The Reddit Blackout Is Over, but the Protest Isn’t Over

The Reddit shutdown has completed its first phase and the subreddits are starting to come back online, but the site has not returned to normal. Many communities have reopened in read-only mode, and some may remain completely dark for longer.

More than 7,000 communities closed on June 12 and 13 to protest planned changes to the Reddit API. These changes will kill several third-party apps that Redditors use for browsing (at least two have already announced they will be closed permanently) and may make it impossible to use the site with screen readers and other accessibility tools. The changes will also likely affect the tools that moderators (who are volunteers, not Reddit employees) use to detect and remove spam and hate speech.

Consequences of shutting down Reddit for now

Well, first of all, Reddit crashed on the first day. A spokesman told the Verge that this number of submarines being privately owned at the same time “caused some expected stability issues”. The site was intermittently unavailable for most of Monday morning.

Thousands of blocked submarines certainly drew attention to the problem; “Reddit Blackout” has been trending on Twitter since people who didn’t know about the issue started asking about it. There was a flurry of reports in the media, including ours .

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told staff that the protest is “one of the loudest we’ve ever seen,” but he expects “like all explosions on Reddit, this one too will pass.” (He seems to think that the planned two-day duration of the main outage means that everyone will forget about it in two days; this seems unlikely to me, for reasons I will explain below.)

In the same memo, he warned employees against wearing Reddit swag in public because “some people are really upset.”

Despite the CEO saying that Reddit “didn’t notice a significant impact on revenue,” Digiday reports that several advertisers have chosen to spend their ad budgets elsewhere, at least for the duration of the power outage. Both Reddit and advertisers have said they hope the outage will be a temporary issue and things will return to normal soon. But according to Ad Week , advertisers are keeping a close eye on the situation.

However, it is not clear if this is actually the case. More on that in a bit, but first: Here are some of the API policy changes that users and moderators are rejecting, including the threat of shutdown, that have already been made.

Reddit has made some concessions on accessibility, but it’s not enough

“We absolutely have to release what we promised,” Huffman said in that memo, apparently referring to planned API changes that will charge developers for access.

One of the main concerns is accessibility for people using tools such as screen readers. The official Reddit app is not accessible enough for many visually impaired users and these users are dependent on third party apps.

In one early concession that came as subscribers pressured the CEO and prepared to shut down, Reddit decided that “accessibility-focused apps” would be exempt from the new policy. On June 7, Reddit contacted the developer of one such app, Dystopia , and offered them free access on the condition that they promised not to monetize the app. RedReader reports that they also received an exception.

Both developers see the exception as a short-term bandage to keep their applications running. The requirement not to monetize apps means that developers cannot be compensated through ad or subscription revenue (although they are allowed to accept donations).

The new API terms also prevent these apps from accessing NSFW content that includes porn (breaking news: blind people love porn too) as well as other content labeled in this way, such as numerous discussions of medical issues or sexual trauma. Thus, even if there are exceptions, blind readers will not be able to use all the features of the site.

Aside from these concerns, there is also the concern that Reddit selects specific apps to grant exceptions, leaving the question of what counts as an “accessibility-focused app” to the company’s discretion.

Reddit Makes Concessions on Moderator Tools, But It’s Not Enough

One of the reasons Reddit is as readable and helpful as it is (apart from the fact that it eventually banned its hate speech subreddits belatedly) is because communities are moderated by their own members, not by algorithms or underpaid , injured workers.

As many Lifehacker readers know, Reddit is the place to go to find the information you want from people in the know. When I wanted to find a filter and other equipment for a small aquarium, I did not rely on Google – the search results are rubbish and mostly ads. I went to r/bettafish, r/plantedtank and r/shrimptank to read the discussion and recommendations.

Reddit is one of the few places where content is available for public reading and is curated by enthusiasts. This does not mean that everything is perfect and correct, but this is far from how the rest of the Internet works these days.

And this usefulness is due to the work of volunteer moderators, who largely attribute their ability to do their job to third-party tools and bots that have also been created by enthusiasts. Reddit’s own moderation tools have always been insufficient for the wide range of tasks that moderators perform. The CEO of Reddit has announced that the company is working on new moderation features that are yet to be implemented.

But Reddit has been promising better moderation tools for years. Instead of waiting for them to show up, hobbyists have made their own. r/AskHistorians has receipts of Reddit’s broken promises regarding moderation tools and features.

To address the issue of moderation, since its new and existing moderation tools would not be able to fill the gap, Reddit announced on the same day as the policy change that they would exclude certain tools used by “verified moderators” from the new API policy. (This was announced on May 31, some aspects were clarified or possibly changed on June 7 , and will take effect “on a date to be determined.”) This policy requires moderators to create new accounts on Pushshift, as well as an individual approval from Reddit and access to “moderated use cases only”.

In other words, Reddit still has to decide which users deserve access and which tools are considered moderation tools.

Why the protest didn’t end even if the blackout ended

Critics of the power outage wondered how the two-day protest could make a difference. My friends, let me address you for a moment from my perspective as someone who is intimately familiar with collective action to get out-of-touch CEOs to do the right thing .

While a strike or power outage may be the most visible action in a campaign, it is never the only one . Ahead of our 2022 strike and our seemingly unprecedented 2019 fair contract signing, we have lived and breathed something called an escalation schedule (same idea as shown here ). You start with small actions and develop them with a clear plan of how you will act if your requirements are not met. A strike is almost always preceded by dozens of smaller actions.

Strikes and strikes with a fixed duration are one of the possible steps on the chart. The idea is to send a message: many of us are so dedicated . After that, you don’t stop. You keep getting worse. The idea behind even an indefinite strike is to become more and more of a problem for the company over time. You are getting more and more media attention; the company is increasingly suffering from loss of business. Collective action is effective because it is part of a larger escalation.

So why come back in two days? In the case of Reddit, going into the shadows is a powerful act, but the site itself is also the most visible way for Reddit users to communicate publicly—another powerful tool they have for escalation.

There’s another reason why so many followers came back online (and why some refused to join the protest): they don’t exist to make money for Reddit, but to serve their users. r/Assistance helps people with financial and emotional support so they stayed awake during the blackout , but asked people to post only urgent and important requests, such as requests for food or money for rent.

Another example: r/AskHistorians exists as an educational resource for both Reddit users and the general public. The lockdown made all of their past content inaccessible, so they’re back in restricted mode , which allows people to read the archives but not post new questions or answers. Their moderators write:

we believe reopening in “Limited” mode…still puts pressure on admins to signal our position, but also allows us to reach a much wider audience, making this and our previous statements more accessible, amplifying the message for more the number of users. . … We do all of this because we are passionate believers in the wider public good of making historical knowledge accessible and reliable, and have been looking for a solution that allows this broader mission to continue while reducing the active participation that matters to the corporation. perspective.

What’s next

Moderators and users of more than 7,000 subscribers have already shown that they are determined to stand together against API changes, and most of them plan to build on this strong statement. The unit that organizes the protests, r/ModCoord, posted a message about the next steps .

More than 300 subscribers have pledged to remain in the background until the demands are met. These include r/aww, r/funny and r/videos. Many other subscribers are polling their members (either on the subscription itself or in back channels such as the Discord communities where regulars hang out) to decide whether to join the extended outcry.

For subwoofers that can’t shut down indefinitely – the post mentions r/StopDrinking and r/Ukraine as an example – they offer a weekly power outage called Touch the Grass on Tuesdays.

Meanwhile, over 6,000 subreddits are still limited; this Twitch thread offers a live score if you want to see how it goes.