Reddit is changing its rules in a way that could ensure its mods never go rogue again.
On Monday, Reddit’s vice president of community Laura Nestler announced in a post on the platform’s r/modnews subreddit that the company was changing the Community Type settings rules. Going forward, moderators will be required to submit a request to Reddit instead of being able to instantly change settings themselves.
Community type settings on subreddits are usually set by moderators and change a subreddit’s visibility from public to limited or private view. Mods can also change the Community Type settings from SFW (safe for work) to NSFW (not safe for work), which restrict access to the group by age.
Reddit’s CEO hints that subreddit paywalls are on the way
According to Nestler, in an interview with thresholdReddit has been talking about this change behind the scenes since she joined the company in 2021.
“When a public community is made private, all redditors (even members of that community) lose access to the community and its content,” Nestler said in the announcement posted on Reddit. “Except in extenuating circumstances, communities must respect the expectations they set—public communities must remain accessible to all; private communities must remain private.”
Quenching future Reddit protests
Whether or not Reddit has discussed this change before Reddit blackout protests of last year, it will be hard for users to see this as anything other than a change intended to stifle future dissent.
In June 2023, thousands of Reddit communities, known as subreddits, changed their Community Type settings from public to restricted or private in protest of the company’s recent changes to its API. The Reddit API used to be free for developers to build on. However, the company decided to start charging for API access, which resulted in some popular Reddit-based apps like Apollo closing.
Mashable’s Speed of Light
Reddit eventually had to get involved and take over several larger subreddits to restore access to these communities. When a subreddit is made private, many users and visitors are completely cut off from viewing the content posted there. Some moderators who refused to comply with Reddit were removed from their moderator positions. The role of moderator, it should be noted, is generally not held by Reddit employees. Moderator is a completely unpaid, volunteer position, and moderators are recruited from members of the Reddit community.
Reddit administrators, who will approve or deny these requests to change the Community Type settings, ARE employed by the company.
Earlier this year, Reddit became one public company in the stock market. The social media platform now has less room for its community to participate in actions that could hit the company’s traffic or revenue as they did in 2023.
The new rules
According to Reddit, moderators will now have to submit a request before taking their subreddit private or changing age restrictions.
Outside of protest, the obvious rationale for a quick Community Type change might be to avoid being inundated with harassment in the event that a subreddit is being brigaded with trolls. This is a situation from which communities, it seems, would be more vulnerable after the change of this rule. Several mods shared this concern in responses to the Reddit rule change post.
“Our trans subscribers have been bombarded by large, organized harassment campaigns in the past, sometimes for months,” one user wrote in the comments of the Reddit announcement. “Private exit and manual screening and approval of each applicant has been our primary safeguard for protecting our users, their photos and information.”
Mashable reached out to Reddit for comment on this potential issue and for further information about the change in general, but we did not hear back in time for publication.
Mods can apply for these requests at any time and will receive a response within 24 hours. Subreddits with less than 5,000 members, or those less than 30 days old, will have their requests automatically approved.
Moderators can still temporarily limit posts and comments on a subreddit under it Temporary events politics. Restrictions placed on a subreddit by mods due to a sudden spike in traffic will not require approval from Reddit. These restrictions under Temporary Events are allowed to last up to 7 days.
Regardless of what Reddit’s real reasoning behind the new rules is, the changes likely won’t get a positive response from moderators as Reddit removes a source of leverage these community members once had.
threads
Social networks Reddit