A slew of adult content subreddits have recently “gone dark” on Reddit in a coordinated effort to protest the platform’s new policies regarding third-party app usage.
Additionally, Reddit announced that explicit content will soon be unavailable for viewing through third-party apps. Thousands of subreddit groups—online communities within Reddit—have switched to “private” mode for 48 hours to voice their dissent against these new rules.
The moderators who made the changes plan to keep the groups private for 48 hours in protest of new rules about apps that are often used to browse the site: one of the few major social media platforms that still allows porn on it.
According to a tally being kept on a Reddit thread, subreddits with over one million members such as the ‘nsfw’, ‘nsfwhardcore’ and ‘porn’ communities were among those taking part in the protest. It was reported by BBC News that as of Monday almost 3,500 subreddits had been set to private mode in this way.
The protests stem from Reddit announcing that it would introduce charges for developers making third-party apps used to browse, moderate or otherwise interact with Reddit. Steve Huffman, Reddit’s chief executive, also announced that from July 5 access to explicit and “mature” content would be limited on third-party apps, although moderator functioning would not be affected on apps by the change.
Huffman said this was “part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed.” Some redditors said they were concerned that Reddit may be looking to phase out porn from the platform.
Reddit’s rules ban the sharing of non-consensual porn on the platform, but in 2022 a BBC investigation highlighted how explicit and sexually-charged photos of women were posted and traded via Reddit without the women’s consent.
Writing about this week’s protest, Huffman said: “We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, at times, going private. We are all responsible for ensuring Reddit provides an open accessible place for people to find community and belonging.”
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