Reddit
is
giving
its
staff
a
lot
more
power
over
the
communities
on
its
platform.
Starting
today,
Reddit
moderators
will
not
be
able
to
change
if
their
subreddit
is
public
or
private
without
first
submitting
a
request
to
a
Reddit
admin.
The
policy
applies
to
adjusting
all
community
types,
meaning
moderators
will
have
to
request
to
make
a
switch
from
safe
for
work
to
not
safe
for
work,
too.
By
requiring
admin
approval
for
the
changes,
Reddit
is
taking
away
a
lever
many
communities
used
to
protest
the
company’s
API
pricing
changes
last
year.
By
going
private,
the
community
becomes
inaccessible
to
the
public,
making
the
platform
less
usable
for
the
average
visitor.
And
that’s
part
of
the
reason
behind
the
change.
“The
ability
to
instantly
change
Community
Type
settings
has
been
used
to
break
the
platform
and
violate
our
rules,”
Reddit
VP
of
community
Laura
Nestler,
who
goes
by
the
username
Go_JasonWaterfalls
on
the
platform,
writes
in
a
post
on
r/modnews.
“We
have
a
responsibility
to
protect
Reddit
and
ensure
its
long-term
health,
and
we
cannot
allow
actions
that
deliberately
cause
harm.”
Last
year,
thousands
of
subreddits
went
private
to
protest
changes
to
Reddit’s
API
pricing
that
forced
some
apps
and
communities
to
shut
down.
Going
private
was
effective
during
the
protests
in
making
a
statement
and
raising
awareness.
But
it
also
blocked
off
content
that
Reddit
users
might
have
made
with
the
expectation
that
it
would
stay
public.
(Going
private
made
Google
searches
worse,
too.)
During
the
protests,
Reddit
sent
messages
to
moderators
of
protesting
communities
to
tell
them
that
it
would
remove
them
from
their
posts
unless
they
reopened
their
subreddits.
It
also
publicly
noted
that
going
NSFW
(Not
Safe
For
Work),
a
tool
moderators
used
to
add
friction
to
accessing
a
subreddit
and
to
make
the
subreddit
ineligible
for
advertising,
was
“not
acceptable.”
More
than
a
year
after
the
protests,
Reddit
is
essentially
back
to
normal.
But
it
appears
the
company
still
feels
it
has
to
make
changes
to
protect
the
platform.
“While
we
are
making
this
change
to
ensure
users’
expectations
regarding
a
community’s
access
do
not
suddenly
change,
protest
is
allowed
on
Reddit,”
writes
Nestler.
“We
want
to
hear
from
you
when
you
think
Reddit
is
making
decisions
that
are
not
in
your
communities’
best
interests.
But
if
a
protest
crosses
the
line
into
harming
redditors
and
Reddit,
we’ll
step
in.”
Reddit
says
it
will
review
requests
to
make
communities
private
or
NSFW
within
24
hours.
For
smaller
or
newer
communities
— under
5,000
members
or
less
than
30
days
old
—
requests
will
be
approved
automatically.
And
if
a
community
wants
to
temporarily
restrict
posts
or
comments
for
up
to
seven
days,
which
might
be
useful
for
a
sudden
influx
of
traffic
or
when
mod
teams
want
to
take
a
break,
they
can
do
so
without
approval
with
the
“temporary
events”
feature.
A
GIF
showing
how
to
make
a
Community
Type
request
on
Reddit.GIF:
Reddit
Reddit
worked
with
mods
ahead
of
announcing
this
change,
Nestler
tells
me
in
an
interview.
The
same
day
Nestler
and
I
talked,
for
example,
she
said
that
she
had
spoken
about
the
changes
with
Reddit’s
mod
council,
which
has
about
160
moderators.
She
characterized
their
reaction
as
“broadly
measured”
and
said
that
the
mods
understand
Reddit’s
rules
and
why
Reddit
is
making
the
change,
“even
if
they
don’t
necessarily
like
it.”
But
“the
feedback
that
was
very
obvious
was
this
will
be
interpreted
as
a
punitive
change,”
particularly
in
response
to
last
year’s
API
protests,
she
says.
I
asked
if
Reddit
would
reconsider
this
new
requirement
if
there
was
significant
blowback.
“We’re
going
to
move
forward
with
it,”
Nestler
says.
“We
believe
that
it’s
needed
to
keep
communities
accessible.
That’s
why
we’re
doing
this.”
Nestler
says
the
change
is
something
that
the
company
has
talked
about
since
she
came
to
Reddit
(she
joined
in
March
2021,
two
years
before
the
protests).
But
the
protests
made
it
clear
that
letting
moderators
make
their
communities
private
at
their
discretion
“could
be
used
to
harm
Reddit
at
scale”
and
that
work
on
this
feature
was
“accelerated”
because
of
the
protests.
Nestler
wanted
to
make
clear
that
its
rules
aren’t
new
and
that
the
enforcement
of
the
rules
isn’t
new.
“Our
responsibility
is
to
protect
Reddit
and
to
ensure
its
long-term
health,”
Nestler
says.
“After
that
experience,
we
decided
to
deprecate
a
way
to
cause
harm
at
scale.”
However,
she
says
that
the
company
only
did
so
“when
we
were
confident
that
we
could
bring
our
mods
along
with
us.”
(Originally posted by Jay Peters)
Comments