Moderators from some of Reddit’s largest communities (subreddits) have been suspended from the social network after continuing their protests against the new API pricing. Among the “banned” admins on the platform are the users responsible for coordinating r/MildlyInteresting and r/interestingasfuck, one of Reddit’s largest communities.
Hours after the case was revealed, MildlyInteresting’s moderators told The Verge that their accounts had been restored. After the “blackout” protest on Reddit, in which thousands of communities were shut down by admins, admins found new ways to protest the API and (at least try) to affect the social network’s ad business — as Reddit threatened to remove moderators if the blackout continued.
New protests involve photos of John Oliver and “”
After the subreddits came out of the blackout, some of them took other forms of protest: posting only photos of British presenter John Oliver and tagging the community as Not Safe For Work, NSFW — a tag used for adult content subreddits.
While John Oliver’s photos act by decreasing the engagement and, consequently, the reach of the ads in the community, NSFW tagging prevents the ads in the subs. In the communities dedicated to this content, the impact is not so great (even if some of them have 1 million subscribers).
But in the case of MildlyInteresting, that’s 22 million ad “targets.” The interestingasfuck community, which is also branded as NSFW, has nearly 11 million members. In these subs, the absence of ads is detrimental to Reddit.
As MildlyInteresting’s moderators reported to The Verge, upon logging into Reddit last Tuesday (20), they were told that their accounts were suspended for seven days — which would rule out a possible “scam” from other admins. Hours after the complaint, the suspension was removed.
Other protests involve photos of Tim Cook
While some use photos of John Oliver, r/Apple is protesting with photos of Tim Cook. On the subreddit, the iPhone case continues, but the latest posts are photos of the Apple CEO in a variety of situations — even being “cooked.”
And if some communities have branded themselves as NSFW, even without adult content, a sub for larger ones has started publishing content “for all ages”. NoFans, a pun on OnlyFans and community for amateur publications, only allows the dissemination of images of passive coolers — heat sinks for PCs that don’t use fans.
For the gamer audience, don’t be alarmed by the new posts on r/Steam: now the community really only talks about steam, including steam engines. Another one that followed the literality of the name is r/Wellthatsucks, which became a subreddit about vacuum cleaner.
The protests against Reddit and its CEO Steve Huffman, who in r/HarryPotter can only be called Voldemort, won’t end anytime soon. With the cases of suspension of the moderators, those who believed that we would only see a blackout as a protest were mistaken. The is just beginning.
