Reddit planning to kick out protesting moderators
Reddit’s answer to a recent subreddit protest against application programming interface (API) fees appears to be to push out the moderators committed to that protest.
Approximately 8,000 subreddits went dark for at least 48 hours from Monday, 12 June 2023, to protest the company’s planned API fees coming into effect in July 2023.
Developers behind third-party mobile apps like Apollo have warned that the fees were all but certain to result in their shutdown.
Several critics — including Apollo developer Christian Selig — have pointed out that the fees were exorbitant compared to similar platforms.
Moderators on many of the platform’s biggest subreddits have been largely supportive of third-party app developers.
Many users prefer using these apps to access and engage on Reddit as they offer superior functionality.
Reddit blamed a two-hour outage of its website and mobile app on Monday on stability issues caused by public subreddits switching to private as part of the protest.
Many of the platform’s most popular subreddits have vowed to stay dark until Reddit revises its API fees.
But instead of listening to Reddit users’ and moderators’ concerns, Reddit appears to be doubling down on its messaging that the fees are necessary for its financial sustainability.
Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman told The Verge that Apollo’s free use and effective “reselling” of Reddit data meant it could have a 100% profit margin with little work.
“It costs us about $10 million in pure infrastructure costs to support these apps,” Huffman said.
Steve Huffman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Reddit Inc. Photo: Alex Flynn/Bloomberg
Huffman said that 90% of Reddit users were contributing and monetized through ads or Reddit Premium.
“Why would we subsidize this small group? Why would we effectively pay them to use Reddit but not everybody else who also contributes to Reddit? Does that make sense?”
“These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free.”
Huffman’s suggestion that the developers want the APIs to be free is disingenuous, as Selig has repeatedly said the fees are simply unreasonably high.
Whereas 50 million API calls on Reddit’s planned fees would work out to about $12,000, the same number on Imgur comes to $166.
Reddit’s director of consumer and product communications has also claimed that many users on protesting subreddits who wanted their communities back were not being heard.
NBC News reports that Huffman is considering new platform rules allowing Reddit users to vote out moderators if they are unhappy with their management of a subreddit.
Using existing Code of Conduct to take over protesting subreddits
In the r/ModSupport subreddit, an official Reddit admin recently said that Rule 2 and Rule 4 of the platform’s Code of Conduct allowed for removing moderators for being inactive, vandalizing communities, or “squatting” subreddits.
“Active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active,” the admin said.
“Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust.”
“We have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4).”
“When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation of the Moderator Code of Conduct, and add new, active mods to the subreddits.”
“We also step in to rearrange mod teams, so active mods are empowered to make decisions for their community.”
At the time of publication, this admin post had a negative score of 123.
However, in a post with a positive 2,900 score, Reddit user BuckRowdy said that the Code of Conduct did not allow admins to take over protesting subreddits that have been made private.
“The rules in the Code that have been quoted have no such allowances that can be applied to any of the participating subs,” they said.
“The rules cited do not apply to a private sub whether in protest or otherwise.”
Some protesting moderators also pointed out they would temporarily re-open subreddits to gauge users’ feelings about the protest and had repeatedly received support for it.
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