After porn-y protest, Reddit ousted mods; replacing them isn’t simple

After threatening to do so last week, Reddit has now removed the moderators of some of the subreddits that were protesting Reddit’s new API pricing scheme. Some of these subreddits have new mods in the protesters’ place, while other affected subreddits have been left unmoderated. Still others, oddly, saw their moderators reinstated.

Reddit claims the moves are a response to mods breaking its Moderator Code of Conduct by allowing “not safe for work” (NSFW) content in previously “safe for work” subreddits. However, moderators who spoke to Ars Technica believe Reddit’s actions are designed to silence their protests over the new fees.

Mod status revoked

Various Reddit moderators reached out to Ars Technica this week, informing us that mods for r/Celebrities, r/interestingasfuck, r/mildlyinteresting, r/self, r/ShittyLifeProTips, and r/TIHI have been removed. Other subreddits are reportedly affected, too, including r/toyota, r/garmin, and r/IllegalLifeProTips. All of the communities recently started allowing NSFW content as a form of API pricing protest.

Reddit can’t sell ads on NSFW content, and Redditors have accused the company of covertly switching some subreddits back to SFW.

Ars Technica asked Reddit if a Reddit admin had switched NSFW communities back to SFW, and spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt responded by saying, “It’s not OK to show people NSFW content when they don’t want to see it. In line with our Moderator Code of Conduct, we’ll remove moderators and restrict communities where moderators are engaging in malicious conduct, like allowing rule-violating behavior or encouraging the submission of sexually explicit content in previously safe-for-work spaces.”

He added that mods “incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct.”

Reddit’s Content Policy has a rule that says: “Ensure people have predictable experiences on Reddit by properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually explicit, or offensive.” Rathschmidt also directed us to Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct, which says that mods must “Be Active and Engaged.”

As of this writing, some of the subreddits whose mods were removed remain unmoderated. Other subreddits have new mods. One example, r/Celebrities, has already seen resistance from community members, claiming the new mods “don’t represent” them and that these mods weren’t active in the community before the protests.

Meanwhile, the feeling around the general mod community is one of disgust, while some are seriously considering abandoning their volunteer posts or have already done so.

“We put up with a lot as Reddit mods—death threats, doxing, sorting through lewd and even illegal material (that Reddit continually ignores)—and deserve to be treated with basic respect,” a Reddit moderator, who asked to be referred to only as Jess for privacy reasons, said regarding the removal of some mods. The mod has started erasing their account and has resigned as a moderator.

“I have no desire to be associated with a company that conducts itself in such a manner,” Jess said.

Confusingly, the moderators of some of the subreddits, including r/mildlyinteresting, were restored.

Reddit didn’t answer Ars Technica’s questions about why mods for the aforementioned subreddits were removed or why some mods were restored.

Third-party apps are mod tools, too

Since the beginning of the controversy, moderators have been at the forefront of the API pricing protests, with most arguing that the new pricing will eliminate the tools that let them moderate effectively. Reddit has made a lot of noise lately about how new pricing won’t impact moderator tools; however, many “moderator tools” are just standard third-party reader apps.

Jim Salter, an Ars staff alumnus and a moderator for r/zfs, told Ars that the apps he hears mods worrying about the most are Apollo and RIF. The companies behind both apps plan to close when the new API pricing takes effect, with Apollo famously announcing that Reddit’s new fees would cost it $20 million per year.

“I don’t know of anyone at all using a ‘third-party moderation tool only’ client that [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman would be exempting. The third-party mod tools are built into all-in-one clients, and their use as mod tools isn’t getting them exempted,” Salter said.

Jess relies on RIF for moderating work and described the app as “incredibly simple and intuitive” while Reddit’s own mobile app is “prohibitively slow and clunky.”

Jess said, “I am happy to see that Reddit has recently added a significant number of mod tools on their app, but it’s too little, too late, in my opinion. I’m not going to use an app I don’t like in order to do volunteer work.”

A mod, who asked to be identified as Omar for privacy reasons, told Ars that the ongoing protests aren’t just about mod tools, saying that the protests have gone well beyond that.

“The core issue at hand is that the behavior of Huffman has been hostile to the people that have contributed to his platform for free. A 30-day window to adjust your business is not something that should ever become industry standard for an API,” Omar said.

He added, “The question isn’t about if these tools are impacted by the API. There is a large amount of uncertainty about if that will change and a hostility by Huffman that makes it hard to take promises at face value.”

Huffman recently told The Verge that Reddit has been considering new API fees since at least 2015, so the need for the speed of the current changes isn’t clear. Huffman has also said that he’s open to negotiating with developers, but Reddit didn’t answer Ars Technica’s questions about which developers it is still working with.

Reddit’s Rathschmidt told Ars that Reddit sees its Developer Platform as a potential future resource of mod and accessibility tools but declined to share details on when it would exit beta. However, interest in the platform, which has its own limitations (like siloed data) has waned since the API battle, with devs unsure of how Reddit might treat the platform in the future.

“Given Reddit’s history of app development, I don’t exactly have high hopes for [the Developer Platform],” Salter said. “It’s worth remembering that the current Reddit app is the result of Huffman purchasing Alien Blue and immediately making it tremendously *worse* than it was when he bought it. It’s also worth noting that ‘the new thing is in beta’ is not the best time to destroy ‘the old thing that actually works.’”

Thousands of subreddits remain dark

Although the initial subreddit protest blackout period was from June 12 to 14, 3,038 subreddits are still dark as of this writing, according to the Reddark_247 tracker. On Thursday, however, Reddit claimed that over 80 percent of its top 5,000 communities, based on daily average users, are open.

Last week, Huffman did a round of interviews in which he expressed a strong desire for the protests’ end. He told NBC News that he was considering changes to Reddit’s rules that would make it easier for community members to vote out mods.

On Friday, a Reddit admin posting in the r/ModSupport subreddit said, “If mods disagree about how to moderate their community, we will reorder the moderator list to grant top slots to mods that want to keep their communities active and engaged,” adding, “If a top mod wants to stop moderating but keep the community private indefinitely, they will be bumped down the list so a more active moderator can step in.”

Reddit’s Rathschmidt told Ars that Reddit is “not replacing protesting moderators” and claimed instead that Reddit is responding to violations of the Be Active and Engaged moderator rule.

“We are not removing moderators because they are protesting, nor are we taking over subreddits for participating in the blackout,” Rathschmidt said.

“We have a unique system of checks and balances, (including our Moderator Code of Conduct), and we respect the communities’ right to protest. Any actions we are taking are because of rules (Code of Conduct, primarily Rule 4) being broken, not for protesting,” he added.

Still, Reddit’s latest porn-induced headache seems somewhat self-inflicted. Coaxing mods into opening private subreddits can encourage protesters to drum up new, creative ways to protest Reddit’s API pricing… and creative they were. In addition, mods Ars spoke with all pointed to Huffman’s recent interviews as riling up protesters further.

Recent developments are just another indication of the power struggle happening between Reddit and its most dedicated users. Reddit needs free content and moderation to exist, yet it doesn’t want to give those critical players real control of site policies, even though they are largely responsible for much of the site’s content and value. In the protests, these volunteer content creators and moderators are trying to show just how much influence they can have on the Reddit experience.