- Last year, Reddit moderators protested changes to the site that restricted access to third-party apps.
- Thousands of subreddits were made private, preventing the public from viewing popular forums.
- The company acknowledged in its S-1 filing ahead of its planned IPO that host rebellion was one of the risk factors.
Several years after its website was launched, online bulletin board platform Reddit is preparing to go public next month.
Ahead of its planned IPO, the company filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining the risks associated with the business that potential shareholders should be aware of.
One of these “risk factors” is “disruption” to the functioning of the site as a result of “actions or inactions” by “volunteer moderators.” Reddit subtly acknowledges how much it relies on the good intentions of moderators and their potential influence. Moderator's Rebellion.
In June, thousands of popular subreddits (forums) went private after moderators (unpaid users who ensure visitors follow the forum's community guidelines) protested changes to the platform. Some subreddits have millions of members.
At the time, Reddit was facing backlash over its plans to start charging companies for access to its application programming interfaces (APIs). Access to Reddit's vast data is typically used for free by third-party apps like Apollo and Sync, and he was one of the preferred ways for Reddit users to navigate her website.
In response, moderators staged a 48-hour protest against these changes, closing public forums and restricting access.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in an interview with The Verge during the regional power outage that the protests will do nothing to change the company's mind.
“We've had power outages in the past, where we had a little bit more room to move. But the core of this is a change in API pricing. That's a business decision for us. We're not going to reverse that decision,” Huffman said.
While the protests ultimately didn't change the direction of Reddit's business plans, the company clearly understands one thing. That said, it's bad business to go to war with moderators.
A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.
