As the Reddit blackout chaos continues, a hacker group has claimed responsibility for the February 2023 hack.
The BlackCat ransomware group says they were behind the attack, stealing 80GB of data from the company. Now the group is asking for $4.5 million dollars and a rollback of the planned API changes. Reddit’s API changes are intended to make it harder for AI companies like OpenAI to train their large language models on ‘free’ data. But third-party reddit apps and moderators are also caught up in reddit’s wide-casted net—casualties reddit is apparently willing to make.
In February 2023, reddit told its users that hackers had employed a “sophisticated and highly-targeted” phishing attack to gain access to internal documents and data. That includes contract information for current reddit employees and advertisers. At the time, reddit said the group made off with no user data that wasn’t already public.
The BlackCat group’s demands surrounding the API pricing follow reddit’s contentious decision to limit API access starting July 1. On that date, many third-party apps used to access Reddit communities will go dark. Several moderators of popular communities like r/Music and other spaces went dark in protest—and remain restricted in some capacity. Reddit is working to remove the unpaid moderators of these communities to re-open them. However, it’s unclear how much damage removing experienced moderation teams will do in the long-term health of the site.
The blackout is having an impact on Reddit’s bottom line, as some advertisers are reportedly holding off on campaigns on the site. “After the blackout, we will be closely monitoring user behavior on reddit and guide clients when we can unpause,” adds Freddy Dabaghi, a Managing Director at ad agency Crispin Porter Bogusky. It has asked clients to stop campaigns if they were targeting reddit communities that have participated in the current blackouts.
At the time, Reddit told advertisers it is redirecting impressions lost from blacked-out subreddits to the homepage. But that doesn’t solve the issue for most advertisers, who are hoping to target specific communities. “The ads would then just be shown to the masses and outside of any of the contextually relevant locations that advertisers are trying to reach with Reddit,” adds Liam Johnson, an account director at digital marketing agency Brainlabs.