Reddit's New Policy Changes: A Blow to Community Freedom and Protest Power

Admin approval mandatory to turn communities Private: Reddit

Reddit has recently updated its policies to restrict moderators from changing their community-type settings without any platform inputs. This means that going forward, if the moderator of a community wants to change their subreddit from public to Private, or to a mature (18+) subreddit, they would first have to send the platform a request. Platform administrators will respond to requests under 24 hours, and subreddits with under 5000 members or ones that are under 30 days old will get auto-approved. Moderators can still temporarily restrict their subreddits for up to seven days using a feature called Temporary Events without platform approval. For context, temporary events are short periods of significant traffic spikes. This comes after Reddit moderators went on strike last year, protesting against changes to the platform's API (application programming interface) policy. Under the new policy, the platform introduced a premium access point to Reddit's Data API for third-party apps which require higher data usage limits. Under this new premium plan, Reddit started charging $0.24 per 1,000 API calls (data requests made by a third-party app). Moderators went on strike because the developers of third-party apps (which mods relied upon for moderation ) said that this pricing didn't work out for them and that they would shut down if the pricing model went into effect. As a part of this strike, moderators for various subreddits including the likes of r/memes, r/bitcoin, r/Youtube changed their subreddits from public to private. At the time, Reddit had said that it would remove moderators if a subreddit's moderation team unanimously decided to stop performing their role. Reddit eventually did end up taking over some of the subreddits, according to a report by the Verge. In an interview last year with the New York Times, Reddit's CEO and founder Steve Huffman mentioned that the company does not want to give away Reddit data for free to large companies. He argued that people share extremely personal details about their lives on the platform which could help large language models (LLMs) generate better results. As such, by changing the API policy, Reddit could have been looking to prevent AI companies from scraping the Reddit data to train their models free of cost. Following the change in API policy, Reddit signed a $60 million data monetisation deal with Google and then another deal with OpenAI. The company argues that when a public subreddit goes private, it causes all redditors (including members of the subreddit) to lose access to the subreddit's content. "Outside of extenuating circumstances (see the table below), communities should honor the expectations they set - public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private," the company says. The company admits that historically moderators have used community-type settings to protest Reddit's decisions. "While we are making this change to ensure users' expectations regarding a community's access do not suddenly change, protest is allowed on Reddit," the company adds. Interestingly, according to Reddit's content policy, while it may share public content on the Reddit platform with others, it "does not license or make publicly available private data about Redditors" including their posts and comments in private communities. As such one must question whether by spontaneously changing a major public subreddit to a private one moderators used to have the power to restrict Reddit's data licensing partners from accessing their community's content. This ability gave moderators significant leverage in negotiations or protests against Reddit's policies. By implementing these new restrictions on changing community types, Reddit appears to be aiming to maintain more control over its data assets and ensure consistent access for its licensing partners like Google and OpenAI.

Reddit policy changes make sitewide protests nearly impossible

Moderators will now have to get admin approval when switching a subreddit from public to private. Reddit has just changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get admin approval to switch from public to private, as originally reported by The Verge. This is being seen by many as an attempt to curb sitewide protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staffers. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to go private at once without Reddit having its hand on the lever. The company put a little note on the support page that reads "if you're changing your community type after community creation, you'll need to submit a request." This page doesn't offer any reasoning behind the decision. We reached out to Reddit to inquire about this most recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the subreddit r/modnews written by VP of community Laura Nestler. She wrote that "the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules." So it looks like last year's protests are absolutely connected to today's changes. Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that "communities should honor the expectations they set - public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private." On the topic of recent protests, switching from public to private is the exact way in which subreddits expressed dissatisfaction with last year's API pricing changes. In that case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits became inaccessible to the general public, though they remained active for current members. The site's daily traffic suffered as a result. This allegedly had an impact on the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all of those subreddits went private. The company blamed the protests for this outage, telling Engadget that "a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues." Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protest Reddit by labeling a subreddit as NSFW. This disallows advertising on the subreddit and makes it harder to search for. The company also put the kibosh on this move, as that kind of switch also now requires admin approval. It's worth noting that last year's protests didn't work. Reddit went ahead with those API charges, which forced third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also went in and took complete control of one of the larger subreddits that participated in the protest. Now, there's today's change that effectively bans sitewide protests altogether. Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company around $60 million per year, but the users who actually created the content that's being licensed will be getting approximately $0 per year.

New Reddit policy changes are a straight blow to community freedom

New Reddit policy changes have quietly rolled out that severely limit the ability of subreddit moderators to switch their communities from public to private without admin approval. The change had sparked concerns that Reddit aims to prevent large-scale protests like those seen last year when over 8,000 subreddits went private in response to controversial Reddit API pricing changes. The company has not provided an explicit reason for the Reddit policy changes but did direct inquiries to a post on r/modnews by Reddit's VP of community, u/JasonWaterfalls. They cited the potential for platform disruption as a key factor, noting that "the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules". The new Reddit policy changes for admin approval come in the wake of last year's protests that disrupted the site, reportedly causing a significant outage. During those protests, thousands of subreddits went private in response to changes that increased costs for third-party apps, leading many, like Apollo, to shut down. The protest impacted daily traffic and, according to Reddit, caused "stability issues". Interestingly, this is not the first time moderators have used community-type switches as a form of protest. Some subreddits have also switched their classifications to NSFW (Not Safe For Work), which restricts advertising and search visibility. However, Reddit now requires admin approval for this type of change as well, further tightening its grip on how moderators can express dissent. Google has long dominated the digital landscape, but recent trends show the tech giant tightening its grip on the internet in more subtle ways. From algorithm updates to its increasing reliance on AI, Google is steadily shaping how users find information online. As it licenses to train AI models, Google is not just defining search engine results -- it's also defining the future of artificial intelligence, data accessibility, and online knowledge sharing. As a matter of fact, the protests last year ultimately failed to stop Reddit from implementing its API pricing changes, and the new Reddit policy changes make it even more difficult for moderators to organize impactful protests. Adding to the frustration, Reddit recently signed a deal with Google to license its content for AI training, reportedly earning around $60 million annually. Meanwhile, the users who create this content see none of that revenue. Reddit has struck a $60 Million deal with Google to Use its content for training AI models byu/Yazzdevoleps ingoogle In tandem with Reddit, Google's actions are part of a larger movement where tech companies centralize control, influencing what we see, how we interact, and ultimately, the free flow of information. In both Google and Reddit's cases, the increasing control over how online communities and users interact highlights a growing trend: Platforms that once empowered users are now limiting them. This shift not only affects the experience for millions but raises questions about who really controls the future of the internet. The Reddit policy changes reflect a broader shift where platforms like Reddit are increasing control over how communities function, making it harder for users and moderators to hold them accountable. For many, this represents a deeper erosion of Reddit's once-vibrant culture of open dialogue and protest. In reality, by limiting moderators' power to make their subreddits private or protest through other means, Reddit has effectively removed one of the few ways they could pressure the company. Protests that can be easily ignored are not protests at all -- and many feel that's exactly the point of these Reddit policy changes. And what exactly can we do about it? Can we support alternative platforms that prioritize user control? Can we develop new ways to hold platforms accountable for their decisions? These are questions we all need to consider as the future of the internet unfolds.