The IT Nerd

From the “This won’t end well” department comes news that Reddit has taken over one of the biggest subreddits that went private to protest the API changes that Steve Huffman has implemented:

As we reported last week, the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, a subreddit with than 5 million subscribers, had taken the community private and were pushing its users toward Discord and Substack instead. At the time, the moderators expected to be removed after receiving a message from a Reddit admin (employee), ModCodeofConduct, telling them they would be replaced if they didn’t reopen.

Three former moderators of r/malefashionadvice tell The Verge that they were removed from the subreddit on Thursday. “We more or less have been expecting the removal for the past few days,” one former mod, who asked to go by “Walker,” says in an email to The Verge. Now, the community’s modlist currently has just one moderator: ModCodeofConduct. Though despite the subreddit’s “restricted” status, somebody was able to make a post on Thursday that encourages community members to join the Discord.

The fact that this subreddit has encourages people to move to Discord is bad news for Reddit. This platform relies on user generated content and the free work of the moderators. Remove those and Reddit is nothing.

What’s worse for Reddit is that they’ve taken over these subreddits as well:

• r/ShittyLifeProTips (though ModCodeofConduct posted an open call on Thursday for new mods that has gotten some, uh, snarky responses)
• r/AccidentalRenaissance (which was private as of last week after its moderators resigned)
• r/oldbabies (pictures of babies with faces that look like old people)
• r/BeardAdvice (according to the Reddark tracker, this community participated in the recent blackouts)
• r/plumbingporn (also participated in the recent blackouts, per the Reddark tracker)
• r/fordtransit (a community dedicated to Ford Transit cargo vans)

Thus you can same result. Which is people leaving Reddit for other platforms. It’s almost as if Reddit is on an Elon Musk style suicide mission to make money at any cost. Even if it results in self destruction.

Great plan Steve. Glad it’s working out so well for you.

Steve Huffman is clearly desperate as he’s now made it clear that subreddits that are set to private are going to reopen their communities this week:

The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can’t stay closed. The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage. “This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond a the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.

I am guessing that the API protests have hurt Huffman and company. Thus they’re going to the nuclear option. Seeing as Minecraft has ditched Reddit, that’s not a smart plan as this move will push more people and communities to abandon Reddit. And then what will Huffman do? I seriously think that he believes that he can bend the will of others. But that’s not the case. And he’s going to find out soon enough.

Steve Huffman must be rethinking his life choices at this point as his problems with the API protests that he started are growing. Today’s problem is that the makers of Minecraft have decided to ditch Reddit for greener pastures:

The makers of the popular game Minecraft say they will no longer share official content on Reddit following the changes being pushed through by the site’s management.

And:

Now it seems Mojang—the Microsoft-owned developer of Minecraft—is siding with the strikers. “As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits,” reads a post made by Mojang’s Java Tech Lead.

“Because of these changes, we no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer our players to.”

Mojang previously used to post technical detail such as game changelogs to Reddit, which list new features or bug fixes made during game updates. Mojang is now encouraging players to instead visit the Minecraft feedback site or pay attention to other social media channels.

Minecraft’s popularity is sure to make this a big story. Which means that this will be a big headache for Steve Huffman. The question is how Huffman will react to this. That will be interesting to watch as he doesn’t come across as a very rational person.

Well, this is going from bad to worse for Reddit. On top of everything else that’s going on with the API protests, and Reddit’s frankly ham fisted response to them. The company has a new problem. Accessibility. Or rather the lack of it. Via The Verge:

Reddit will make “accessibility improvements” to many moderator tools in its official mobile apps by July 1st, the company announced on Friday. 

Some moderators rely on third-party apps because Reddit’s apps have what they characterize as “significant accessibility challenges,” and the accessibility community has expressed concerns over how they will moderate on mobile after popular apps like Apollo shut down on June 30th due to potentially expensive API pricing changes. It seems this roadmap, which promises improvements to features like the moderation queue and the ModMail messaging system on Android and iOS, is intended to assuage those fears.

Based on the replies to the announcement post, however, many are still unhappy with the company’s plans. “A multibillion dollar corporation forcing disabled people (including the profoundly disabled) to simply ‘learn new tools,’ and to stop using the accessibility tools they’re used to — the tools they depend on — to access / moderate the communities they depend on — is cruel,” wrote PotRoastPotato, a moderator who has advocated for disabled communities as part of the recent protests across Reddit. “As long as there are disabled users who depend on and are accustomed to the accessibility features of third-party apps, these apps need to be preserved,” PotRoastPotato added in an email to The Verge.

Reddit’s roadmap notes that some features won’t be available until late July or sometime in August, and some are critiquing the company for that choice. “Why are these not blockers that you are forcing Reddit to delay API changes for?” one user wrote. “Do you find it acceptable to have an inherently worse moderator accessibility experience while pulling the rug out from underneath the community?”

Well, I am sure that this isn’t the response that Steve Huffman and company were hoping for. But it’s Reddit’s fault that they are in this situation. If they thought this whole situation through rather than taking an Elon Musk approach to this, perhaps they would be in a different place. But much like Elon Musk, Steve Huffman doesn’t strike me as the type to think things through. Instead he strikes me as the type to just do stuff and then be surprised when there’s blowback. This is another reason, on top of the ones that I outlined here, why Reddit is doomed.

UPDATE: Meanwhile on Reddit, posts like this are starting to appear:

This situation may be about to get really bad for Reddit.

The API protests and Reddit’s heavy handed reaction to said protests are getting a lot of attention. And as far as I am concerned, Reddit is doomed as a result of that. I’ve been saying that for a while and I am sticking to that because from where I sit, this Reddit situation a case of is history repeating itself.

For those of a certain age who were using the Internet in the early 2000’s, one of the best places to go on the Internet was digg. Wikipedia describes Digg like this:

Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

It formerly had been a popular social news website, allowing people to vote web content up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. In 2012, Quantcast estimated Digg’s monthly U.S. unique visits at 3.8 million. Digg’s popularity prompted the creation of similar sites such as Reddit.

In short, it digg was Reddit before Reddit even existed. But much like Reddit, management who figured that digg was immune to failure made a mistake that killed the site. Again, from Wikipedia:

Digg’s v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called “power users” who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another’s postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page. Frustrations with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy competition from Facebook, whose like buttons started to appear on websites next to Digg’s.

In short, they took the ability for ordinary users of digg to upvote or downvote web content out of the users hands and put it into the hand of a few. On top of that, the site became buggy. That started the downward spiral that eventually led to the demise of digg. Yes digg did try to fix a lot of this stuff. But by the time they did, it was too little too late.

Now let’s compare that to Reddit, Steve Huffman who is Reddit’s CEO is trying to make money from Reddit at the expense of their user base. Specifically he’s ignoring its users, alienating the volunteers it depends on for literally everything, and killing third-party apps which work better than the first party Reddit app. Not to mention he’s ignoring the threat of subreddits moving to places other than Reddit such as Beehaw which will take traffic away from Reddit. In a way, Reddit is following down the same path as digg. And what is ironic about this situation is that Reddit was one of the sites who actively added to the factors that led to their demise:

Disgruntled users declared a “quit Digg day” on August 30, 2010, and used Digg’s own auto-submit feature to fill the front page with content from Reddit. Reddit also temporarily added the Digg shovel to their logo to welcome fleeing Digg users.

And now Reddit is on its way to becoming the next digg.

Can Reddit stop itself from becoming the next digg? Sure it can. All it needs to do is to have a CEO who will listen to users, respect them and change course accordingly. But Steve Huffman isn’t that CEO. So I’m not holding my breath in terms of seeing Reddit change course. And I expect that Reddit will join Digg, not to mention other sites like MySpace, and LiveJournal as being footnotes in Internet history as a result.

Reddit and its CEO Steve Huffman seem to be taking a page out of the Mafia’s playbook by actively threatening and intimidating moderators of subreddits to open their subreddits, or else bad things will happen to them. Via The Verge:

Reddit appears to be ramping up the pressure on moderators to open communities that closed in the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin — an employee of Reddit — has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the “expectation here is that communities reopen,” according to a message shared publicly by a moderator of r/DIY.

The pressure worked. The community was closed, but it reopened on Thursday, and a mod said that fears of Reddit actions forced the team’s hand: “We’re re-opening because if we don’t, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do,” the mod wrote.

And:

We’ve seen messages from other moderators where the admin, ModCodeofConduct, uses similar rhetoric. To the moderators of r/homeimprovement the admin said that “to be very clear you cannot remain closed so we need to know if any mods here wish to participate in opening the community.” 

To the moderators of r/harrypotter, the admin account wrote that “keeping the community closed is not an option” — even though users have voted for the subreddit to be private, according to a post from a r/harrypotter mod.

Here’s what’s really interesting about this story:

Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.” In the absence of corrections, then, you can assume Reddit believes none are necessary.

What that says to me is that Reddit clearly feels that they are not only justified in taking this rather Mob like action, but they’re also okay with it being reported by people like The Verge. That says a lot about Reddit. And none of it good. Seeing as a lot of subreddits are still closed, and others are taking on other forms of protest like posting pictures or Tim Cook or posting porn to take money out of Reddit’s pockets, this isn’t going to go away. And I suspect that this API protest is about to head to a place where all out war between Reddit and subreddit mods and users will become a thing. And I think it’s well within the realm of possibility that Reddit will lose that fight as they now have more in common with a dollar store version of Vito Corleone these days.

There’s a variety of methods that people are using to protest the API changes that Reddit wants to make. But this one that is being highlighted by The Verge is a new one:

A handful of subreddits have classified themselves as not safe for work (NSFW) to protest Reddit’s recent treatment of the platform’s volunteer moderators, and as a result, some non-porn communities are starting to get a lot of porn.

And:

Subreddits that have made the NSFW switch include r/interestingasfuck, r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It), r/formula1, r/videos, r/HomeKit, and r/HomePod.

• The only subreddit-specific rule in r/interestingasfuck is that “any content you submit must be something you consider interesting as fuck.” The subreddit is now filled with porn. 
• r/TIHI removed a rule that forbids “extreme NSFW content,” according to a pinned post on the subreddit. “We feel we have been too restrictive with our content, especially on the NSFW side of things, so we have removed this rule. As long as it’s legal under U.S. law, and you hate it, we encourage you to post it.” As you can imagine, the subreddit has some gross stuff now.
• r/formula1 reopened on Tuesday. “Formula 1 is known for, both in the past and today, to include certain risque imagery that fall within the NSFW space,” a mod wrote in a post. “Switching our classification means Reddit’s age verification shields underage users from being exposed to content considered harmful.”
• r/videos is now an NSFW subreddit, and like a few other huge communities, it only allows content about comedian John Oliver. (I can’t believe I am writing this statement: so far, I have not seen porn about John Oliver on the subreddit.)
• r/HomeKit and r/HomePod each have pinned posts pointing to r/Apple’s statement about why it reopened. As far as I can tell, both subreddits otherwise haven’t changed things, and the posts I’ve seen appear to be on topic.

Other subreddits that aren’t explicitly NSFW have loosened their rules such that users are posting porn and inappropriate content anyway, including r/iOS, r/simpsonsshitposting, and r/Wellthatsucks.

Here’s the core reason why they are doing this:

And switching to NSFW might also create some pain for Reddit itself, as NSFW subreddits are not eligible for advertising.

They’re taking money out of Reddit’s bank account. That’s pretty crafty. Now it might be a little money, or a lot. It really doesn’t matter as Reddit isn’t revenue positive at the moment. So anything that takes money out of their bank accounts will hurt. I guess that’s why Reddit decided to do this:

Reddit has started removing moderator teams managing subreddits that switched the labeling on their communities to Not Safe For Work (NSFW) in the latest protests against the site.

While some of these moderators have been reinstated, it’s clear to me that this latest salvo does hurt Reddit. It will be interesting to see how things escalate from here.

I think that we can all agree that Reddit has become a train wreck next to a dumpster fire because of this API situation that has caused outrage across Reddit and beyond. But watching from this from the outside, I have three takeaways from this gong show:

1. Reddit wants too much money way too quickly: Clearly this API change by Reddit is an attempt to not only kill third party apps, but to make money as fast as possible. Otherwise, Reddit would not have said that it wants to charge such insane fees for using said API. Now I get that Reddit might feel that third party apps are profiting off of Reddit when Reddit itself isn’t revenue positive, but this isn’t how you solve that problem.
2. This situation exposes Reddit’s dirty little secret: Reddit exists because of Steve Huffman, but it has succeeded because of unpaid labour by moderators and posters. The problem is that Huffman has really managed to anger moderators and posters enough that they will go elsewhere if they are pushed hard enough. If that happens, the site will collapse and Huffman will be screwed. If Huffman were smart, which clearly he isn’t, he’d find a way to address that.
3. This situation exposes Steve Huffman’s true personality: Because of this situation, it turns out that Steve Huffman is a liar and jerk. And not only that, he has deliberately induced a panic situation to try and get what he wants. Which is money. The problem is that instead of people capitulating to him, they’ve rebelled. Big time. Now he could walk this back easily if he really wanted to. But here’s his other problem, his ego is stopping him from doing this. Which means that this situation is going to get way worse and have a worse outcome because of that.

To be clear, Reddit can’t continue as is because it’s bleeding money like a gunshot victim in Compton CA. But this isn’t how you solve that problem. If Reddit’s board of directors had any backbone, they would realize this and put Huffman in the bin as quickly as possible. Then after that, walk back a lot of this stuff that he’s done and try to be partners with all the people that Huffman has angered. That doesn’t just include the Appllo’s of the world, but the user base and moderators as well.

However, that’s likely not going to happen as I suspect that if the board was going to do that, it would have done it already. That means that Reddit is pretty much doomed seeing as a lot of popular subreddits are looking for homes elsewhere, and traffic to the site has dropped during the API protests. That’s not a good place to be if you’re Reddit. And the only person to blame for that is Steve Huffman. It sucks to be you Steve.

The train wreck next to a dumpster fire that is Reddit may become much worse shortly. I say that because a story has now surfaced that goes something like this:

Hackers are threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand – and reverses its controversial API price hikes.

In a post on its dark web leak site, the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, claims to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February breach of the company’s systems.

Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions but confirmed that BlackCat’s claims relate to a cyber incident confirmed by Reddit on February 9. At the time, Reddit CTO Christopher Slowe, or KeyserSosa, said that hackers had accessed employee information and internal documents during a “highly-targeted” phishing attack. Slowe added that the company had “no evidence” that personal user data, such as passwords and accounts, had been stolen.

Reddit didn’t share any further details about the attack or who was behind it. However, BlackCat over the weekend claimed responsibility for the February intrusion and threatened to leak “confidential” data stolen during the breach. It’s unclear exactly what types of data the hackers have stolen, and BlackCat hasn’t shared any evidence of data theft.

If this is true, then Reddit really has a huge problem on its hands. Unlike their attempts to bully their user base, Reddit would have little to no leverage against these threat actors. So you have to wonder what Reddit CEO Steve Huffman would do. Would he cave and pay up as well as walk back the API changes? Or would he stand firm? That of course assumes that this claim by Black Cat is true.

I guess we’re about to find out.

The train wreck next to a dumpster fire that is Reddit is getting worse. Word is getting out that Reddit has now taken the rather stupid decision to force open subreddits that are still closed and replacing moderators that won’t do what Reddit says. Here’s an example of this from Mastodon:

The only reason that I can think of for this is that Reddit is hurting because of the API protests, and hurting big time. So as a result Reddit is doing dumb stuff like this. But all that this is going to accomplish is that that Reddit will generate bad press, and they will drive people off the platform. For a business that wants to do an IPO in the second half of this year, this situation is not going to end well. So perhaps Steve Huffman who is Reddit’s CEO should take another approach to address the reasons why people are mad at him rather than adding gasoline to the train wreck next to a dumpster fire that he created? Just a thought.