![]() “It’s going to be something that we see day over day … And we’re not going to notice it - until it’s too late.” And it’s not going to be something that we see overnight,” Omar said. “The quality of the content… is going to start to degrade. Those consequences may not be immediately felt, they added, and could have an impact on the content seen on Reddit, which calls itself the “front page of the internet.” Reddit has roughly 430 million active monthly users, making it one of the internet’s top sites. Gilbert and Omar say the new policy could significantly risk moderator burnout and retention. “Without Reddit’s volunteer moderators, the site could likely see less helpful content, and more spam, misinformation and hate.” “Reddit is built on volunteer moderation labor, including the creation and maintenance of many tools,” Gilbert said in a statement. Sarah Gilbert, postdoctoral associate at Cornell University and Citizens and Technology Lab research manager, explains that API access helps moderators keep communities safe and “more quickly respond to spam, bigotry, and harassment.” Third-party apps are also important for screen readers, she said, as the official Reddit app is not accessible for people who are visually impaired. READ MORE: Twitter’s head of trust and safety resigns after criticism from Elon Musk Most people visiting Reddit probably don’t think about API, but access to these third-party resources is critical for moderators to do their jobs, experts note. Omar asked not to be identified by their full name in this article, due to safety concerns that have come up while moderating their subreddit. And that’s so much more expensive than trying to collaborate,” Omar, a moderator of a subreddit participating in this week’s blackout, told The Associated Press. “A lot of what’s going on here is… (Reddit) burning goodwill with users. The company’s response to the blackout has fueled further outrage among protest organizers, most recently after the move to replace moderators of protesting subreddits. And while Huffman maintains that he respects users’ rights to protest, he also says that the subreddits currently participating in the blackout are “not going to stay offline indefinitely” - even if that means finding new moderators. ![]() The vast majority of subreddit communities are still active, Reddit notes. While some returned to their public settings after 48 hours, others say they plan to stay private indefinitely until Reddit meets their demands - which include lowering third-party developer charges, set to go into effect July 1, so that popular apps don’t shut down.Īs of Friday, more than 4,000 subreddits were still participating in the blackout - including communities with tens of millions of subscribers like r/music and r/videos - according to a tracker and live Twitch stream of the boycott. Reddit as a whole currently has more than 100,000 active subreddits. ![]() Nearly 9,000 subreddits went dark this week. WATCH: Reddit users go dark in protest of policy that could shut out third-party appsīut the blackout is not over, organizers say. “Protest and dissent is important… The problem with this one is it’s not going to change anything because we made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on.” “The analogy I like to use for Reddit is, Reddit is a city… and what we’re seeing today is a protest in our city,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The Associated Press. Despite this week’s blackout, the company says it is not changing its course. Many users currently rely on third-party apps to access features that are unavailable in the official Reddit app, particularly for content moderation and accessibility aids.īut Reddit says that supporting these high usage third-party developers is too expensive and that the new policy is necessary to become a self-sustaining business. Organizers of the protest say that Reddit’s new policy threatens to end key ways of historically customizing the platform, which relies heavily on the volunteer labor of subreddit moderators. ![]() The blackout, which began Monday, emerged out of outrage over Reddit’s upcoming changes to its application programming interface (API) access - notably the company’s plan to start charging high usage third-party apps, who have long-used the Reddit data at no cost to build resources for users not available through the official site or app. ![]() That’s because thousands of subreddits chose to go dark in an ongoing protest of some controversial changes announced by the online discussion network. WASHINGTON (AP) - If you hopped on Reddit to scroll through your favorite forums this week, you may have encountered “private” or “restricted” messages. ![]()
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