The ongoing Reddit protest over API pricing intensified this week after some moderators added the NSFW, not safe for work, tag to their otherwise appropriate subreddits.
According to Reddit policy, subreddit pages that have the NFSW tag cannot host advertisements. The moderators who are now adding the NSFW tag to their pages are hoping to cut into Reddit’s advertising revenue.
However, Reddit is not backing down from the fight and is starting to seriously crack down on protesting moderators. They have already removed several moderators from some protesting subreddits and have said that it is against company policy to change the status of a subreddit to NSFW when it is not hosting inappropriate content.
“Changing a previously SFW community to an NSFW community in order to protest Reddit policies is inappropriate for the members of your community and not acceptable overall,” the company said.
“People subscribe to communities based on the content at the time of subscription. Communities can gradually change as they grow, but this is not what we are observing and not in the best interest of the users being subjected to that content.”
Some of the pages that are still tagged as NSFW include subreddits focused on technical support for Apple products, Game of Thrones and birth control.
Many of the protesting subreddits have been archived and are inaccessible to users after the company removed their moderators.
The ongoing protest began early last week after Reddit announced it would be charging app developers for access to their software data. In response, thousands of subreddits went offline. The protest was only supposed to last two days but since then thousands are still dark. According to recent estimates, over 2,500 subreddits remain private or otherwise inaccessible due to the protest.
Despite the protest and a hacking group threatening to release 80GB of private employee data, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has not backed down. Last week he said that the protest has not impacted their bottom line at all and it would not influence their decision, protestors coming after the company’s revenue is an easy explanation for the harsh response.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.