If you try to access Reddit, you’ll find that many of the platform’s communities have gone private. More than 8,000 subreddits — including popular ones such as r/gaming, r/funny, r/aww — are going dark to protest fees that Reddit is charging for third-party access to its API, or application programming interface.

To protest the social network’s actions, the moderators of nearly 3,500 subreddits plan to take those subs private between June 12 and June 14, meaning that they will not be accessible to users who are not members. This includes subs like r/pics and r/aww, both of which have over 30 million members each.

Some of Reddit's most popular communities, including r/videos, r/reactiongifs, r/earthporn, and r/lifeprotips, have announced their plans to set themselves to private on June 12. The protest is mainly because of the new pricing imposed by Reddit on third-party app developers seeking access to the site's APIs.

Reddit has announced that it is “evolving a number of relevant internal policies” after a debacle over its moderation policies that led to numerous subreddits going private in protest. The issue began when a moderator from the r/UKPolitics subreddit was suspended for posting an article that included the name of former Green Party member.