Reddit recently changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get administrative permission to go from public to private, as previously reported The Verge. This is seen by many as an attempt to prevent global protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staff. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to be private at the same time without Reddit having a hand on the lever.
The company put a small note on the support page that reads “if you change the type of your community after the community is created, you will need to submit a request.” This page does not provide any reasoning behind the decision.
We reached out to Reddit to ask about this recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the r/modnews subreddit written by VP of Community Laura Nestler. He wrote that “the ability to quickly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules.”
So it seems that last year’s protests are completely connected to today’s changes. Nestler also suggested that this is a matter of personal responsibility, writing that “communities must respect the expectations of their placement – public communities must always be accessible to all; private societies should remain private.”
On the topic of recent protests, going public to private is how subreddits expressed their displeasure with last year’s API pricing changes. In that case, more than 8,000 subreddits went private in parallel. This means that subreddits are not accessible to the general public, although they remain active for current members.
As a result, the site’s daily traffic has suffered. This is suspected to have affected the performance of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all these sub-sections were made private. The company blamed protests for the outage, telling Engadget that “a large number of subreddits transitioning to private led to some expected stability issues.”
Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protested against Reddit by labeling the subreddit as NSFW. This does not allow advertising on the subreddit and makes it difficult to search. The company has also put the kibosh on this move, as that type of change also now requires a manager’s approval.
It is worth noting that last year’s protests did not work. Reddit continued with those API charges, forcing third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also stepped in and took complete control of one of the largest subreddits participating in the protest. Now, there is a modern change that completely bans global protests.
Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company an estimated $60 million a year, but the users who created the licensed content will receive almost $0 a year.
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