Private communities will be removed from the website unless they reopen

A Comment on “Removing the [name of] Subreddit] from the Public Discussion Group of the Verge ‘Weak Analytical’ on July 27, 2023

The Verge reports that the mod status of private communities that aren’t public will be taken away by the end of the week. The company will take your request into consideration if you tell them that they want to be active moderating the subreddit.

The deadlines are given to indicate a deadline sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage.

But when some replied, the admin took a far more aggressive tone. “This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” past the deadline, ModCodeofConduct wrote in one message seen by The Verge. “This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here,” the admin added. ModCodeofConduct claimed that the switch to private in protest is in violation of the Moderator Code of Conduct.

Even though most users won’t post in a community, they can still see posts, since they can make links from that subreddit that show up in search results. The few hold out in private mode and it looks like Reddit wants to change that.

Many of the communities that went dark earlier this month are back online now, but some remain private or restricted in some way.

There is no reason to reopen as I don’t think we are the bad guys there, says yoasif, the r/firefox moderation who received the message. The protest has had a chance to be reconciled for weeks now, but have yet to do so. r/firefox, as of this writing, is indeed still private.

In message threads we have seen, both of the subreddits were told that they need to change before they could reopen.

After sending a modmail message on June 27, 2023, your mod team indicated that you do not want to reopen the [name of subreddit] community. This notice is for you to know that you will be removed from the community at the end of the week. We will take your request into account if you reply to let us know you are interested in actively moderating this community.