Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

Moderators of many Reddit communities are committed to keeping their threads private or restricted indefinitely. For the vast majority of subreddits, the outage to protest Reddit’s expensive API pricing changes was expected to last from Monday to Wednesday. But in response to a post on Tuesday on the r/ModCoord subreddit, users chimed in to say that their subreddits will remain dark after that 48-hour window.

“Reddit has changed microscopically,” u/SpicyThunder335, a moderator of r/ModCoord, wrote in the post. They say that despite the announcement that access to a popular data backup tool for moderators will be restored, “our core concerns have not yet been met and these concessions came before the outage’s start date; Reddit has been silent since the beginning. SpicyThunder335 also bolded a line from Monday’s memo from CEO Steve Huffman, obtained by On the edge — “like all hype on Reddit, this too shall pass” — and said that “more is needed to make Reddit work.”

Before Tuesday’s post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to going dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list includes some extremely popular subreddits, such as 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 commits to an indefinite period in perhaps the most important moment of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited the moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the pledges are being kept.

SpicyThunder335 notes that not everyone will be able to go dark indefinitely for good reasons. “For example, r/stopDrinking represents a valuable resource for communities in need, and the urgency to spread the word about the ongoing war on r/Ukraine clearly outweighs any of these concerns,” SpicyThunder335 wrote. Alternatively, SpicyThunder335 recommended implementing a “touch-the-grass-Tuesday weekly gesture of support,” which would be left to the discretion of individual communities. SpicyThunder335 also acknowledged that some subreddits will need to poll their users to make sure they’re on board.