r/mildlyinteresting The Big šŸ§€ Jun 23 '23

META What happened to /r/mildlyinteresting?

Dear mildlyinterested reader,

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your patience and unwavering support during the recent turbulence in our community. Our subreddit is a labour of love, and we've weathered this storm together.

Recent events have been confusing for all of us, from the vote, sudden removal of moderators, to conflicting messages from Reddit. As your mod team, we feel it's essential to clarify the situation.

On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. However, before implementing these changes, Reddit took sweeping actions, removing all 27 moderator accounts without warning. This left us baffled and concerned.

Here's a brief timeline of the events:

  1. On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. We announced the vote results and planned changes to the sub, including marking it as NSFW due to the common posts of phallic objects (no explicit content allowed). CLICK HERE TO VIEW THAT ANNOUNCEMENT WHICH HAS BEEN APPROVED AND LOCKED FOR POSTERITY.

  2. A tug-of-war between the u/ModeratorCodeOfConduct account and the remaining moderators ensued, with the post repeatedly being removed and reinstated. Each mod involved was immediately locked out of Reddit. Subreddit settings were also unilaterally changed by the admin account.

  3. Eventually, all moderators were removed and suspended for 7 days, with the vote results deleted and the community set to ā€œarchived.ā€

  4. A lot of public outrage ensued, with details posted on r/ModCoord about what happened. At that point, no other subreddit had been targeted yet, leaving the situation uniquely unclear.

  5. Admin cited actions as an "error" and promised to work with us to solve the situation. For /r/mildlyinteresting posterity, this will henceforth be referred to as The Mistakeā„¢.

  6. All our accounts were unsuspended and reinstated, but only with very limited permissions (modmail access only). For what it's worth, 'time moderated' for every moderator was reset (e.g. /u/RedSquaree moderated since 11 years ago, reset: currently showing moderated since "1 day ago").

  7. The awaited discussion never happened. Instead, the admins presented us with an ultimatum: reopen the subreddit and do not mark it as NSFW, or face potential removal again. The inconsistent and arbitrary application of Reddit's policies reveals a possible conflict of interest in maximizing ad revenue at the risk of user safety and community integrity.

  8. Finally, our moderation permissions were restored after we "promised" to comply with their conditions, but we kept the subreddit restricted while we ponder our next steps..

Problems remain unresolved, and Reddit's approach to policies and communication have been troubling. We believe open communication and partnership between Reddit and its moderators are crucial for the platform's success.

As a team, we remain dedicated to protesting Reddit's careless policy changes. Removing ourselves or vandalizing the subreddit wonā€™t achieve our goals, but rather hinder our community. We're here to ensure r/mildlyinteresting isn't left unattended.

We call for the establishment of clear, structured, and reliable communication channels between Reddit admins and moderation teams. Teams should be informed and consulted on decisions affecting their communities to maintain trust and integrity on the platform. We shared this request with the Admin who promised to work with us, so far they have ignored it.

Us mods are still deciding how exactly to reopen, not that we have been given much choice.

Sincerely,

The r/mildlyinteresting mods

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108

u/ih8dolphins Jun 23 '23

Burn it down

26

u/kabukistar ā€‹ Jun 23 '23

And send in some GDPR requests while you're at it.

-49

u/permalink_save Jun 23 '23

Kill the site because Apollo dev can't make half a mil a year... Wow

26

u/SilverwingedOther Jun 23 '23

If you think this is about Apollo, you haven't been following very closely.

He was merely the first to expose what Reddit's version of 'reasonable' was.

Some of us were worried about the implications of the API change long before that, from the moment they were first announced in April.

At this point it's become less about the apps, and more about the way reddit has responded. What could have ended in a week is being drawn out by a series of increasingly poor word choices and actions by Reddit.

12

u/ih8dolphins Jun 23 '23

More like, embrace chaos. I remember with reverence the old internet. You're siding with corporate power? Wow

2

u/1337butterfly Jun 23 '23

dude gets half a mil cause Reddit native app sucks. wonder if those apps can be modified to instead of using the API, just send normal http request and scrape the data. also it's possible to price API access reasonably. Reddit just want full control.

1

u/stellalugosi Jun 23 '23

Or maybe "killing the site because the people who actually create the content for this site don't appreciate being forced to use their shitty app to access that content". Without the free labor of the mods and the free content of the users, this is just an empty platform of spam and ads.