The Platform Strikes Back

Why it's always good to say no to an asshole.

Jun 30, 2023

If you’ve been wondering what’s going on with Reddit, why John Oliver being sexy is part of a grassroots protest against a tech giant, why I tracked down the personal email of a Reddit investor, and why the protest is revving up again today, STRAP IN!! THERE IS YELLING! YES WE ARE CALLING IT REXXIT AND YES I MADE A GRAPHIC!!

Chapter One: What

Here is a screenshot of Reddit’s main page, r/popular, on June 12th.

A screenshot of www.reddit.com/r/popular the page is entirely black

r/popular is Reddit's main destination, pulling together “the best posts from the most active communities. There is a link to it on every page of the site, and it’s usually filled with politics, humor, sports, memes, AITA, pop culture, gaming, cute animals, etc. Reddit stuff.

Instead, it was black because more than 8000 subreddits, containing nearly a quarter of the site’s content, were staging a protest against CEO Steve Huffman’s announced changes to the platform. The changes, intended to create a path to profitability for Reddit and an eventual IPO, haven’t gone into effect yet, but so far they’ve earned Huffman a mass migration of communities to federated alternatives like kbin, a big drop in traffic and a bigger drop in engagement, hackers demanding ransom, a leaked memo, secretly recorded phone calls, a wild card starring role for John Oliver, people realizing Google doesn’t work without Reddit, advertisers moving their buys offsite, a drop in valuation, AND MORE!!

It's been wild, you guys.

Basically, what Huffman wants to do is force users to use the official Reddit app. Currently less than half of the site’s 52-ish million daily users visit Reddit using the official app. The rest use 3^rd-party apps or a web browser. If Reddit can force more users to use the official app, they can deliver more eyeballs to advertisers, make ads harder to evade, offer custom marketing experiences, and sell user data.

Unfortunately for Reddit, a lot of people hate the Reddit app. So they use 3^rd-party apps, which pull Reddit’s content into their apps by accessing the Reddit API. (API stands for “Application Programming Interface,” and that’s exactly how it works, developers use the interface to program their apps. You don’t need to know this.) In the past, Reddit encouraged 3^rd-party apps, and had deals in place with them to either share revenue or pay a licensing fee.

Now, Huffman has switched gears, saying 3^rd-party apps “add no value,” claiming app developers have threatened him, refusing to negotiate, and dropping a price increase on accessing the API that will force 3rd-party apps out of business. Developers, while laying off employees, have had to issue detailed statements debunking his claims.

Chapter Two: Who

The people who really NEED 3^rd-party apps are folks with disabilities and moderators. Reddit’s official app has terrible accessibility, and thriving communities like r/blind can’t survive if they are forced to use it. Here’s a heartbreaking post from the moderators of r/blind on what it’s been like for them working with Reddit’s accessibility team.

Screen shot of text that reads: Reddit representatives refused to answer questions concerning the formal certifications, accreditations or qualifications of employees tasked with ensuring universal accessibility. These certifications demonstrate that a professional has the knowledge necessary to create universally-accessible software and/or documents. Because Reddit cannot confirm that employees tasked with universal accessibility hold appropriate certifications or that the company will provide for such training and certification, we have concerns that employees do not have the appropriate knowledge to effectively ensure access for all assistive technology users both at present and in the future. Reddit has also indicated there are not currently any employees who work full-time on accessibility. This is a necessity for any organization as large and influential as Reddit.

Moderators urgently need 3^rd-party apps because of something else the official Reddit app lacks: moderation tools. As you might expect on a site with 53 million daily users where anyone can make multiple accounts and run bots, Reddit is simply full of assholes! And moderators need tools to deal with them.

I want to say I love Reddit. There are supportive communities for teens, trans folks, Black folks, shut ins, disabled folks, folks who love that one obscure band you didn’t think anyone liked, people who still want to compare theories on Mulholland Drive, folks who will drop everything for a weird utopian experiment called r/place, folks who are suicidal, folks who are funny as fuck, folks who just want to scroll through cute animal pictures, and more. But the assholes are there. Former CEO Ellen Pao made huge strides in clearing neo-Nazis and Terfs from the site but WEIRDLY when she was ousted and Steve Huffman was reinstated, a lot of the white supremacists and their friends came back.

In a smaller sub, you can play whack-a-mole with assholes, or use the official app’s limited tools to make posting requirements like account age, etc. But in a big sub—and the most popular Reddit subs have millions of users—you need strong moderation tools to account for ban evaders, harassers, etc. The official Reddit app doesn’t have those tools. 3^rd-party apps do.

Moderators, who put in countless unpaid hours growing their communities and keeping them safe, made it very clear how that the API roadblock would negatively affect their ability to keep their communities functioning. After a disastrous AMA and failed talks, they announced a two day strike. I can’t even link to the announcement; it’s been cross-posted so many times that if you click on it, Reddit breaks. Essentially they were going to turn Reddit black for two days, starting on June 12.

Chapter Three: How

The way the blackout works was that moderators set their subs to private and lock everyone out. Some subs couldn’t participate—sobriety and mental health communities and r/Ukraine stated that they supported the cause but needed to remain open for safety reasons. But like I said, more than 8000 signed on, a massive effort.

graphic that says on June 12, 458 million submissions (22$ of total), 5.7 billion comments (38% of total), 66 million authors (48% of total), and 102 billion total karma (43% of total) will go dark on reddit

On June 12, the subs went dark, Reddit crashed, and all hell broke loose. I don’t know if I can get across how huge this was. r/awww, r/videos, and other popular subs are daily destinations for millions of people. It was fucking crazy. Many users were jubilant. Some were pissed off or confused. Meanwhile, moderators and others were archiving their content and migrating their communities to other platforms. After the two days were up, some subs reopened—often with restrictions—but many pledged to stay closed indefinitely.

That’s when Reddit started threatening and removing mods.

Chapter Four: Wow

The threats started out as passive aggressive check ins encouraging mods to turn in their fellow mods and reopen their subs. Some did, because there are always weasels. More than 2000 subs, 25% of the original protest, stayed the course. In other cases, the mods opted for malicious compliance, and that’s where John Oliver comes in.

It started with r/pics (30 million members) voting to only allow sexy pictures of Mr. Oliver. The sub was quickly flooded with on-topic content, and r/gifs (21 million), r/aww (34 million) r/art (22 million), r/videos (26 million), and many others followed suit.

a piece of toast with John Oliver's face on it — by u/Alizerin

Oliver, who can’t cover the protest because of the writer’s strike, tweeted his support for the posts.

It hasn’t just been John Oliver. r/Apple is only allowing pictures of Tim Cook, r/wellthatsucks is only posting about vacuum cleaners, r/OnlyFans is only allowing images of mechanical fans. r/memes decided to only allow medieval memes, and it’s fucking amazing.

A medieval painting of a ship full of sailors advancing on a walled city. The caption on the sailors says "Redditors with integrity" and the caption on the city says "probably twitter" — by u/kneejerk2022

(We will not be distracted by mentions of Twitter! I am not going there!!)

Other subs have turned on the NSFW tag, which means they can’t be monetized. Some aren’t allowing the letter k , insisting on “your mom” jokes. Some just turned off all posting rules or made every user a moderator. One lets a different user make a new rule every day.

Chapter Six: Yelling

You might be wondering why the mods and users don’t just walk away. Obviously, many have, or they’ve been forced out. But the point is that these people really care about Reddit and the communities they’ve built and participate in. They apparently care more than Reddit itself does! Huffman sneered at the mods involved in the protest and likened them to “landed gentry” because apparently he doesn’t get paid enough to understand why a multimillionaire describing the people who work for him for free as “landed gentry” is truly surreal.

Seriously, HOW BAD AT CEO-ING CAN ONE PERSON BE? This guy has a site with 53 million daily users, and he pays ZERO DOLLARS FOR CONTENT! ZERO!!!! The users give it to him for free and he sells it to advertisers! HE ALSO DOESN’T PAY THE MODERATORS!!! FREE LABOR!!!!! He’s gotten a billion dollars in investment! WHAT DID HE SPEND IT ON???? A good app? NO. A site that doesn’t go down literally all the time? NO. A robust executive team who can give him good advice? CLEARLY NOT.

DID I MENTION HIS LAST ATTEMPT TO TURN A PROFIT INVOLVED MAKING REDDIT CRYPTOSNOO NFTS?????????

Screenshot of an ad for "cryptosnoo nuts" that are "non-fungible, highly collectible, and ready to take off"

Did I mention the company icon is a “Snoo” and this man refers to his employees as Snoos?????? Did I mention he has just fully been lying everywhere? Did I mention it’s is very telling that he doesn’t seem to care when moderators warn him about white supremacists flooding the site?

Chapter Five: Now

Today, Friday June 30, is the last day of the Reddit API being accessible. It’s the last day of business for many apps. It’s the last day that many disabled users will be able to access Reddit. Three days ago Reddit told moderators they had 48 hours to comply, and then told them administrative action was imminent.

screenshot of text that reads "this community will not remain private beyond the time frame we've allowed for coordination of plans here" — Screenshot from The Verge’s solid coverage—more on that in the end notes.

The protest coordinators have posted a renewed call for blackouts and account deletions, starting tomorrow.

I don’t know how many subs will participate. A lot of them won’t be able to because they were banned or because the mods were replaced, or because they’ve been taken over by white supremacists and sports fans. Many of them have already moved on to the communities they are building elsewhere. Some of them are definitely burned out and feeling defeated because it’s fucking hard fighting a giant corporation. Lots of them have nowhere else to go.

No matter what happens, this has been a massive event and affected millions of people. In addition to the dips in traffic and advertising revenue, Reddit has been devalued by investors. Google is pissed at Reddit for breaking search and has already introduced an alternative, which will further decrease traffic.

Maybe the blackout won’t “work” in the sense of Reddit changing course, but I think it is already working, because being in the midst of a movement based on saying no to an asshole is always transformative. THE END I DID NOT INTEND THIS TO BE SO LONG.

Deeper Links

If you want to watch subs restricting or going dark on July, there is a stream here.

I mentioned The Verge’s coverage, led by Jay Peters, which has been extraordinary.

There’s a whole subplot to this involving Ellen Pao, the CEO who briefly replaced Steve Huffman. Pao forced malignant MAGA and transphobic subs off the platform, called out Huffman for racism, and then was forced to resign when she was blamed for firing someone she didn’t fire. It was all extremely GamerGatery and stupid.

Minecraft broke up with Reddit.

Some infö on the Fediverse.