Reddit appears to be ramping up the pressure on moderators to open communities that closed in the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin — an employee of Reddit — has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the “expectation here is that communities reopen,” according to a message shared publicly by a moderator of r/DIY.
Reddit pressures mods to end the blackout as they find new ways to protest
‘The expectation here is that communities reopen.’
‘The expectation here is that communities reopen.’
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
The pressure worked. The community was closed, but it reopened on Thursday, and a mod said that fears of Reddit actions forced the team’s hand: “We’re re-opening because if we don’t, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do,” the mod wrote.
The mod’s post also announced a vast number of changes to the subreddit’s rules that hew more closely to Reddit’s general requirements, while also undoing many of the norms and rule tweaks that were in place to improve the quality of content. The changes include no longer requiring users to do basic research and lowering the standard for what the subreddit counts as spam. Reddit has its reopened community, but at what cost?
Reddit users have been protesting over planned API changes that will force popular third-party apps like Apollo to shut down and over the company’s characterizations of moderators. More than 8,000 communities went dark at the height of the protests.
Some reopened with adjustments to their rules: a few are focused entirely on John Oliver, while two fashion advice subreddits are now about 1700s fashion.
Some switched to Not Safe For Work (NSFW) to make the subreddits harder to access and prevent advertising from appearing in those spaces, but Reddit removed some mods and said the NSFW switch is “not acceptable.”
We’ve seen messages from other moderators where the admin, ModCodeofConduct, uses similar rhetoric. To the moderators of r/homeimprovement the admin said that “to be very clear you cannot remain closed so we need to know if any mods here wish to participate in opening the community.”
To the moderators of r/harrypotter, the admin account wrote that “keeping the community closed is not an option” — even though users have voted for the subreddit to be private, according to a post from a r/harrypotter mod.
More than 2,600 subreddits remain dark in protest, and users on r/ModCoord (moderator coordination) are still sharing their stories of receiving messages from Reddit that they view as threatening and intimidating. “My tiny 27-user sub is being threatened for staying blacked out,” one user wrote. “Reddit is a BULLY,” said another, sharing a screenshot of where they told ModCodeofConduct their messages were “harassment and intimidation.”
Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.” In the absence of corrections, then, you can assume Reddit believes none are necessary.
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