The message-board platform Reddit has changed the level of control subreddit group moderators have over how their communities are classified. In a post on the Reddit modnews community, the company's Vice President of Community Laura Nestler detailed the changes, which now restrict moderators from changing the classification of a group to Private or Not Safe for Work without Reddit's permission.
There are exceptions: Moderators can make such a change on a temporary basis for seven days without submitting a request and changes are approved automatically for subreddits with fewer than 5,000 members or that have existed for less than 30 days. The post detailed a few other use cases for exceptions, such as a moderator wanting to take a break or quit, or a public group recruiting members before going private.
Nestler said in the post that Reddit will be responding to requests within 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As for why Reddit is making the change, Nestler said that communities should honor the expectations set out by their original privacy settings, but acknowledged that a major reason is that locking the public out of subreddit spaces has been used as a means of sitewide protest.Â
"The ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules. We have a responsibility to protect Reddit and ensure its long-term health, and we cannot allow actions that deliberately cause harm," Nestler said.
Last year, moderators used the tactic to protest a price hike on Reddit's API, making popular subreddits dark to the public. Nestler said in the post that protest is still allowed on Reddit, but that moderators should give feedback to the company and get involved in the decision-making process through avenues such as the Reddit Mod Council or its Partner Communities program. "But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we'll step in," Nestler said.
The post was met with immediate backlash; a response from CouncilOfStrongs with 233 upvotes replied, "Don't lie to us, please. Something that you can ignore because it has no impact cannot be a protest."
Nestler used the platform to continue replying to individual posts after the initial message about the changes.Â
Reddit is one of the web's largest groupings of message boards. Statista estimates that Reddit will grow to about 53 million active US users per month by next year, up from 49 million as of the second quarter of 2024.