Unveiling the Unprecedented Craze Surrounding John Oliver on the Minecraft Subreddit

Comedian John Oliver has made a splash on the popular Minecraft subreddit, garnering support from its 7.4 million subscribers. The subreddit has been flooded with images as a form of protest against Reddit's forthcoming API changes, which prompted many subreddits to go private in June.

Despite an initial two-day blackout that failed to sway Reddit's API policy plans, numerous popular subreddits have chosen to remain private indefinitely. Before making this decision, many of them sought the input of their users through polls. One such subreddit, r/Minecraft, conducted two polls following Reddit officials' suggestion that the first vote had been influenced by non-subscribing activists. In both polls, an overwhelming majority voted in favor of an indefinite blackout for the Minecraft subreddit.

Reddit officials disagreed with the r/Minecraft mod team's decision to close the subreddit based on the poll results, citing the low participation of less than 20,000 users. They argued that permanently shutting down a public forum due to the demands of a small portion of its user base, especially when the reasons are unrelated to the subreddit's topic, does not make sense. A Reddit admin communicated this stance to the r/Minecraft mod team, as shown in a screenshot shared by user mynameisperl. Consequently, r/Minecraft was compelled to reopen, leading the moderators to adopt a more lenient approach towards posting submissions. Consequently, the subreddit's front page became filled with images of John Oliver, including photographs and Minecraft-inspired fan art of the comedian.

The idea originated on r/pics, the first subreddit to protest the controversial changes by allowing only image submissions of the Last Week Tonight host. While other parts of the site found different creative ways to protest Reddit's API changes, the John Oliver movement gained the most traction as of June 19. It has already spread to mainstream subreddits like r/gifs and r/aww, which have a combined total of over 85 million subscribers.

Despite the protests, Reddit remains determined to implement its new API policy on July 1. This policy will require third-party apps, such as unofficial clients and mod tools, to start paying for server requests. The protesters are simply demanding fair and reasonable pricing, comparable to other public APIs. However, Reddit's proposed charge of $0.24 per 1,000 requests has led popular third-party clients like Apollo and Reddit is Fun to announce their shutdown next month. This pricing would result in skyrocketing monthly costs, potentially reaching millions of dollars.

Although the CEO of Reddit assured employees that the blackout would pass, the influx of John Oliver imagery demonstrates that the protests are far from over.