Ever since Reddit decided to change its API pricing, Reddit users have been protesting against it through a blackout. While a lot of subreddits have already gone public again, many are still insisting on staying private indefinitely, to which the company's CEO has responded.
Protest Leaders Can Be Kicked Out
Not only did the protest cause Reddt to suffer a major outage for about three hours, but it has also created an inconvenience for everyday users as they cannot access many subreddits they used to visit often. Now, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is giving users the ability to decide.
A new policy will soon be implemented by the company to give users the power to remove a moderator's status, which can be done when they are no longer happy with the decision that the moderators are making regarding the subreddits they voluntarily watch over.
Huffman said that the moderator removal policy will be in a more democratic system that will hold moderators accountable for their decisions, as mentioned in NBC News. The existing policy only allows higher-ranking moderators or Reddit to kick out lower-ranking mods.
The Reddot co-founder expressed that the analogy closest to them is the "landed gentry," where the people who got to the subreddit first get to stay there, making rules and passing them down to their "descendants," which he states is not democratic.
He also reasoned that if a person is a politician or a business owner, they are accountable to their constituents. Just as a politician needs to be elected, a business owner can also be fired by its shareholders if they are making the wrong decisions.
However, moderators believed that they deserve a high level of control over the subreddits, given that they are dedicating hours and hours of free labor to enforce rules and make sure that the forums run smoothly. A threat to that position may lead to yet another protest.
The social media site did not specify when the policy will be implemented. Although, Huffman believes that most will end their protest voluntarily soon, and they are just letting it play out. The policy might come into effect when the protest leaders take long enough to make a decision.
Huffman Explains the Situation
Users can take the looming policy change of kicking out moderators as a sign that the Reddit CEO is keeping the new API pricing. Other than that, Huffman also explicitly stated that a decision has been made and they're standing by that decision.
The API pricing comes as Reddit can no longer sustain the costs of API usage. He pointed out that while they have been covering the payments, third-party apps have been making "millions" from using Reddit's API, and that they should start covering their costs.
As for smaller apps, Huffman said that the majority are within the free limits for Reddits API, as mentioned in The Verge, even though the general belief was that all third-party apps would have to start paying for the cost of API usage.
