This whole mess with Reddit is not over yet and it seems like the protests are actually working. The company intends to improve the app's accessibility tools so moderators with disabilities will have an easier way to navigate through the social networking site.
Improved Moderator Tools
Ever since Reddit announced its new API pricing, a lot of third-party apps voiced out their concerns saying that the cost will not be sustainable for small developers. Since then, a number of prominent third-party apps have shut down like Apollo.
Because of that alone, Reddit has received a lot of hate from its users and expressed them in the form of protests. More than 8,000 subreddits participated in the blackout, which meant that the forums would be private or in read-only mode.
While Reddit stands its ground on the pricing, it did acknowledge that accessibility apps are important to provide the forums an easy way to moderate for people with disabilities, which is why the company has already made a deal with some.
As part of the policy exemption for accessibility apps, Reddit has already made a deal with three of them, which are Luna, RedReader, and Dystopia. Although, this may not have been enough since r/TranscribersOfReddit, a community that transcribes media, is still shutting down.
This, however, was not enough to tone down the anger of some moderators. A Reddit moderator said that a multibillion-dollar corporation is "forcing disabled people to simply 'learn new tools,' and to stop using the accessibility tools they're used to," as mentioned in The Verge.
The moderator behind the statement and an advocate for disabled communities, u/PotRoastPotato, said that the act was cruel. He added that as long there are disabled users who are accustomed to the third-party apps, it must be preserved.
Reddit Starts Suspending Moderators
Although the company is playing nice with disabled moderators by exempting accessibility apps from the API pricing, it has not been kind to other mods who, in a way, have been patronizing Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman who says that subreddits will soon become public again.
The subreddits that closed their doors during the protest did eventually become public again. With Huffman's statement expressing that moderators are acting against what users really want, polls were posted in subreddits to ask whether they should go back to normal or only post about John Oliver.
In other instances, subreddits were labeled as NSFW to prevent the company from monetizing them. Reddit determined that the mislabeling of forums was a violation of the Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct, resulting in the suspension of moderators behind the label.
In addition to the seven-day suspension, the moderators who were accused of violating the rules were also ousted from their position. Although, Reddit did reinstate the moderators for r/MildlyInteresting, according to Dexerto.
There are still subreddits that remain unmoderated after the company's purging of mods after being accused of violating the social networking site's rules. As of writing, there are still over 2,400 subreddits that are currently dark.
