Over the past week, /r/gaming and thousands of other subreddits joined a blackout to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes. This has interrupted general use of our community, and communities across reddit, which sucks. Our hopes were that, by uniting in protest, Reddit would reconsider their egregious API pricing model in a way that was sustainable for third-party developers. It’s very clear that, at this point, Reddit has no intention of adjusting this new model. However, to the credit of the admins of Reddit, we have had many direct meetings discussing other concerns we had, such as API access for moderator tools, and accessibility functionality in first-party apps. Over the last 3 days, Reddit has made indications and promises that not only will moderation tools continue to have access to the API, but they will be significantly improving their own mobile application in a number of ways for users, moderators, and those with accessibility needs. While this is good news, it doesn’t address the core of our concerns. Unfortunately, we’re at a point where we feel no amount of protesting will ever address those concerns, and any further blackouts and protests will only continue to hurt the community. Initially, a majority of the community widely supported the blackout of /r/gaming. Though after the first 48 hours, it became less clear what the best move forward was. In the past day, we’ve been contacted by admins with what appears to be a thinly veiled threat to “reopen or else”. Frankly, we had already prepared to reopen the subreddit, but we’d be lying if we said the pressure from the admins didn’t expedite our actions. At the end of the day, we do not trust that our community would be in good hands if solely controlled by Reddit administrators; we want to ensure the subreddit stays an inclusive space, irrespective of race, sexuality, or gender identity. The messaging from the admins—and specifically Steve Huffman—has been erratic, reactive, unprofessional, and inconsistent. We’re at a point where we want to make sure that the overall community will not permanently suffer from impulsive decisions made by Reddit. Additionally, we’d like to state how utterly disappointed we are in CEO Steve Huffman’s conduct over the past week. Not only was he caught blatantly lying to try and spin a false narrative against a third-party developer, but he doubled down on this messaging. He’s continued to show over the past week that he’s willing to say whatever he can to attempt to turn this situation into an “us versus them” narrative, with the community and moderators being cast as the “bad guys”. His immature and unstable behavior is grossly concerning for the future of Reddit. There is no other way to put this: We are incredibly disappointed in you, /u/spez. Stop being the Kmart version of Elon Musk, and start listening to your vocal and passionate community. We strongly feel that the last week has shown us precisely what Steve Huffman truly thinks about the users and moderators of this site, and how little he values them. What’s perhaps even worse is that we know for an undeniable fact how many admins actually DO care about the communities, and are equally as frustrated with Steve Huffman’s behavior. Moving forward, we feel that Steve Huffman should issue a public apology to the community of Reddit, third-party developers, and specifically Christian Selig. Steve’s false words against Christian could have potentially been career-ending for him, had Christian not brought recorded evidence to counter the fictitious narrative Steve tried to spin. In our opinion, Steve Huffman has destroyed an invaluable amount of trust among the users and moderators of Reddit, and if he ever intends on regaining that trust back, he’ll need to publicly acknowledge his mistakes. (And get some media/PR training, as well.) Objectively, we’re pleased with the promised upcoming improvements to moderation tools, accessibility needs, and usability of first-party services from Reddit. While it remains to be seen how much of what was promised will be implemented, we genuinely trust the words of a handful of admins who are actively working on improving Reddit. Still, we have utter disappointment and frustration with so many aspects of how the last week has unfolded: both from the side of Reddit, as well as from moderators and community members. This whole thing sucked, and it’s clear that most people just want things to return to the status quo. Of course, we’re still heavily concerned with Steve Huffman’s actions: past, present, and future. We’re also concerned with the direction Reddit is currently heading. However, we all still genuinely love this platform, and we don’t want to see it Digg its own grave. So we’ll continue doing everything we can to help foster the community and guide Reddit in a sustainable direction. Only time will tell if these efforts are futile. We appreciate you reading this long, boring, and overly-dramatic post. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled /r/gaming content.
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