carried out “to carry this momentum into the second half and beyond”.
See also: Reddit: New API rules will cost developers millions
This is just one of the moves Reddit is making in its effort to make money: In April, it also announced that it will start charging developers for access to its API. The company made this decision precisely at the moment the biggest players in technology began to engage with generative artificial intelligence, which is usually trained using data from the internet, which is accessed via API.
See also: Apollo: Reddit app may stop working
While Reddit may have wanted to profit from large companies, even independent developers are affected by its decision. Christian Selig, the sole developer of Apollo for Reddit, said it would cost him $20 million a year to keep his app running as is. Other third‑party apps, such as Narwhal and Reddit is Fun, have already warned users that they cannot pay for Reddit’s API and will likely shut down. Dozens of subreddit communities on various topics are now planning to “wipe out” from June 12 as a protest. Some of them plan to remain inactive for 48 hours, while others intend to stay permanently inactive until Reddit addresses the issue.
Information source: engadget.com
