It looks like Reddit’s CEO threat to kick out volunteer moderators has been enough to scare many subreddits to open back up, although some are pivoting to new forms of protest.
Over 8,400 subreddits originally participated in the so-called "blackout" by becoming private, preventing users from accessing their pages. But this past weekend, many of the top subreddits reverted back to public —and some volunteer moderators cited Huffman’s threat as the reason why.
“You are seeing this post because Reddit has threatened to open subreddits regardless of mod action and replace entire teams that otherwise refuse,” wrote a moderator for r/Apple, a subreddit devoted to Apple products. “We want the best for this community and have no choice but to open it back up — or have it opened for us.” (Currently, only 3,385 subreddits remain dark.)
Indeed, this past weekend, Reddit began contacting volunteer moderators, urging them to make their subreddits public again. “We are reaching out to find out if any moderators currently on the mod team would be willing to take steps to reopen the community,” Reddit wrote, later adding: “If you are not able or willing to open and maintain the community please let us know.”
Although the message contained benign language, many volunteer moderators saw the wording as a potential threat that could lead to two drastic actions: Reddit could replace them with moderators willing to open the subreddit back up or the company could take over the subreddit entirely.
The messages were enough to spark moderators in support of the blackout to tell their peers to consider “softer forms of protest,” essentially pivoting away from keeping the subreddit private indefinitely. As a result, several high-profile subreddits such as r/aww, r/pics and r/GIFs —which have tens of millions of followers— are responding by permitting only users to post pictures of the British comedian John Oliver in attempt to keep protesting Reddit.
The moderators have been protesting Reddit because starting next month the platform plans on charging access to the its API. The resulting costs will be so high that several third-party apps, including Apollo, say they have no choice, but to shut down.
Reddit’s CEO originally said he’d respect the protests. But in an interview with NBC News last week, he called out the volunteer moderators supporting the blackout as “landed gentry,” and threatened to change Reddit's rules to boot them out.
So to no one’s surprise, many volunteer moderators continue to blast Reddit and Huffman for taking drastic action to crack down on the protests. “Anyway, we – the so-called ‘landed gentry’ – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the ‘royal court,’" wrote the moderators on r/GIFs in a sarcastic post.
In response, the moderators on r/GIFs polled their users on whether the subreddit should return to normal or permit only GIFs featuring the comedian John Oliver. A large swath of the subreddit’s users voted for the latter. r/Pics and r/Aww also held similar polls with the support overwhelmingly in favor of permitting only John Oliver-related posts.
So it’s possible many other subreddits could do the same. Still, the blackout has also faced some backlash among other users. For example, the subreddit r/NBA originally participated in the protest despite the NBA finals being in progress. r/NBA has since reverted back to normal, but some users there say they’re angry at the volunteer moderators for taking subreddit private.
“What were these fraudulent keyboard warriors thinking, closing down this forum in the most important series of this season. Especially after MOST USERS did not care at ALL about this stupid bullshit,” wrote one user.