Reddit protests see moderators removed, communities move to Discord

Reddit protests have been continuing, despite threats by the company to take over subreddits which refuse to end them. The company has now carried out its threat against one of the biggest subreddits – a move which seems set to backfire.

Additionally, a fun crowdsourced art project on Reddit is now being used to post messages protesting against the company’s decision to charge extortionate amounts for API access …

A quick recap

Reddit got itself into a mess when it decided to charge unrealistic amounts for access to the API that powered third-party (former) apps like Apollo. That resulted in wide-scale protests by moderators and users alike, with the company threatening them in response.

While many subreddits went dark, limiting access to existing members, some others came up with a clever alternative: applying a NFSW label, which prevented Reddit from selling ads in them. Subreddits that adopted this tactic include r/HomeKit and r/HomePod.

r/malefashionadvice

One of the biggest subreddits to go dark was r/malefashionadvice, with more than five million users.

Moderators initially gave in to threats – and made itself public again – before again going private. The moderators explained the reason for this was the impact on disabled moderators, who had relied on the accessibility features of third-party apps.

We as a moderation team could not, in good conscience, continue placating reddit and it’s administrators. Their continued disregard for the concerns and will of their own users and moderators is untenable. Until reddit can react in an appropriate manner, r/malefashionadvice will remain private. We stand with the community of r/ModCoord in their efforts to advocate for the disabled community of reddit in their push for in accessibility of the platform. Please see their post at this link and below:

We stand with the disabled users of reddit and in our community. Starting July 1, Reddit’s API policy blind/visually impaired communities will be more dependent on sighted people for moderation. When Reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps for the disabled, they are not telling the full story.

That “full story” is that third-party apps like Apollo, RIF, Boost, and Sync had much better accessibility features than the very few apps Reddit now permits. Additionally, it is a much bigger challenge for disabled people to adapt to new apps with very different UIs.

Continuing Reddit protests see moderators removed

Two weeks ago, Reddit gave moderators less than a week to end their protests, or be removed. The Verge notes that the company has now carried out this threat in the case of r/malefashionadvice.

Three former moderators of r/malefashionadvice tell The Verge that they were removed from the subreddit on Thursday. “We more or less have been expecting the removal for the past few days,” one former mod, who asked to go by “Walker,” says in an email to The Verge. Now, the community’s modlist currently has just one moderator: ModCodeofConduct.

Reddit is trying to recruit replacement moderators for a number of affected subreddits, though isn’t getting quite the response it had hoped.

“The community is not in need of new mods. We’re quite happy with the work of the previous mods.”

“Why the **** would anyone want to do free work for a ****** greedy corporation that doesn’t give a **** about the communities that make them valuable to advertisers?”

“I volunteer as tribute! When chosen, I will invite the old mods back because they were just fine and shouldn’t have been removed.”

“It’s fascinating to watch the admins killing their site in slow motion.”

Communities moving to Discord

r/malefashionadvice is one of a number of subreddits whose moderators are urging users to switch instead to their Discord communities. While the numbers of users who have done so are currently very small – just 5,000 in this case – former moderators say that these include many of the most prolific posters.

r/Place art project turned into protest graphic

The subreddit r/Place was a fun (and official) collaborative art project. The Verge notes that the latest iteration also isn’t going quite the way Reddit would have hoped.

In r/Place, individual users can drop a single pixel of color every five minutes on a huge canvas, including overriding other pixel placements if you want to try and claim some turf. In the utopian version of this idea, r/Place becomes an ever-changing piece of art where users work together to draw all sorts of pixelated images in one giant collage.

But the 2023 version […] has become a massive billboard for users to air their grievances. See for yourself in Reddit’s official time lapse video.

Note: Contains NSFW language:

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