Reddit continues to pressurize moderators into reopening subreddits. The company is threatening to remove them from their moderation roles if they keep their communities private. Many subreddits have given in under pressure and reopened to the public. Some have found a new way to protest Reddit’s API updates, though the company is threatening them as well.
The Reddit community has been protesting the firm’s API updates since June 12. More than 8,000 subreddit went dark protesting the API changes that affect third-party apps and moderation tools. The company turned a deaf ear to user complaints, leading to the mass protest. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman publicly lashing out at third-party developers, and calling the protest a “noise” has made the matter worse.
However, with subreddits extending the protest indefinitely, the company is now threatening moderators. “Expectation here is that communities reopen,” a Reddit admin reportedly told a moderator. “To be very clear, you cannot remain closed so we need to know if any mods here wish to participate in opening the community,” another group of moderators was warned. One more group received a similar threat. “Keeping the community closed is not an option,” they were told.
Reddit is threatening moderators for taking communities private
As The Verge points out, the admin is a paid employee of Reddit while moderators are unpaid volunteers. Unfortunately, moderators love what they do and don’t want to lose their moderation roles. They are now unwillingly reopening their communities under the company’s pressure and threats. “We’re re-opening because if we don’t, the mods that Reddit appoints may not care about the subreddit the way we do,” a moderator of r/DIY wrote in a post.
Moderators of many other subreddits have confirmed receiving these warnings or threatening emails from the company. Some of those are as small as just ten subscribers, while others have millions of subscribers. It appears Reddit is determined to force all subreddits open, even those where subscribers have voted to stay private. The firm recently removed some moderators for accepting NSFW (not safe for work) content, but reinstated them later.
Note that NSFW-classified subreddits are not eligible for advertising. Hence moderators are going this route to try and impact Reddit’s ad revenue. This may be a more effective protest as the mass blackout didn’t make a significant revenue impact. But the company is threatening to remove moderators for accepting NSFW content as well. It remains to be seen how Reddit handles this mess in the coming weeks.