Some moderators of Reddit communities participating in the protest against API changes today got messages from the company: work to reopen your subreddits or else.
If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately.
Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community, please let us know.
On Thursday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The Verge that “we don’t have problems with protests.” According to NBC News, Huffman “plans to pursue changes” that would let regular users vote moderators out more easily. Though the protest, which included more than 8,000 subreddits at peak, was initially planned to last for only two days, many subreddits vowed to stay dark indefinitely, including popular communities like r/music, r/videos, and r/nba, which remained dark even during the NBA championship game. More than 4,000 subreddits remain closed.
Mods were already worried. Reddit said in a fact sheet on Thursday that it is “not shutting down discussions or unilaterally reopening communities,” but the admin account u/ModCodeofConduct said the company can remove mods that violate Reddit’s Mod Code of Conduct and replace them.
“If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to user
