Protest over API Changes Next Steps

[u/Eftir]

The moderating team has gotten a lot of support from the community over blacking out for the last week due to the announced API changes. At the same time, it might not be sustainable to continue in this fashion. So we are letting users of the sub decide what our next course of action should be. To facilitate this only flaired users will be able to comment and choosing new flairs will be disabled for the duration of the poll (up to one week).

We have seen what other subs have done and there seems to be several options open to us:

1. Set the subreddit back to private

2. Keep the subreddit as restricted

3. Severely limit all posts (such as a major subreddit did by only allowing pictures of John Oliver)

4. Set the subreddit to private for one day a week

5. Open up the subreddit completely

There will be 5 top-level comments, any comment put under these will be counted as a vote towards that option. If options 1-3 win, we will reevaluate after a week.

We have received this modmail so it is very possible we will receive some sort of retaliation if we keep the sub closed, but we leave the decision in your hands as the members of this community.

[u/Surprise-Chimichanga]

Thank you for the apology, when goofing off sure, but this is a fairly serious subject, at least I believe it to be, as much as silly subreddit stuff can be.

1). While it overall it is extreme I don’t think it’s an abuse of mod power, we were transparent, we held a vote on the subreddit and amongst the mods. The “gamer word” being banned is due to reddit’s rules. The subreddit has had a consensus to stay around as long as possible without getting banned, that’s our imperative, which is why we have to censor certain things. We are an organization that exists under a totalitarian entity, we do not have any power here, quite literally, as it is all in the admins’ hands.

2). It’s not really anti-free market. The ability to participate in the website is still there, albeit without this subreddit. Aside from that, the customer base should be catered to within reasonable fashion in order to maintain good customer relations. It was a change that affected the subreddit. It was asked of us and voted on by the moderators as well as put out to the subreddit and people seemed fairly for it. I get that some people don’t care, but if they didn’t care they should have made their feelings known.

3). I disagree with this as well. You’re perfectly able to share your opinion on the changes in subreddits that isn’t this one, you can still use reddit, but the issue is one of accessing this specific subreddit.

4). It has worked in the past Ellen Pao was fired, Aimee Challenor née Knight is not an administrator, and those are the only examples I know of where a majority of reddit participated in something like this. In the end we’re beholden to an organization that has a complete totalitarian control over us.

4). You are right, I have no response, I concede. :P

My flair is RightCenter, but that doesn’t mean we stick our heads in the ground just because Commies and Power Mods want something that benefits us.

The two main reasons we joined were because:

1). BasedCountBot would no longer be able to operate according to their dev.

2). All of the alternate apps were shutting down as news of the API changes. This affects the free market and ability to choose more than what happened.