Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave

[GURPS]

The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful tools by jacking up the price on it to unsupportable levels — was about making Reddit more “democratic.”

Except, that’s clearly not the case. For weeks now, Reddit has been ratcheting up the threats to various moderators of subreddits to try to force them to reopen.

The latest is that Reddit started contacting more mods of protesting subs (most have reopened, but many are still engaging in acts of protest) telling them they had 48 hours to tell the company their plans for reopening. Quickly after that, they issued an ultimatum: closed subreddits must reopen.

“This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.
After a mod replied, ModCodeofConduct went even further. “[Millions of] members have lost complete access to this community and that is not going to continue,” the account said. “Wanting to take time to consider future moderation plans is fine, but that must be done in at least a ‘restricted’ setting. This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.”
In a conversation with moderators of a different subreddit, ModCodeofConduct told them that “continued violation of [Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct] over the next 31 hours will result in further action.” Rule 4 of that document is “Be Active and Engaged.” That subreddit has since reopened, though in an “archive” mode where new posts will be automatically removed.

Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave

The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about cur…

www.techdirt.com