Reddit’s fight with its most powerful users enters new phase as blackout continues

By Brian Fung, CNN

(CNN) — After nearly a week of mass protests on Reddit directed at its management, the company’s strategy appears to be simple: power through.

That approach was reflected Thursday in a series of media interviews conducted by Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman.

In the interviews, Huffman defended the company’s initial decision to charge third parties for data access, a decision that led to the days-long protests involving voluntary blackouts of thousands of forums on the site. Huffman also attributed high-profile blackouts to the petulance of an aggrieved minority, and accused some of its most vocal third-party developers of being freeloaders.

But Reddit isn’t only pushing back rhetorically. The company also appears to be laying the groundwork for ejecting forum moderators committed to continuing the protests, a move that could force open some communities that currently remain closed to the public. In response, some moderators have vowed to put pressure on Reddit’s advertisers and investors.

The escalations highlight the rift that’s emerged between the two most powerful groups on Reddit: The platform’s corporate managers and its unpaid volunteer moderators who manage conversations in individual subreddits. And it pits Reddit’s corporate interests, particularly ahead of a rumored initial public offering, against users and outside developers who have long argued they create value for the platform’s owners.

Now, the fate of the protests may hinge on public perceptions of which group better represents the views and interests of Reddit’s overall userbase, while Reddit increasingly moves to isolate moderators it views as out of line and as it seeks to drive a wedge between average users and moderators.

The Reddit blackout continues

More than 6,000 Reddit forums went dark on Monday in what was supposed to be a two-day protest over the company’s plan to charge some developers millions of dollars for third-party apps tapping into its application programming interface (API).

As of Friday morning, nearly 5,000 subreddits were still set to private and inaccessible to the public, reflecting a modest decrease from earlier in the week but still including groups such as r/funny, which claims more than 40 million subscribers, and r/aww and r/music, each with more than 30 million members.

But Reddit has portrayed the blacked-out communities as a small slice of its wider platform. Some 100,000 forums remain open, the company said in a blog post, including 80% of its 5,000 most actively engaged subreddits.

In the interviews with media, Huffman said that while many Reddit users may have supported the protests initially, most now simply want their favorite communities to open back up and that moderators who wish to continue protesting have lost the support of those they represent. Huffman at one point sought to drive home that message by using the phrase “landed gentry” to describe moderators as out of touch and privileged.

“The blackouts are not representative of the greater Reddit community,” Huffman told The Verge. “Users may have been for this on Monday; they’re not for it now.”

Huffman added that even many moderators themselves “don’t want to be dealing with this … it’s like a protest in a city that goes on too long, and the rest of the citizens of the city would like to go about their lives.”

That attitude was reflected in a number of Reddit comments reviewed by CNN, but it was not immediately evident whether that view represents a majority opinion.

Omar, a moderator of a subreddit participating in this week’s blackout, told CNN Friday that many subreddits have participated in the blackouts based on member polls that indicate strong support for the protests.

“What we are seeing now is a case of the discontent speaking out where the silent majority is happy with the status quo of a blackout,” said Omar, who requested anonymity for safety reasons. Omar added that the backlash Reddit has faced was largely self-inflicted, and that the company’s critics do not oppose its attempts to monetize the platform so much as the way it has gone about it.

“We aren’t here to argue that Reddit shouldn’t be charging for their API,” Omar added. “We’re here to argue that the timeline and the price of their API are both unreasonable and anti-competitive.”

Huffman argued this week that Reddit is a business, telling NPR “it’s time we grow up and behave like an adult company.”

Preparing for a crackdown

Even if there remain numerous holdouts committed to a long-term blackout, Reddit appears to be maneuvering for a crackdown.

Huffman told NBC News the company will soon allow forum users to overrule moderators by voting them out of their positions, a change that may enable communities that do not wish to remain private to reopen.

In addition, one company administrator said Thursday, Reddit may soon view communities that remain private as an indicator that the moderators of those communities no longer wish to moderate. That would constitute a form of inactivity for which the moderators can be removed, the company said.

“If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users,” the administrator said, adding that Reddit may intervene even if most moderators on a team wish to remain closed and only a single moderator wants to reopen.

Some moderators have interpreted the company’s message as a threat and a twisting of Reddit’s terms. Just because a subreddit stays private does not mean that the moderator team has stopped moderating, they have said.

“Going private does not affect the community’s purpose, cause improper content labeling, or remove the rules and expectations already set,” wrote a moderator of r/ModCoord, a Reddit forum where much of the moderator organizing has taken place. “Reddit has been vague about what they would do if subreddits stay private indefinitely. They’ve also said [moderators] would be safe. But it seems they are speaking very clearly and very loudly now: Moderators will be removed one way or another.”

Content moderation on Reddit stands to worsen if the company continues with its plan, Omar said, warning that the coming changes will deter developers from creating and maintaining tools that Reddit communities rely on to detect and eliminate spam, hate speech or even child sexual abuse material.

“That’s both harmful for users and advertisers,” Omar said, adding that supporters of the protests have been contacting advertisers to explain how the platform’s coming changes may hurt brands. Already, Omar said, the blackout has made it harder for companies to target ads to interest groups; video game companies, for example, can no longer target ads to gaming-focused subreddits that have taken themselves private.

Reddit has promised to update its proprietary tools for moderators and argued that 93% of moderation actions currently take place through the platform’s website and native app. Huffman has also said that the protests have had little impact on the company financially.

The-CNN-Wire
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