Reddit appears to be stepping up pressure on moderators to open up communities that were closed during the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin – a Reddit contributor – has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the “expectation here is for communities to reopen,” according to a post shared publicly by a moderator from r/DIY.
The pressure worked. The community was closed, but reopened on Thursday, and a mod said fear of Reddit action forced the team: “We’re reopening because if we don’t, the mods Reddit appoints might not care about the subreddit like we do,” the mod wrote.
The mod’s post also announced a host of changes to the subreddit’s rules that more closely adhere to Reddit’s general requirements, while also reversing many of the standards and rule tweaks that were in place to improve content quality. improve. The changes no longer include requiring users to do basic research and lowering the standard for what the subreddit counts as spam. Reddit has its community reopened, but at what cost?
We’ve seen posts from other moderators where the admin, ModCodeofConduct, uses similar rhetoric. Speaking to r/homeimprovement’s moderators, the admin said that “to be very clear, you can’t stay closed, so we need to know if mods here want to participate in opening up the community.”
To the moderators of r/harrypotter, the admin account wrote that “keeping the community closed is not an option” – although users have voted that the subreddit be private, according to a post by ar/harrypotter mod.
More than 2,600 subreddits are going dark in protest, and users on r/ModCoord (moderator coordination) are still sharing their stories of receiving messages from Reddit that they consider threatening and intimidating. “My little sub with 27 users is under threat because he keeps blacking out,” a user wrote. “Reddit is a BULLY,” said anothersharing a screenshot of where they told ModCodeofConduct their posts were “harassment and harassment”.
Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We will no longer respond to rumors, unsubstantiated allegations or unsubstantiated allegations of The edge. We will contact you if corrections are needed.” So if there are no corrections, you can assume that Reddit believes none are necessary.
