A week after community moderators launched what they described as a 48-hour protest against Reddit’s plans to change its business model, Reddit’s message boards run by thousands of volunteers remained dark on Tuesday.
More than 3,200 message boards, known as subreddits, remained restricted or private, down from about 9,000 last week, according to the report. website chasing rebellion. Memes mocking Reddit CEO Steve Huffman flooded the site as anger over the company’s change in business model continued to erupt on the site.
Moderators of some reopened communities said they reopened because Reddit threatened to replace them.
“We want the best for this community, so we have no choice but to reopen it or have it open for us,” said an Apple Enthusiasts forum moderator. r/apple I have written They asked Mr. Huffman to resign in a message.
Other communities have reopened, but only allowed GIFs, memes, and photos of the “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” host.
moderator of r/photoFor example, we have 30 million members. participated in a poll About “going back to business as usual” or “allowing only images of John Oliver that look sexy”. Oliver’s option “return to normal” won decisively by 37,331 votes to 2,329 votes. Many of the memes that flooded the community mocked Huffman.
Mr. Oliver recommended The rebellion involved posting pictures of herself on Twitter dressed in a variety of outfits, including pink panda-print pajamas, a witch’s hat and purple cloak, and writing, “Dear Reddit, great job. Note: r/photo — good luck. please…”
Backlash erupted last week over changes Reddit announced in April that it would start charging some large companies for access to its application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are a means for external entities to download and process the vast amounts of social network data. A selection of memes, gifs, videos and conversation threads.
Reddit said it does not want to hand over such valuable assets to companies such as Google, OpenAI and Microsoft that have used its data to develop artificial intelligence systems.
However, some Reddit users and developers believe that this pricing has led people to view and comment on sites like Reddit, ReddPlanet, Sync for Apollo, rif is fun and more. He says third-party apps will die out. Moderators said the change could undermine some of the tools they use to manage freewheeling discussions on the site.
Since June 12th, many Reddit moderators have set the community to “private”, inaccessible to members for at least 48 hours. Some users were having trouble using the site that day. Reddit said, “The move of a significant number of subreddits to private has created the expected stability issues.”
A week later many communities were still armed.
“There are still a lot of subreddits out there who have a lot of complaints about how the whole thing is handled, and you can see that the reddits don’t want to get involved here in the slightest,” said Christian Selig, developer of Apollo on iOS. said Mr. The app has been widely praised for its design and rich functionality, he said in an interview Tuesday.
Selig said he still plans to shut down the app on June 30, a day before he said it would start accruing a $20 million annual fee under Reddit’s pricing plans.
Despite the turmoil, Huffman suggested Reddit was gearing up for a potential initial public offering this year and wouldn’t change course.
he said NBC News Last week, Reddit reported that it was considering allowing users to vote, comparing the moderators who led the protests to “land gentlemen” who thwart the site’s democratic ethos. An estimated 57 million people visit the platform every day.
‘Protests and opposition are important,’ said Huffman Associated Press last week. “The problem this time is that we made a non-negotiated business decision and nothing will change.”
Reddit spokesman Tim Rasschmidt said that when Huffman referred to “the gentleman who landed,” he was “talking about how users want the community to reopen.” said they did not agree with the protests.
“In the future, we may consider developing a way for community members to vote out mods if they disagree with decisions affecting the community as a whole,” Ladschmidt said in an email Tuesday. .
But he said Reddit is not threatening to replace moderators. “That’s not how we do it,” Ratschmidt said. “It’s not our goal to put pressure on people. We’re communicating expectations and how things work.”
Selig said developers and moderators are not opposed to charging for access to Reddit data. He said he has asked the company to consider lowering its rates and extending the time before the new rates take effect.
Instead, corporate leaders “built walls and said, ‘You don’t care.'” We’re just going to get through this,” Selig said. “And that’s where a lot of the frustration sticks.”
