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Hello /r/gaming!

tl;dr: We’d like to open a dialog with the community to discuss /r/gaming’s participation in the June 12th reddit blackout. For those out of the loop, please read through the entirety of this post. Otherwise, let your thoughts be heard in the comments. <3

As many of you are already aware, reddit has announced significant upcoming changes to their API that will have a serious impact to many users. There is currently a planned protest across hundreds of subreddits to black out on June 12th. The moderators at /r/gaming have been discussing our participation, and while we’ve come to a vote and agreement internally, we wanted to ensure that whatever action we take is largely supported by our community.

What’s Happening

• Third Party reddit apps (such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun and others) are going to become ludicrously more expensive for it’s developers to run, which will in turn either kill the apps, or result in a monthly fee to the users if they choose to use one of those apps to browse. Put simply, each request to reddit within these mobile apps will cost the developer money. The developers of Apollo were quoted around $2 million per month for the current rate of usage. The only way for these apps to continue to be viable for the developer is if you (the user) pay a monthly fee, and realistically, this is most likely going to just outright kill them. Put simply: If you use a third party app to browse reddit, you will most likely no longer be able to do so, or be charged a monthly fee to keep it viable.

• NSFW Content is no longer going to be available in the API. This means that, even if 3rd party apps continue to survive, or even if you pay a fee to use a 3rd party app, you will not be able to access NSFW content on it. You will only be able to access it on the official reddit app. Additionally, some service bots (such as video downloaders or maybe remindme bots) will not be able to access anything NSFW. In more major cases, it may become harder for moderators of NSFW subreddits to combat serious violations such as CSAM due to certain mod tools being restricted from accessing NSFW content.

• Many users with visual impairments rely on 3rd-party applications in order to more easily interface with reddit, as the official reddit mobile app does not have robust support for visually-impaired users. This means that a great deal of visually-impaired redditors will no longer be able to access the site in the assisted fashion they’re used to.

• Many moderators rely on 3rd-party tools in order to effectively moderate their communities. When the changes to the API kicks in, moderation across the board will not only become more difficult, but it will result in lower consistency, longer wait times on post approvals and reports, and much more spam/bot activity getting through the cracks. In discussions with mods on many subreddits, many longtime moderators will simply leave the site. While it’s tradition for redditors to dunk on moderators, the truth is that they do an insane amount of work for free, and the entire site would drastically decrease in quality and usability without them.

Open Letter to reddit & Blackout

In lieu of what’s happening above, an open letter has been released by the broader moderation community, and /r/gaming will be supporting it. Part of this initiative includes a potential subreddit blackout (meaning the subreddit will be privatized) on June 12th, lasting 48 hours or longer.

We would like to give the community a voice in this. Do you believe /r/gaming should fully support the protest and blackout the subreddit for at least June 12th? How long if we do? Feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions below.

Cheers,

/r/gaming Mod Team