from the off-with-their-heads dept
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.
The thing is, in many of these subreddits, the users voted in favor of going private. So, for all of Huffman’s nonsense talk about “democracy” and getting rid of what he preposterously called “the landed gentry,” the reality is the opposite. It’s Huffman’s way, or you’re out.
Indeed, there are already reports of Reddit admins being willing to help stage coups to oust protesting mods and install others in their place. Meanwhile, there’s talk of renewed protests on July 1st (the day the API changes go into effect), though who knows how well that will go.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen lots of reports noting that Redidt’s traffic, after an initial dip, has returned to normal, but it’s possible that some of that is just people gawking at the spectacle of the protesting subs that were covered in John Oliver images.
But, perhaps a more concerning issue regarding Huffman’s plans to take the company public in the near future, is that the same reports saying traffic has returned to normal, are noting that traffic to Reddit’s advertising portal… has dropped noticeably.
However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.
Next thing you know, we’ll be hearing that Huffman has hired Linda Yaccarino to be the new CEO….
Filed Under: ads, communities, moderators, steve huffman, subreddits, threats
Companies: reddit