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On The State of /r/PICS: Profanity, Offensive Content, and An Open Letter : r/pics
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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Here's the text of the open letter:
As promised, here’s what the r/PICS moderators would like to say to Reddit’s administrators:
Forging A Return to Productive Conversation
To All Whom It May Concern:
For fifteen years, r/Pics has been one of Reddit’s most-popular communities. That time hasn’t been without its difficulties, but for the most part, we’ve all gotten along (with each other and with administrators). Members of our team fondly remember Moderator Roadshows, visits to Reddit’s headquarters, Reddit Secret Santa, April Fools’ Day events, regional meetups, and many more uplifting moments. We’ve watched this platform grow by leaps and bounds, and although we haven’t been completely happy about every change that we’ve witnessed, we’ve always done our best to work with Reddit at finding ways to adapt, compromise, and move forward.
This process has occasionally been preceded by some exceptionally public debate, however.
On June 12th, 2023, r/Pics joined thousands of other subreddits in protesting the planned changes to Reddit’s API; changes which – despite being immediately evident to only a minority of Redditors – threatened to worsen the site for everyone. By June 16th, 2023, that demonstration had evolved to represent a wider (and growing) array of concerns, many of which arose in response to Reddit’s statements to journalists. Today (June 26th, 2023), we are hopeful that users and administrators alike can make a return to the productive dialogue that has served us in the past.
We acknowledge that Reddit has placed itself in a situation that makes adjusting its current API roadmap impossible.
However, we have the following requests:
Reddit is unique amongst social-media sites in that its lifeblood – its multitude of moderators and contributors – consists entirely of volunteers. We populate and curate the platform’s many communities, thereby providing a welcoming and engaging environment for all of its visitors. We receive little in the way of thanks for these efforts, but we frequently endure abuse, threats, attacks, and exposure to truly reprehensible media. Historically, we have trusted that Reddit’s administrators have the best interests of the platform and its users (be they moderators, contributors, participants, or lurkers) at heart; that while Reddit may be a for-profit company, it nonetheless recognizes and appreciates the value that Redditors provide.
That trust has been all but entirely eroded… but we hope that together, we can begin to rebuild it.
In simplest terms, Reddit, we implore you: Remember the human.
We look forward to your response by Thursday, June 29th, 2023.
There’s also just one other thing.
that "one other thing" is a hyperlink to a picture of multiple John Olivers standing behind a sign reading "We Demand To Be Taken Seriously".
My take: the letter does a good job of stating the grievances and position of the moderators and should be referenced in future articles about the Reddit protests. And, although it's well-written and well-intentioned, it's not going to work because Reddit hasn't been dealing in good faith so why would they start now?
Reddit will mistakenly take this letter as a sign of weakness and not perceive it as what it truly is: a final attempt at communication/reconciliation before walking out. The best likely response would be Reddit making some mealymouthed promises that will never be kept. It's more likely, however, that Reddit will either do nothing at all or do something new that's hostile and foolish. And it's highly likely that the moderators realize all of this, but figure there's nothing to be lost by giving it one last try.
Yep, I'm with you on that. Unfortunately, I think the /r/pics mods are somewhat replaceable. That's not to say they don't do a good job - they definitely do, and I've got nothing but good things to say about how they've handled this last month. But it's a catch-all subreddit without any real sense of community, culture or curation. A new mod team could be brought on and, after a short acclimatisation period, I think the subreddit would probably feel the same as ever.
There are definitely other subreddits that will suffer much more if they have their mod teams replaced because the mods really curate the content - setting posting rules, banning certain topics, removing things that don't fit the culture of the subreddit and that aren't at a high enough quality, etc. Replacement mods simply wouldn't do it in the same way.
The fact that the biggest subreddits are like /r/pics - catch-all subs with somewhat replaceable mod teams - makes it very easy for Reddit to treat this as being less serious than it is for them. Yes, the big subreddits with the most subscribers and the most traffic are catch-all subreddits with somewhat replaceable mod teams, but those aren't why people stay on Reddit. People stay for the curated subreddits, the special-interest subreddits, the niche subreddits. And those are the ones that are far harder to find replacement mod teams for, let alone ones that continue to keep the subs going as they were before.
How Reddit handles this open letter will be quite interesting. There's nothing unreasonable about this letter and its requests. Like you said, if Reddit can address it satisfactorily, there's still a chance things can be smoothed over between Reddit and moderators; a lot of mods don't want to leave the site, after all, and are looking for an excuse to stay - that's why there are still open letters being posted rather than everyone just resigning as moderators right away. But if Reddit doesn't address it, and address it well, I think, because it's so well-written, well-intentioned and reasonable, it will reflect terribly on Reddit and could easily be seen as the final straw by a lot of mods.