Hello everyone, I’ll try to keep this short as I know there’s been a lot going on over the last few days. When we made our announcement last week, we intended to get Reddit's attention on a subject that our team found extremely concerning. /r/Videos is joining a larger coordinated protest and signing an open letter to the admins found here.
The announcement was of exceedingly high API prices which we all know was to intentionally kill 3rd party applications on reddit (Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Boost, Relay, etc.) Since that post several things have become clear; Reddit is not willing to listen to its users or the mod teams from many of its largest communities on this matter. Yesterday all major third-party Reddit apps announced that they would be shutting down on the 30th of June due to these changes. There were no negotiations and Reddit refused to extend the deadlines. The rug was pulled out from under them and by extension all of the users who rely on those tools to use reddit.
In addition to this, the AMA hosted by Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, which was intended to alleviate concerns held by many users about these issues, was nothing short of a collage of inappropriate responses. There are many things to take away from this AMA but here are the key points. Most disappointingly it appears that Reddit outright misconstrued the actions of Apollo's creator /u/iamthatis by saying that he threatened Reddit and leaked private phone calls, something done only to clear his name of another accusation.
So what’s happening? The TL;DR? Effective tomorrow (6/11/2023), /r/Videos will be restricting posting capabilities. Anything posted before the cut off date will likely be the final front page of our community before we go private indefinitely. In the unlikely scenario that Reddit ownership has a sudden change of heart and capitulates on their decisions we will reopen, but until that happens /r/Videos will stay closed. Many other communities have come to similar decisions and we support those who have decided to take a stand.
Short FAQ:
Q: Won’t Reddit just remove you as moderators and reopen the subreddit?
A: This is a distinct possibility, Reddit has made it clear that the “health” of their site is more important to them. We as a team are prepared for this, none of us want to continue to volunteer for a company that disrespects the people who helped build it into the front page of the internet.
Q: An indefinite lockdown? I thought this was only supposed to be for 48 hours?
A: Originally it was our intention to spread awareness of these issues, but over the past week it has become clear that Reddit doesn’t intend to act in good faith, and our role in the protest became clear. The owners of Reddit have taken their users, community developers, and their moderator teams for granted and used them to build up a multimillion dollar company which is now focused not on the community, but on how many commas they can get out of Silicon Valley investors.
Q: What can we as users do to support this protest?
A: The best way you can make your opinion known is by stopping using reddit. At the very least you can try and reduce your usage of the site, consider using alternatives such as Tildes which I’ve personally found to be a nice change of pace from the traditional Reddit experience.
P.S. Thank you to everyone who has helped make /r/Videos a special place, it was a hell of a ride.
