Reddit NSFW protestors now given ‘final warning’ by company

Reddit NSFW protestors – moderators who applied the Not Safe For Work flag to their subreddits to prevent monetization – have now been given a “final warning” to remove the label …

A quick recap

Reddit got itself into a mess when it decided to charge unrealistic amounts for access to the API that powered third-party (former) apps like Apollo. That resulted in wide-scale protests by moderators and users alike, with the company threatening them in response.

While many subreddits went dark, limiting access to existing members, some others came up with a clever alternative: applying a NFSW label. Subreddits that adopted this tactic include r/HomeKit and r/HomePod.

The idea was simple: ensure that Reddit cannot sell ads in those subreddits. Ever since 2019, the company has not allowed brands to place ads in any subreddit marked as NSFW, so this move effectively demonetized them.

Reddit NSFW protests must end this week

Reddit had already removed some moderators, and has now told the remaining ones that the labels must be removed by the end of this week.

As The Verge spotted, the moderators of r/PICS are among those to have been sent a threatening message – despite the fact that in this case, the label is entirely accurate.

This is a final warning for inaccurately labeling your community NSFW which is a violation of the Mod Code of Conduct rule 2. Your subreddit has not historically been considered NSFW nor would they under our current policies.

Please immediately correct the NSFW labeling on your subreddit. Failure to do so will result in action being taken on your moderator team by the end of this week. This means moderators involved in this activity will be removed from this mod team. Moderators may also be subject to additional actions, e.g., losing the ability to join mod teams in the future.

Lastly, if you suddenly begin to post, or approve content that features sexually explicit content to your community in order to justify the NSFW label, we will immediately remove and permanently suspend moderators who have participated in this action.

Moderators for another subreddit, r/cyberpunkgame, said that “Reddit’s actions are on par with the most dystopian of companies seen in Night City.”

Photo: Kelli McClintock/Unsplash