More than six thousand subreddits went dark to protest

How Many Million Subscribers Are Interested in Staying Dark Indefinitely? A Reply to Selig on SpicyThunder335

In r/ModCoord, four separate threads detail an “incomplete and growing list of participating subreddits” that includes numerous well-known communities with tens of millions of subscribers.

Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.

Christian Selig, whose post about the pricing of the website caused a lot of outrage, said it was incredible to see the community fight back against the changes. He wrote in a post on the Apollo discussion forum that he hoped they would listen. “I think showing humanity through apologizing for and recognizing that this process was handled poorly, and concrete promises to give developers more time, would go a long way to making people feel heard and instilling community confidence.”

“This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love,” r/Toptomcat wrote in the post. And some subreddits didn’t wait until Monday: r/TIHI (Thanks, I Hate It) and r/polls were among those that went dark shortly after CEO Steve Huffman’s poorly-received Friday AMA.

Not everyone will be allowed to go dark indefinitely for valid reasons. “For example, r/stopDrinking represents a valuable resource for a communities in need, and the urgency of getting the news of the ongoing war out to r/Ukraine obviously outweighs any of these concerns,” SpicyThunder335 wrote. As an alternative, SpicyThunder335 recommended implementing a “weekly gesture of support on ‘Touch-Grass-Tuesdays,’” which would be left up to the discretion of individual communities. SpicyThunder335 also acknowledged that some subreddits would need to poll their users to make sure they’re on board.

R/Mod Coord’s moderator wrote in the post that “Reddit has budged microscopically.” They say that despite an announcement that access to a popular data-archiving tool for moderators would be restored, “our core concerns still aren’t satisfied, and these concessions came prior to the blackout start date; Reddit has been silent since it began.” SpicyThunder335 also bolded a line from a Monday memo from CEO Steve Huffman obtained by The Verge — “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well” — and said that “more is needed for Reddit to act.”