Reddit changes policy to severely limits moderators' ability to switch their communities from public to private

[joelr]

New Reddit policy changes have quietly rolled out that severely limit the ability of subreddit moderators to switch their communities from public to private without admin approval.

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The change had sparked concerns that Reddit aims to prevent large-scale protests like those seen last year when over 8,000 subreddits went private in response to controversial Reddit API pricing changes.

What’s the motive behind Reddit policy changes?

The company has not provided an explicit reason for the Reddit policy changes but did direct inquiries to a post on r/modnews by Reddit’s VP of community, u/JasonWaterfalls. They cited the potential for platform disruption as a key factor, noting that “the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules”.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Just another reason to host your own community.

Reddit is just like Facebook, it's rented space.

I have a group on Facebook with more than 45,000 members. If Facebook decides to close it down or discontinue groups, it's just my loss. I have to deal with it. That's it.

They can't close down my forum, though.

 

[Heatman]

Just another reason to host your own community.

Reddit is just like Facebook, it's rented space.

I have a group on Facebook with more than 45,000 members. If Facebook decides to close it down or discontinue groups, it's just my loss. I have to deal with it. That's it.

They can't close down my forum, though.

This!

They can terminate all your efforts within seconds and they are never going to inform before hand. The description "Rented Space" vividly makes it clear on what it is.

If you want more control over the longevity of your community, it's better to start it out on forums and run it on your terms.

 

[Henrywrites]

This!

They can terminate all your efforts within seconds and they are never going to inform before hand. The description "Rented Space" vividly makes it clear on what it is.

If you want more control over the longevity of your community, it's better to start it out on forums and run it on your terms.

This is good for forums. I think some of the guys at those subReddits should begin to think of opening a forum where they can get to build better interactions and have more control, unlike what we see on Reddit. The only challenge would be about generating traffic at the end of the day.

 

[Tracy]

Just another reason to host your own community.

The first forum script developer that creates an app with centralized login that enables the use of 3rd party add-ons and places the app on the Play Store and App Store so that sites can link their users to it and also offers a centralized reference database of sites broken down by niche or similar is going to have a winner on their hands.
Yes, getting the add-ons to play nicely might be difficult, but I'm sure it's not an insurmountable job.
I know at one time Invision was talking about doing this but I guess it died on the vine.

So many use FB, Twitter and similar because they have a centralized application to use for access and don't have to various logins and such.

 

[Heatman]

This is good for forums. I think some of the guys at those subReddits should begin to think of opening a forum where they can get to build better interactions and have more control, unlike what we see on Reddit. The only challenge would be about generating traffic at the end of the day.

Eventually anyone who's a webmaster and have a long term plan for whatever they are building on needs to go independent from all those big platforms to starting out on their own hosted community. Imagine grooming a sub on reddit or a page/group on Facebook only for it to be taken down for one silly excuse of another.