After the multi-day blackout, many mods kept the protest going by setting their previously safe-for-work subreddits to NSFW and allowing explicit content like porn. In June, hundreds of subreddits went dark in protest of the API access changes, setting their communities to private and therefore unviewable to everyone except approved members.
Many mods use third-party apps to keep their communities safe and useful for members these third-party apps are often easier to use and less buggy in comparison to Reddit’s official app. Moderators, who are unpaid volunteers helping enforce Reddit’s community guidelines, have been in revolt since April when the platform announced the new API rules. “This change will not impact any moderator bots or extensions.”
“Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed,” Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote under his u/spez username in an announcement last month. Screenshot from third-party app Narwhal showing a message that directs users to log in to the official Reddit app to see NSFW content.
