Reddit has begun taking control of subreddits that shut down to protest changes to the platform’s API. The admin account u/ModCodeofConduct has assumed sole charge of r/malefashionadvice, a popular community with over 5.4 million subscribers.
In mid-June, r/malefashionadvice and thousands of other subreddits went offline to express their opposition to the new API rules. The changes to the API included Reddit’s decision to charge for what was previously a free service, causing many third-party developers who relied on the API to abandon their projects. This move led to a decline in traffic for Reddit during the protest.
Reddit warned moderators who kept their subreddits private or in read-only mode that it would take over control of those communities. As a result, the admin account u/ModCodeofConduct, which is the only current moderator for several subreddits, including r/malefashionadvice, r/AccidentalRenaissance, and r/ShittyLifeProTips, called for volunteers to take over the subreddits.
A Reddit spokesperson clarified that the platform is enforcing its moderator Code of Conduct, which considers public communities that have been indefinitely made private as “abandoned.” Reddit aims to find new moderators who want to revive such communities, and they have a practice of reactivating private, high-subscriber communities that are being inactive.
Meanwhile, Reddit has revived r/place, an art project where users can place a single pixel on a large mosaic every few minutes. Some redditors are using this opportunity to voice their grievances against the company and CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez), highlighting the r/Save3rdPartyApps community in their message on the mosaic.
