It seems like Reddit has had it with the ongoing protests. The community leaders have been coming up with ways to express their disagreement with the API pricing. They continue to do so even after the site has warned them of the consequences, and now Reddit is throwing in a final warning.
The Last Warning
Mislabeling subreddits as NSFW has been used before by moderators, and this had led to them being removed from their position as well as suspended for several days. This did not scare other mods at all as they continue to do the same.
To prevent this from happening, Reddit is issuing a final warning wherein the protesters will be subjected to more extreme consequences. Subreddits such as r/Pics and r/military switched the label to NSFW, with mods reasoning that the topics in the group justify it.
For instance, military content could potentially hold violent content. The moderators of r/military stated the subreddit should've been NSFW already, but they'd never thought to change it until recently. Reddit, however, does not buy the reason behind the change.
The company sent a message to the mods to issue a final warning, which states that inaccurately labeling the community NSFW is a violation of Mod Code of Conduct rule 2, and the subreddit was not historically considered NSFW, as mentioned in The Verge.
Reddit urged the subreddit leaders to immediately correct the label. Not doing so would subject them to losing their position as moderators by the end of the week. Additional actions are also mentioned such as losing the ability to join mod teams in the future.
Retaliation in the form of approving content that features sexually explicit content in the subreddit to justify the NSFW will not be tolerated. Should a moderator attempt to do so, they will not only be removed but permanently suspended from Reddit.
The mislabel prevents Reddit from placing ads within the subreddit, which affects its revenue stream. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said that the incorrect label is a "violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct."
Protests are Still Ongoing
Even after all the threats that Reddit is throwing their way, moderators are still trying to mock the social networking site's executives. For example, r/videos is no longer allowed to post what it was created for in the first place, which is videos.
Its first rule says that users cannot post porn, nudity, or gore, which sounds pretty standard. The second one is that they can only post titles if it has profanity in them. This may be an effort to label the posts or the subreddit itself NSFW, which other subreddits have been doing.
Lastly, users will have to post texts describing the video they want to post in detail, instead of posting the actual video itself, beating the purpose of the subreddit. If they want to provide a link for the video they're speaking of, they can only do so through the comment section.
