It’s been two weeks since Reddit communities have been shut down, in protest of charges for using the platform’s API. The company, as you can imagine, isn’t liking it one bit. She sent messages to moderators and called out plans for reopening, saying subreddits can’t continue in private mode.
The messages were sent by admin users, who are employees of the company, to the moderators of the subreddits that remain closed.
In them, Reddit is vague, but stipulates a deadline around Thursday (29) for a response on what is the planning for reopening.
“It’s okay to want to wait a while to consider future moderation plans, but this should be done in a ‘restricted’ setting at the very least,” reads one of the messages obtained by the Verge. “This community will not be in private mode beyond the timeline we have allowed for confirmation of plans.”
In another conversation, the same Reddit admin account says that keeping communities in private mode will be considered a violation of rule 4 of the moderation code of conduct, which requires moderators to be active and engaged. Should this happen, the company would take the necessary measures.
Since then, some moderators have reopened their subreddits, but put them in archive modes. Thus, new posts are automatically removed.
Protest was felt even by Google
In restricted mode, only approved users can post, but the subreddit is visible to everyone.
This is an important point: many people visit communities just to get information. Limiting visibility directly affects Reddit traffic and advertising revenues.
Even Google seems to have borne the brunt of the protest. In a leaked audio, Prabhakar Raghavan, the company’s vice president of research, says that users of the search engine were not happy with the protest.
Adding “reddit” to the search has become a common trick to circumvent shallow, generic text. Thus, the user falls right into the replies that real people post on the subreddits. With communities closed, this ceases to work.
Reddit users are against API charges
The protests began on June 12, when some 7,000 subreddits were put into private mode by their moderators. Since then, many communities have reopened, while others have joined demonstrations in creative ways.
The reason is the charge for the network API. According to the company, this is a way to protect against the training of artificial intelligences using data from the platform. However, the new policy derailed several third-party apps, which were preferred by users.
