Reddit is telling protesting mods their communities ‘will not’ stay private

Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. 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.

After a mod replied, ModCodeofConduct went even further. “[Millions of] members have lost complete access to this community and that is not going to continue,” the account said. “Wanting to take time to consider future moderation plans is fine, but that must be done in at least a ‘restricted’ setting. This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.”

In a conversation with moderators of a different subreddit, ModCodeofConduct told them that “continued violation of [Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct] over the next 31 hours will result in further action.” Rule 4 of that document is “Be Active and Engaged.” That subreddit has since reopened, though in an “archive” mode where new posts will be automatically removed.

Reddit has been pushing for protesting communities to reopen for weeks, telling them it would replace “inactive moderation,” “mods vandalizing communities,” and “subreddit squatters” with active mods. While many subreddits have reopened as normal, some have switched from private, which bars users from seeing any posts in the community, to restricted, where content is viewable but only certain users are allowed to post or comment.

When restricted, even if most users can’t post in a community, they can still see posts (which has the added benefit of making any links from that subreddit that show up in Google search results actually useful). But for the few that are holding out in private mode, it appears Reddit wants to change that.

While the company said in a June 15th fact sheet that it is not “unilaterally reopening communities,” the new rhetoric could indicate that Reddit is re-evaluating that approach.

Reddit declined to comment.