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Business News/ Technology / News/  No more NSFW? Reddit blocks access to porn, obscenity via third-party apps
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No more NSFW? Reddit blocks access to porn, obscenity via third-party apps

Reddit has blocked access to mature content on its platform via third-party apps. Users will now have to log in to the official Reddit app to view explicit content. The move by Reddit is aimed at forcing users to adopt the official app instead of third-party apps.

The Reddit app icon is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. Reddit is facing an ongoing blackout from some of its most active users. After outrage erupted over plans to charge some third party apps for API, thousands of communities within the online discussion network went dark this week — and many organizers say their protest is not over. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (AP)Premium
The Reddit app icon is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. Reddit is facing an ongoing blackout from some of its most active users. After outrage erupted over plans to charge some third party apps for API, thousands of communities within the online discussion network went dark this week — and many organizers say their protest is not over. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (AP)

Reddit has blocked access to mature content on the platform via third-party apps. The company's CEO Steve Huffman announced last month that access to mature content via third-party apps would no longer work as of July 5. Users will now have to log in to the official Reddit app to view explicit content.

Also Read: Reddit is forcing moderators to remove NSFW label. Here's why

In a Reddit post last month, CEO Steve Huffman had announced, “Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed,".Huffman had further noted that the change in Data API will not impact any moderator bots or extensions. 

A report by Vice noted that Reddit's move is aimed at forcing users to adopt the official Reddit app instead of third-party apps. The report noted that third-party apps don't just include porn, but also other types of explicit content, including sex education, conversations about sexuality and harm reduction.

Reddit announced in April that it planned to allow third parties access to its application programming interface, or API, data. In an interview with the New York Times, Huffman had argued that popular chatbots on the market such as Google's Bard, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing Chat were trained using Reddit's API data.

In the post written last month, Huffman reiterated the need for API fees, saying “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."

Redditors have been in arms about the company's decision to charge exorbitantly for API data which is used by third-party apps to provide features that are not available on the official app and have been used by moderators for managing their communities. 

Many subreddits even went to the extent of organizing a 48-hour-long protest against the new API changes. Some of these communities started posting pornographic content or taking their subreddits as NSFW as a form of protest against the changes brought in by Reddit. NSFW subreddits cannot be advertised and further age-related restrictions are placed on entering the subreddit.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aman Gupta
Aman is a tech nerd at heart and a journalist by profession. He is passionate about unpacking the latest trends and making technology understandable for everyone. Outside of the newsroom, Aman is usually tinkering with a new gadget, lost in a great book, or concocting the perfect cup of coffee.
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Published: 07 Jul 2023, 11:59 AM IST
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