Reddit Experiments With Removing Mods, Blocking Attempts To Switch Subs To NSFW
from the from-sexy-john-oliver-to-sex dept
Reddit’s ongoing war with its volunteer moderators (and users) has moved up a notch. As you’ll recall, last week, the ever tone-deaf CEO Steve Huffman insisted that the protests were just a blip, would be over by last Wednesday, and were having no real impact on the site anyway.
That hasn’t gone quite to plan.
The protests got extended, and as Huffman and Reddit made noises about removing mods of protesting subreddits, things got weird over the weekend, with mods holding votes on a variety of subs that got overwhelming support to reopen with only pictures of comedian John Oliver. And some subreddits took it even farther, requiring they be sexy pictures of John Oliver.
And, from sexy pictures of John Oliver, it didn’t take long for some subreddits to switch to being open, but for NSFW (Not Safe for Work) content: i.e., porn. This included many popular subreddits that wouldn’t normally be home to such content, such as r/interestingasfuck, r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It), r/formula1, r/videos and even r/iOS?
Of course, this impacts Reddit in multiple ways that probably aren’t great for Reddit, or Huffman’s desire to take the company public and help investors cash out. First, it effectively makes those subreddits private, as you can’t view NSFW subs unless you’re logged in and have confirmed that you’re over 18. So, that creates some friction. But, an even bigger deal is that Reddit does not post ads on NSFW subs:
Ads for adult-oriented products and services on Reddit are no longer permissible, and Not Safe For Work (typically referred to as NSFW) subreddits will no longer be eligible for ads or targeting.
As for the claims by Huffman that the protests were not having any real impact, well… the data suggests otherwise. No, it didn’t completely crash traffic to Reddit, but an analysis by Engadget, using SimilarWeb data, showed traffic definitely did drop during the protest. While the decline in unique visitors may not seem that much at 6.6%, the more important point was that the time spent on the platform dropped even more precipitously:
The day before the protest began, an average session on the website was about eight minutes and 31 seconds long. A day later, that metric fell to seven minutes and 17 seconds, or the lowest that stat has been in the past three years.
Any such drop does not look good for investors who would be looking at buying into the company’s “vision” if they’re going to buy equity on the open market.
I’m also kind of wondering if one of the reasons for the massive drop in time spent has to do with the well known fact that the answers to Google searches are often found… on Reddit. And if people are searching for information that takes them to a Reddit thread, in the past, they’d spend some time reading through the threads. But if they do a search, and then click through to find a sub closed or overwhelmed by John Oliver or porn, they might not stick around. And, certainly, some people have noticed that the Reddit protests are also making Google worse.
Given all this bad news, it looks like Reddit and Huffman dipped their toes in the water of trying to remove these moderators thumbing their nose at Huffman. A whole bunch of folks sent over a post on the r/ModCoord subreddit in which a mod from r/MildlyInteresting (one of the subs that switched to NSFW, with support from its community) suddenly found that the entire mod team was locked out of the subreddit.
I was preparing the sub to go live, but just after I switched it to NSFW, I was logged out of my account on every single platform and locked out. I can successfully reset my password, but it will nevertheless not let me login.
Following this, another mod posted our update instead. Right after, the u/ModCodeofConduct account removed the post and flipped the sub back to restricted instead of public. Then, the second moderator was also logged out of their account and locked out. Other mods tried to re-approve the post, one of them was promptly logged out and locked out as well.
A few minutes after, the entire team was removed from the subreddit without any prior communication of any kind. As it stands, at least three of us are literally locked out of our Reddit accounts and the other mods were only removed from the sub.
It appeared that other subreddits that had gone NSFW had the same thing happen, including r/TIHI and r/interestingasfuck.
After complaining, the mod team was told that they had received a 7-day suspension, with some excuse from Reddit about how it was done to “prevent subs spamming sexually explicit material” which the r/MildlyInteresting mods insisted was never the plan in the first place.
And, of course, just as all this started to go viral, someone at Reddit HQ realized how bad all this looked and reinstated the mods:
ModMail from a different admin (not ModCoC) explains that we were apparently “swept up in actions” that they were taking against “communities that were encouraging sexually explicit content”. Situation remains really unclear, and the fact we were a mistake does not excuse r/interestingasfuck being targeted or any of the other 5 subs.
There have been other reports that Reddit staff are deliberately changing subreddits back from NSFW to SFW. Even if the community voted to support the change to NSFW.
A spokesman for Reddit, Tim Rathschmidt, (who over the weekend insisted that Reddit’s threat to remove mods was no threat at all) continues to lie through his teeth with a quote to the Verge:
“Moderators incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said to The Verge when asked about the suspended mods. He declined to comment when asked if Reddit removed the mods.
Rathschmidt also seemed to get a bit snippy when the Verge’s Jay Peters followed up:
Asked if Reddit could confirm the reinstatement, Rathschmidt declined, saying, “I’m not going to set a precedent of confirming with The Verge every action we do or don’t take to ensure users can access their communities.” He didn’t elaborate on how removing a subreddit’s entire moderation team with no communication ensures users can access their communities, particularly since they were never entirely inaccessible beyond the limitations imposed by Reddit itself.
And it appears that this was just the beginning. There were reports that Reddit pulled down its content policy page. And, as I write this, that appears to be the case. Here’s what it looked like yesterday, according to the Internet Archive:
And here’s what it looked like a few hours ago as I wrote this:
Just… gone. If you pull down the language menu, you find there’s no option for English.
This morning the content policy came back, but… still.
And that same Reddit post noted that subreddits switching to NSFW now receive a popup saying that “Content tag is pending until reviewed,” suggesting that Reddit admins are now blocking the changes:
Basically, for all of Huffman’s talk of “landed gentry,” he seems to have decided that he’s the emperor, and gets to make all the decisions now.
Filed Under: mods, nsfw, protests, steve huffman
Companies: reddit
Comments on “Reddit Experiments With Removing Mods, Blocking Attempts To Switch Subs To NSFW”
Coin flip… Twitter or Reddit?
Re:
Can’t tell the difference!
Re: Re:
“Twitter” read backwards is “Rettiwt”.
Re: Re: Re:
True, but considering that Huffman has gone ON RECORD that he thinks Twitter is profitable…
hile it may be extremely presumptious of me to assume, I’m going to assume the worst and think that Huffman also wants to turn Twitter into the same sort of white supremacist shithole Twitter has become, with only the merest of nods to his Wall Street peers.
Re: Re: Re:2
WTF, the guy is delusional if he thinks that Musk-Twitter is profitable.
Even the cost reduction (ignore all the one of costs incurred with the mass layoffs since they are not structural) of the mass layoffs would net Twitter at most $1 billion a year. Just the debt service, of the debt that Musk dropped on Twitter, is estimated at $1.5 billion/year.
And then the expected loss of ad revenue this year is $2 billion to $3 billion. Closing a data center and downsizing a second is not going to cut it to fill a $2.5 billion+ hole.
There is a reason that Twitter under Musk is not paying bills.
Re:
Are you perhaps referring to a bet as to which company will go under first?
Or maybe you’re you channeling FuckedCompany.com, is that it? Yeah, I can see where Pud Kaplan really would be having a heyday over all that’s been going in the last year or so….
If all mods are removed, what’s stopping users from uploading NSFW content?
Re:
They’re removing problem mods and installing/promoting puppets.
Re: Re:
I never expected such a Gonzo response. Perhaps Camilla has been a bad influence on him.
Beyond advertising woes, I am going to guess that there are potential legal and App store problems regarding actual porn in large, previously work safe spaces that Reddit is going to do everything they can to avoid, unlike the pictures of John Oliver protests other subreddits are doing. Just off the top of my head
1.) Tumblr went through their disaster of a porn ban because of App store policies, having large subreddits suddenly become porn subreddits could create a nightmare for Reddit there.
2.) Most of the new US age verification laws target websites with a “significant portion” of their website as being adult content, generally defining that term to mean 33%. While these poorly crafted laws don’t define how they get to that number, having a meaningful portion of the largest subreddits become porn reddits certainly wouldn’t help Reddit’s math.
3.) Depending on the subreddit, I wouldn’t be surprised if a prosecutor would find something to attempt to charge if a large previously work safe sub that attracted a younger audience (like say the Minecraft subreddit) suddenly became a porn subreddit, even if everything was properly marked.
Re:
A problem of their own making.
Ideally those laws get tossed for being unconstitutional – still, this falls under “reddit shit the bed and now has to lie in it”, and regardless, the NSFW tag requires someone to log in and confirm they’re over 18 to view content, so there is a deamarcantion.
This one holds less water, because the NSFW tag blocks the general public from viewing the subreddit. As stated, they would have to log in and have to have confirmed they are 18 in order to view the content, so allowing the tag to be put in place would actually be a method of shielding them from this sort of tactic.
Basically, even if they do have those as reasons, they don’t hold up and certainly don’t excuse anything.
Re:
For some reason you have outlined some potential problems for Reddit, and then conflated them with the only real, actual problem. All that’s needed here is for the Elmo-wannabe to hit the road, and most of the damage he’s caused should self-correct in short order.
Re:
NSFW != porn.
Is that Reddit or Wreckit?
Re:
If you have to ask, it’s already wrecked!
I deleted my Reddit account this morning. 50k karma, money spent, all wiped out. They’ll never again receive my impressions or my hard-earned money.
This being the case, I’m quite appreciative to Techdirt for the continued insight into Reddit’s demise. I was afraid all this popcorn was going to have to go to waste.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
Hopefully you didn’t let the door hit you on your way out!!
Re: Re:
You’re gonna have to roll your window down. I can’t make it a word you’re saying.
I’m sure spez will find plenty of people willing to moderate to his requirements while not being paid at all.
Those who do volunteer will moderate using a tool that does not work well.
1) not enough mods
2) mod tool ineffective
3) ???
4) profit!!!!
Re:
For some of those subreddits, it’s a matter of firing the poor employees and hiring more… subservient ones.
It’s a small but disturbing trend of corporations running subreddits, despite the rules forbidding that sort of behavior.
Re: Re:
That’s not a viable option long term, because those new mods will also not have the necessary tools to keep the subreddits free of hate speech, spam, and porn. Most of them will quit after a while and the subreddits will get totally overrun. Right now potential replacements don’t know what they’re going to be up against. Replacements for those replacements will, and very, very few people will want to sign up for that.
Reddit could try hiring people to work as mods, but that’ll cost a lot of money. Since they just had a round of layoffs, that option’s a non-starter. The current employees have other stuff to do, they can’t moderate full time.
Re: Re: Re:
The only way for reddit to remain viable while still locking their APIs is if they update their own moderator tools to quality levels matching the previous 3rd party tools. At least once they’re done waging war with their users they’d still have a workable platform.
But that still doesn’t address the ill-will that’s been generated by what they’ve been doing up until now.
Re: Re: Re:
Tell that to about 6,500 former employees of Twitter, after how many rounds of layoffs? You can take it to the bank that Elmo Jr. is just chomping at the bit to start emulating his daddy.
Re: Re: Re:2
You realize that the “non-starter” is them hiring more people, right?
The landed gentry peasants are revolting against Emperor Huffman. I’m sure he will keep up his campaign of the beatings will continue until everybody is happy. I hate to invoke the curses of Digg, Myspace, Yahoo and Geocities upon Reddit but it’s current management deserves it. Huffman and Musk should be case studies for business schools on how to squander your resources becacuse you’re too far up your own ass to see the forest for the trees. (Buy my MixMastr5000 AI that will mix metaphors for your with ease. You too can sound crazy all for $9.99 in bitcoin, just go to hppp:/www.MxMstr5k.com.org.gov.edu.sar.csm. If you don’t, the terrorists win and you’ll make the baby Jesus cry!!! I have another AI program–one that’s as sharp as a knife and smart as a tack–that will let everybody in your contact list know you are a terrorist lover who coddles terrorists because you’re too cheap to be patriotic and spend $9.99 to save America!!! Save America now or the world wlil know you hate America!!1!!1!!!!!! ! )
Mods: The right for the sub to determine if it was SFW or NSFW was part of the deal!
Huffman: I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.
This is how you get a general evacuation of your cloud city.
Google searches?
I don’t know where you get this impression from, unless it’s because Google knows you frequently visit Reddit pages, and so weights Reddit pages high in your search results?
It certainly rarely appears in my search results. Stackoverflow.com on the other hand … does.
Re:
I certainly get Reddit results frequently from DuckDuckGo’s anonymous Onion service (to find it, use Tor Browser to search for “DuckDuckGo onion” on the regular DuckDuckGo site). It’s quite unlikely they know anything about me, as I also reject cookies. And they’d rewrite the links to old.reddit.com if they knew.
Google tries hard to ban anonymous searching, but occasionally I do get a successful search through and see Reddit in the results. I’ve heard many other people mention Reddit being a useful repository of “answers” that show up in search engines. You’re probably just not searching for the same things we are.
Leaving the Dumpter Fire
Many of us are bailing to kbin and Lemmy. Kbin doesn’t have an App yet, but it will soon – maybe before the Reddit IPO is delisted.
Huffman: I am getting that golden egg so I can sell it and I don’t care how many people tell me to stop stabbing the goose!
Re:
Errr, but most of us think Hoffman is being the silly goose…
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Thankfully, two of the most troublesome and self-righteous mods at r/formula1 have resigned, and the deceptive NSFW-tag has been removed from the sub.
Re:
Imagine how utterly, irredeemably stupid someone has to be, to support spez and blame the mods.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Mods getting a taste of their own medicine
I’m 100% against what Huffman and co are doing but I do find it hilarious to watch the Mods deal with the same treatment a lot of them do to the users of their subs. I literally got perma banned with no warnings and no previous strikes from r/AITA for saying a human trafficker was acting kind of like a Karen and then when I asked why I was banned they literally tried to get me banned from all of Reddit. I appealed and got my Reddit account back because the ban was ridiculous.
Re:
And this is why you don’t keep a rotten apple in the apple barrel.
1 Moderator is an asshole (to them specifically) and gianpo immediately declares every single mod is the same and that because one moderator was an asshole (to them) every single mod deserves the treatment that Reddit is now dishing out because the moderators are (in the only way that seems to draws attention based on the past) telling Reddit leadership to not be assholes.
Re: Re:
So one of the mods on r/AITA was being an asshole? Unbelievable!
Well, the good news is, at least Steve Huffman thinks he’s a good leader. You know, because his mom told him so.
Dear Internet,
I am about to piss off my entire userbase & moderators.
Please do not build a platform that is like mine, but actually functions that my userbase would flock to leaving me the emperor of nothing.
KTHKS,
Huffy
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
An attack on NSFW content is an attack on the LGBT+ community. For the sake of fursuits and double-dicked horsecocked futanari as nature intended, any attempt to block NSFW must be accurately categorized as homophobia of the gravest degree.
Re:
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Can’t tell how much of that was sarcasm and how much you actually believe.
I gotta go touch some grass.
Re: Re:
Any attack on someone who is LGBT+ is homophobia.
That much is clear.
Maybe you should, indeed, go and touch grass. I do it every time my daddy puts a collar on me and takes me out for walkies.
Re: Re: Re:
o_O
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Great to see Reddit experimenting with new ways to ensure the safety and well-being of its users. By removing mods who display questionable behavior and blocking attempts to switch subs to NSFW, Reddit is taking proactive steps to create a positive community experience. Keep up the good work! – Cameron Hanson.
Re:
So from which reputation management firm are you?
I mean there is this sudden consistent message being blasted onto the internet that the Reddit mods are loose cannons who not only ignore the users of their subs but actively hurt that user community. And accusation without merit, that would fit right into 1984, on this particular issue since the mods have been following what the users of their subs want else said the wishes of their community and it has been Reddit that is behaving like a loose cannon running roughshod over the wishes of the communities and hurting said communities.
Re: Re:
I don’t think its a PR hack so much as a spammer who posted something so outrageous as to drive traffic to his ringtone festival website so he could get traffic.
Re:
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
The spez apologists are quite lame and beginning to look like bots repeating the same drivel over and over.
What if I shoot my feet with a higher caliber weapon? – Spez
Great falls
Does this remind anyone else of a certain person wanting to be king of a certain IRC network? I hope the result is similar.
Private platform
He IS the emperor. Period.
Private platform private rules and he can de whatever he likes.
Closing access to a sub is detrimental to the users.
The vast majority of users don’t care about the mod protest. They want to use the site.
If you don’t like the policy, go somewhere else.
Finding a new moderator isn’t difficult. Just choose from the 99.9% who don’t care about the api “concerns”.