This is how the Reddit rules have changed moderators of subreddits must get admin permission to switch from public to private, as originally reported The Verge. This is seen by many as an attempt to prevent protests on the site, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staff. There would be no way for multiple subreddits to be private without Reddit getting their hands on it.
The company put a small note on their support page saying “if you change your community type after creating a community, you must submit a request.” This page does not provide any rationale behind the decision.
We reached out to Reddit to find out about this latest policy change, and the company gave us an update Write in the subreddit r/modnews Written by Laura Nestler, VP of Community. He wrote that “the ability to instantly change Community Type settings is being used to break the platform and violate our rules.”
It seems that last year’s protests are completely related to today’s changes. Nestler also suggested that it was a matter of personal responsibility, writing that “communities must live up to the expectations they set—public communities must be accessible to all; private communities must remain private.”
On the topic of recent protests, the shift from public to private is the exact way subreddits express their displeasure. last year’s API price changes. In this case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits, while active for current members, have become unavailable to the general public.
Daily traffic of the site suffered as a result. This allegedly affected the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was one main cut of the site then all subreddits became private. The company blamed the outage on the protests, telling Engadget that “a significant number of subreddits have been hijacked, causing expected stability issues.”
Not all protests involve changing the subreddit from public to private. Some moderators are protesting Reddit by labeling the subreddit as NSFW. This prohibits advertising on the subreddit and makes searching difficult. The company also put the kibosh on the move, as such switching now still requires admin approval.
It should be noted that last year’s protests did not yield any results. Reddit went ahead with the forcing API charges Shutting down third-party apps like Apollo. The company also came in and took full control of one of the larger subreddits who participated in the protest. Now, there’s a change today that effectively bans protests on all sites.
Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold Licensing its content to train AI models. The deal will reportedly net the company about $60 million a year, but the users who actually create the licensed content will earn about $0 each year.
