{"id":496777,"date":"2023-06-19T13:18:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=496777"},"modified":"2023-06-19T13:31:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:31:02","slug":"reddit-planning-to-kick-out-protesting-moderators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/496777-reddit-planning-to-kick-out-protesting-moderators.html","title":{"rendered":"Reddit planning to kick out protesting moderators"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Developers behind third-party mobile apps like Apollo have warned that the fees were all but certain to result in their shutdown.<\/p>\n

Several critics \u2014 including Apollo developer Christian Selig \u2014 have pointed out that the fees were exorbitant compared to similar platforms.<\/p>\n

Moderators on many of the platform’s biggest subreddits have been largely supportive of third-party app developers.<\/p>\n

Many users prefer using these apps to access and engage on Reddit as they offer superior functionality.<\/p>\n

Reddit blamed a two-hour outage<\/strong><\/a> of its website and mobile app on Monday on stability issues caused by public subreddits switching to private as part of the protest.<\/p>\n

Many of the platform’s most popular subreddits have vowed to stay dark until Reddit revises its API fees.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman told The Verge<\/strong><\/a> that Apollo’s free use and effective “reselling” of Reddit data meant it could have a 100% profit margin with little work.<\/p>\n

“It costs us about $10 million in pure infrastructure costs to support these apps,” Huffman said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Steve Huffman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Reddit Inc. Photo: Alex Flynn\/Bloomberg<\/p><\/div>\n

Huffman said that 90% of Reddit users were contributing and monetized through ads or Reddit Premium.<\/p>\n

\n

“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?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

NBC News reports<\/strong><\/a> that Huffman is considering new platform rules allowing Reddit users to vote out moderators if they are unhappy with their management of a subreddit.<\/p>\n

Using existing Code of Conduct to take over protesting subreddits<\/h2>\n

In the r\/ModSupport subreddit<\/strong><\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

“We have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4).”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

“We also step in to rearrange mod teams, so active mods are empowered to make decisions for their community.”<\/p>\n

At the time of publication, this admin post had a negative score of 123.<\/p>\n

However, in a post with a positive 2,900 score, Reddit user BuckRowdy said<\/strong><\/a> that the Code of Conduct did not allow admins to take over protesting subreddits that have been made private.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“The rules cited do not apply to a private sub whether in protest or otherwise.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Now read: Reddit breach \u2014 attackers steal source code and internal documents<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moderators are a vital part of what makes Reddit tick. Despite not being paid for their time and effort, they help ensure conversations on the platform have a measure of civility and that illegal content gets taken down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":494987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[54371,65978,86971,8045,87223,12763],"class_list":["post-496777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-apollo","tag-application-programming-interface-api","tag-christian-selig","tag-reddit","tag-reddit-protest","tag-steve-huffman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496883,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496777\/revisions\/496883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}