Reddit's latest policy change could stifle future protests against the platform

Reddit is changing its rules in a way that may ensure its mods never go rogue again.

On Monday, Reddit's VP of community, Laura Nestler, announced in a post on the platform's r/modnews subreddit that the company was changing Community Type settings rules. Going forward, moderators will be required to submit a request to Reddit instead of being able to just change the setting immediately on their own.

Community Type settings on subreddits are typically set by moderators and change a subreddit's visibility from public view to restricted or private. Mods can also change the Community Type settings from SFW (safe for work) to NSFW (not safe for work), which restrict access to the group by age.

According to Nestler, in an interview with The Verge, Reddit has been talking about this change behind-the-scenes since she joined the company in 2021.

"When a public community goes private, all redditors (even members of that community) lose access to the community and its content," Nestler said in the announcement posted on Reddit. "Outside of extenuating circumstances, communities should honor the expectations they set — public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private."

Stifling future Reddit protests

Whether or not Reddit has been discussing this change prior to the Reddit blackout protests of last year, it'll be hard for users to see this as anything but a change meant to stifle future dissent.

In June 2023, thousands of Reddit communities, known as subreddits, changed their Community Type settings from public to either restricted or private in protest of the company's recent changes to its API. The Reddit API was once free for developers to build upon. However, the company decided to start charging for API access, which resulted in some popular Reddit-based apps like Apollo shutting down.

Reddit eventually had to get involved and take over some larger subreddits in order to restore access to these communities. When a subreddit gets turned private, many users and visitors are completely cut-off from viewing the content posted there. Some moderators who refused to comply with Reddit were removed from their moderator positions. The role of moderator, we should note, is generally not held by employees of Reddit. Moderator is a completely unpaid, voluntary position and moderators are taken up by members of the Reddit community.

Reddit admins, who will approve or deny these Community Type settings change requests, are employed by the company.

Earlier this year, Reddit became a publicly traded company on the stock market. The social media platform now has less wiggle room for its community to partake in actions that can hit the company's traffic or revenue like they did in 2023.

The new rules

According to Reddit, moderators will now have to submit a request before taking their subreddit private or changing its age restrictions.

Outside of protest, the obvious rationale for a speedy change of Community Type might be to avoid being inundated with harassment in the event that a subreddit is being brigaded by trolls. This is a situation that communities would, it seems, be more vulnerable to after this rule change. Some mods shared this concern in the replies to Reddit's rule change post.

"Our trans subs have been brigaded by large, organized harassment campaigns in the past, sometimes for months on end," wrote one user in the comments to Reddit's announcement. "Going private and manually checking and approving each applicant has been our primary defense for protecting our users, their photos, and their information."

Mashable reached out to Reddit for comment on this potential problem, and for further information about the change in general, but we did not hear back in time for publication.

Mods can apply for these requests at any time and will receive a response within 24 hours. Subreddits with less than 5,000 members, or those less than 30 days old, will have their requests approved automatically. 

Moderators can still temporarily restrict posts and comments to a subreddit under its Temporary Events policy. Restrictions put on a subreddit by mods due to a sudden spike in traffic will not require approval from Reddit. These restrictions under Temporary Events are allowed to remain for up to 7 days.

Regardless of what Reddit's true reasoning behind the new rules is, the changes will likely not receive a positive response from moderators as Reddit removes a source of leverage these community members once held.