Are the Reddit Protests Over? - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

on Saturday August 05, 2023 @04:34PM from the what's-Snoo? dept.

"Three of Reddit's biggest communities are no longer focused entirely on John Oliver in a form of protest against Reddit," reports the Verge.

Gizmodo argues that this means "the Reddit protest is finally over. Reddit won." Despite the infinite blackout threats, most moderators relented as the weeks rolled by. Three major holdouts were r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos, some of Reddit's largest communities that account for more than 91 million subscribers. The three subreddits reopened weeks ago but adopted rules by popular vote that prohibited content that did not feature HBO's John Oliver, rendering the forums useless for their previous purposes.

For a while, the subreddits stood strong, but r/videos was the first to backpedal, dropping the John Oliver rule but requiring all posts to feature profanity. Soon that rule was abandoned as well. Last week, the moderators of r/aww announced the John Oliver rule was over, and over the weekend r/pics quietly gave up the protest as well, as reported by the Verge. "More than a month has passed, and as things on the internet go, the passion for the protest has waned and people's attention has shifted to other things," an r/aww moderator wrote in a post about the rule change.

According to Reddark, a site that tracks the subreddit protest, 1,843 of the original 8,829 protesting communities are still dark. But most of these are small communities, and today the only protesting subreddit with over 10 million subscribers is r/fitness.

The Verge: Two other big communities have switched back, too. r/pics (with more than 30 million subscribers) had perhaps been the most visibly tied to John Oliver: Oliver himself posted a series of silly photos specifically for the community to use, and at one point, the moderators of r/pics invited Oliver to join the mod team. But sometime recently, r/pics removed any obvious trace of its connections to John Oliver; the Wayback Machine shows that r/pics was all about John Oliver as of Friday but no longer on Saturday...

r/videos (with more than 26 million subscribers) actually dropped its John Oliver rule back in June; it was replaced by a new rule that all posts needed to contain profanity in the title after a community vote. Earlier this month, the r/videos moderators reverted the rules to what they were before the protests started...

In June, more than 8,000 communities went dark to protest the API pricing, but in the weeks since, many subreddits have opened back up (some after feeling pressure from Reddit) and are operating as they did before. Many users are still disgruntled, though, and made their feelings known in July's r/Place canvas.

More than 1,800 subreddits are still private in protest, according to the Reddark tracker.

Some key passages from the moderator's announcement at r/aww: What about the protest, though; did we win? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, as Reddit's minimal attempts at positive outreach remain overshadowed by the plethora of depressing developments...

At the end of the day, Reddit's API changes have gone into effect. They did not extend the transition period or reduce the exorbitant prices. They granted exemptions to a few apps and moderation tools, but that's about it. The best thing I can say is that they did honor their commitment to ensuring the continued functionality of some mod tools... Despite some reassurances and promises from Reddit, their conduct and these changes have driven away many developers, leading to the shutdown of some tools and an uncertain future for others.

The announcement with a link labeled "and more importantly," which leads to a picture with a message for Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (who uses the name "Spez" when posting on Reddit.)