‘Reddit removed moderators after NSFW protests’

Reddit reportedly stripped moderators of several major subreddits who participated in the NSFW protest of their rights. In some cases the rights of these mods would have been restored. Reddit says incorrectly labeling subreddits as NSFW is not allowed.

The moderators of the subreddits r/interestingasfuck, r/TIHI and r/ShittyLifeProTips, among others, were stripped of their rights, according to details The Verge. In a statement to the medium, Reddit says that labeling a community as not safe for work, or NSFW, violates both the Content Policy as the Moderator Code of Conduct. The platform, on the other hand, does not want to say whether moderators have indeed been removed from subreddits for this reason.

According to moderators from r/MildlyInteresting, moderator accounts were automatically logged out and subreddits were automatically relabeled. After a back-and-forth, moderators were given a seven-day ban. Shortly after the publication of The Verge article, all measures against this specific group of moderators were said to have been lifted again. It is difficult to verify whether and in what way all these events are indeed related.

In any case, the subreddits listed all participated in the NSFW protest; instead of setting it to private, communities are marked as nsfw. One such subreddit requires visitors to verify their age by logging into an account. Reddit also does not show ads in these communities. In this way, protesting moderators are actually trying to hit Reddit financially, something the company says was not possible when it went black.