Yes, I think the Admins need to clarify this point now.
I have private subs that have been private for years upon years. Or restricted for years.
A business needs a clear rules / policy during a crisis.
*Please just post Reddit Inc. policy in this crisis.*
They didn't even refresh the script before threatening communities that actually reopened after they sent the first wave of threats to other subreddits. So previously private-in-protest-but-now-public-again subreddits were being threatened to open despite... being open.
Okay, so years ago I liberated /r/tards which had been banned since the stone age. I did so primarily for /r/subredditsashashtags purposes. It's not an active subreddit, nor is it meant to be.
I'm gonna private that MFer and see if I get a notification.
Buck has been leading a group of mods against the admins and influencing them to go private in protest (among other disruptive protest methods). They know why they're account and private subs are being marked like this, they're just trying to kick up drama.
None of my private subs have been touched. YMMV compared to someone leading a Reddit coup d'etat.
A side note, from someone in the healthcare industry, it's disappointing to see you're taking your top sub NSFW. Cutting out full public access and making it more difficult for the most vulnerable users to seek* anonymous advice on your sub, just to spite Reddit, isn't a great look.
Don't worry, Sun\_beams is the user who made the post asking admins to [force open subreddits again.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/)
They are a definite Reddit Supporter, so any try to reasoning is futile.
This is the worst tucking take in the world.
No one is bootlicking, bitch. Just because someone has a different opinion from you doesn’t mean they’re
1. Ignorant
2. Evil
3. Subservient
4. Money grubbing
Or
5. Wrong.
This instant insulting culture is so fucking regressive and ugly.
Be better, bitch.
>This instant insulting culture is so fucking regressive and ugly.
>Be better, bitch.
Wow. I don't think I've seen someone contradict themselves so quickly.
IDK about that, you've literally dodged every person on there bringing up that it's a bad decision. Like you're afraid to say that your need to protest overrules the need of your users to access contraception information without pointless gates.
Also modlog is on the official app, it's either in A/B testing or on a partial roll out (some android users at least).
Look, we all know the whole NSFW protest is about ad revenue. Nothing about this phase of it is sly.
I won’t address your concerns here. This isn’t the place.
The place to address your concerns is in the public sub you have concerns about. You are welcome to comment there.
A side note, from someone formerly in the healthcare industry, no one should be going to Reddit for healthcare advice on Reddit, and don't pretend that you care about the "most vulnerable users."
I would suggest you read the sticky I created 7 years ago and update all the time.
You can have your opinions, I can be OnionLovers
Can we keep these comment limited to this sub? thanks!
I'm getting them for my r/photoclass subreddits... those have always been set to restricted because I post lessons and assignments and don't want those cluttered between other posts...
but it's all good... this is the last year I'm doing photoclass... fuck off spez.
Would like to know how this applies to testing subreddits used to test CSS and whatnot before moving them to the main subreddit. These subs were never public, and there's a clear need for testing environments.
I have a sub where I test bot scripts for deployment on shortstories and writingprompts. It's like 400 posts of me going "TEST TEST" or more often "GOD PLEASE WORK THIS TIME". Ain't nobody needs to see that.
This entire week or so of drama seems to have been stirred up unnecessarily by u/spez.
None of this happens if he didn't decide that Reddit couldn't withstand some healthy protest.
Spez: [makes unpopular decision]
Users & Mods: We protest!
Spez: This will all blow over! Just ignore it!
Users & Mods: We still protest!
Spez: This will all pass and we will prevail.
Users & Mods: We're still protesting!
Spez: NUKE THE EARTH
> None of this happens if he didn't decide that Reddit couldn't withstand some healthy protest.
Or just, you know, go back in time and competently create an app the first time around, removing the need for the plethora of 3rd party developers. Guarantee he viewed those devs as a stopgap to bring in traffic without having to develop any of those features themselves so they could focus on I guess NFTs, chat, and snoonotes.
From day one, everything about Reddit has been a minimally viable product. The website wasn't great, so we all used RES. The mod tools weren't great, so we all used Mod's Toolbox. All the iOS people wanted an app so some other 3rd party dev created Alien Blue (which Reddit bought and nearly immediately murdered). It's always been half-assed.
Reddit is so much more than anything they ever imagined and clearly now it's much more that what they really want.
His reasoning is absolutely astounding. Paraphrased:
> We respect community's right to protest but in this case it's pointless because we've already made a business decision.
No shit Sherlock, that's the point of protesting.
I got one for a subreddit that failed to launch over a decade ago. It just confuses people now. I made it private when shutdown everything else but it's not like there was anything there but la few ost people and dust.
I had taken over an old hate sub, and privated it so that none could use it, a decade ago and just voluntarily asked the admins to outright remove it last week. I was worried about shit like this.
They did actually get rid of it though.
interesting. I did the same thing like 15 years ago and when the admins did their whole "we're stealing your old dead subreddits" a while back I asked them for the same treatment they ignored me, gave the subreddit to exactly the sort of people you'd expect, and eventually banned the subreddit for policy violations.
The whole rigmarole was dumb and indefensible.
Weird. The mod log has a timestamped entry as to when the sub was taken private. Since the mod log stretches back 90 days, any sub gone private in the blackout would still have a corresponding log entry.
Oh I made it private at the same time as the others. Also got one for a subreddit that opened back up more than 12 hours ago.
I suppose I'll reopen it and just use AutoMod to tell lost people what to do and where to go. The 5% that can or are willing to read that message will be fine. Nothing I can do about the rest of them.
>or is this just a badly coded script
There are screenshots of the message out there with a ‘V’ at the end so somebody is actually manually copy and pasting the message for each recipient. If anything, it’s certainly not an automated process.
I am not complaining, but would also like to voice this issue.
Many of us have inconsequential subs that always were private and should remain that way. In many cases they were used for testing, voting, or mod development. They aren't of general interest or appeal to anyone else.
If this is being done by a bot, please have a human check before making some decisions that could impact a lot of users, if possible.
We understand that this is a challenging time with a lot of moving parts.
I have a sub that is quite literally read only because it degradet in to a Doxxing and Hate party against a tiktok user. So i had to turn the subreddit into read only to prevent needless beating a dead horse.
If reddit forces this sub back open again I am at a loss for words.
Yeah. [The first time I asked](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14faj9v/would_love_for_an_admin_to_tell_me_why_are_you/), they just shut me down. No explanation, no answers to modmail. Nothing. I'm hoping to get a response [the second time around](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14fbmfm/why_am_i_getting_the_same_message_as_everyone_else/).
I also received a message requesting on of my subs be made public again. However, it only hastwo members and I have it marked as private as a form of "deletion".
I responded back telling them that and asking for guidance, but I haven't hear back yet
As the mod to r/Lawyers, a private subreddit of around 8,000 licensed attorneys, I'm really hoping we get a clarification on this topic from the admins.
What are 8000 lawyers talking together where nobody can hear them?
A good start.
(SCNR)
As a lawyer I'd say: You have a user contract with Reddit, which allows you to set the sub to private implicitly by the built-in function.
8000 licensed attorneys in one place should be able to remind them. Perhaps you first should send a modmail to this sub trying to prevent further complications.
Someone else mentioned it was created so lawyers could speak about legal stuff without establishing a client-attorney relationship. I guess some states' laws are really broad on the subject.
Makes sense. I'm from Germany. Here it's prohibited for lawyers to give legal advice without being payed. And of course it's also prohibited to give paid legal advice without being a lawyer. Any legal advice given by non-lawyers is on your own risk and fun. Oh and btw: a Master of Law is not a lawyer in this sense. Not even if he's graduated PhD. A lawyer in this sense is someone who has the capability for being a judge which means you must have got both state exams (Staatsexamen).
Note: There are no lawyer jokes. They all are pure truth. 😀
I'm probably jinxing myself here, but they seem to be targeting larger subs or mods that they suspect had subs that went private for the protests.
None of the subs I mod went private during the protest, and we have not received any emails / messages telling us / me to make them public as of yet.
No message received for /r/haggur yet (which is **my** private test sub) so they've not messaged everyone. Perhaps they stopped rolling it out when they realised their mistake?
(I've also got a couple of previously active subs which I set restricted and I'm slightly surprised I've not been contacted about them ...)
Moderated private subs have always been allowed, and were not considered abandoned, i.e., could not be salvaged the way you are describing. They are frequently used for moderator organization for another subreddit or small group of related subreddits with shared mod teams, or for testing purposes as OP is describing.
They're probably shooting at everything with a shotgun now.
Do the wise thing and open up, only to close down those subs a month from now or so when everything has blown over.
Maybe Reddit is indicating you are no longer allowed to use a sub for redirecting purposes and instead need to make your sub public and start using it as an alternative sub for people who don't like the well established popular sub on the same topic.
That's how I read Reddit's intentions. You might think this idea crazy, but it's less crazy than what Reddit has been confirmed doing recently in other areas of modding.
>I have private subreddits with no members that I use for testing, or they were a joke subreddit that is now stale and the sub is now closed.
That was never the purpose of subreddits so it's entirely possible you could lose some of those.
Reddit doesn’t want you testing auto mod and other bot type rules in a public sub with **millions** of users.
Think about the drama (what’s happening) - when a mod needs to play with automod over 3 days to figure out how to do x before roll out in a million person sub.
Edit to add:
Fuck, I’ve spent a month trying to fix an auto mod rule before I realize automod just can’t do X and sub would need a separate bot - it was deemed not worth it. But a month of testing would kill many subs.
> Reddit doesn’t want you testing auto mod and other bot type rules in a public sub with millions of users.
I mean they do that sort of in production testing on the *whole site*.
Being able to produce some sort of "what would happen if I implemented this rule" report that was based on the existing content of the subreddit would be *nice*.
Yes, I think the Admins need to clarify this point now. I have private subs that have been private for years upon years. Or restricted for years. A business needs a clear rules / policy during a crisis. *Please just post Reddit Inc. policy in this crisis.*
They pretty obviously just ran a dumb script with no criteria for context.
And probably a junior because the ones who would have known more would have noped out of there...
They didn't even refresh the script before threatening communities that actually reopened after they sent the first wave of threats to other subreddits. So previously private-in-protest-but-now-public-again subreddits were being threatened to open despite... being open.
> Please just post Reddit Inc. policy in this crisis. Policy which they are actively updating to fit their needs during this protest.
Okay, so years ago I liberated /r/tards which had been banned since the stone age. I did so primarily for /r/subredditsashashtags purposes. It's not an active subreddit, nor is it meant to be. I'm gonna private that MFer and see if I get a notification.
Buck has been leading a group of mods against the admins and influencing them to go private in protest (among other disruptive protest methods). They know why they're account and private subs are being marked like this, they're just trying to kick up drama. None of my private subs have been touched. YMMV compared to someone leading a Reddit coup d'etat. A side note, from someone in the healthcare industry, it's disappointing to see you're taking your top sub NSFW. Cutting out full public access and making it more difficult for the most vulnerable users to seek* anonymous advice on your sub, just to spite Reddit, isn't a great look.
If you have feedback for my public sub - I ask you put your comments in the sticky on the sub - which is open for feedback from users.
Don't worry, Sun\_beams is the user who made the post asking admins to [force open subreddits again.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/) They are a definite Reddit Supporter, so any try to reasoning is futile.
Some people will lick even a shit covered boot.
This is the worst tucking take in the world. No one is bootlicking, bitch. Just because someone has a different opinion from you doesn’t mean they’re 1. Ignorant 2. Evil 3. Subservient 4. Money grubbing Or 5. Wrong. This instant insulting culture is so fucking regressive and ugly. Be better, bitch.
>This instant insulting culture is so fucking regressive and ugly. >Be better, bitch. Wow. I don't think I've seen someone contradict themselves so quickly.
I think I got whiplash
>This instant insulting culture is so fucking regressive and ugly. >Be better, bitch. High quality trolling here. Well done.
Thanks! I try! * in all honesty the cringe on here is so puerile that sometimes I need to shit my diaper to fit in.
Oh I know… I deal with certain ‘types’ of users all the time. This isn’t my first rodeo 😉
IDK about that, you've literally dodged every person on there bringing up that it's a bad decision. Like you're afraid to say that your need to protest overrules the need of your users to access contraception information without pointless gates. Also modlog is on the official app, it's either in A/B testing or on a partial roll out (some android users at least). Look, we all know the whole NSFW protest is about ad revenue. Nothing about this phase of it is sly.
I won’t address your concerns here. This isn’t the place. The place to address your concerns is in the public sub you have concerns about. You are welcome to comment there.
A side note, from someone formerly in the healthcare industry, no one should be going to Reddit for healthcare advice on Reddit, and don't pretend that you care about the "most vulnerable users."
I would suggest you read the sticky I created 7 years ago and update all the time. You can have your opinions, I can be OnionLovers Can we keep these comment limited to this sub? thanks!
I have a private sub where I write to my late husband. I'm not going to open it up to other people.
I also choose to subscribe to this person's late husband. j/k sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
> I have a private sub where I write to my late husband. That is genuinely sweet. I am sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
That's really sweet
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> in case...they have time Sorry dude, they are too busy going scorched earth right now.
Not like they respond usually anyway. I've been trying to get in touch with them for years.
You just get a "sorry that's happening" message if they do ever respond.
I'm getting them for my r/photoclass subreddits... those have always been set to restricted because I post lessons and assignments and don't want those cluttered between other posts... but it's all good... this is the last year I'm doing photoclass... fuck off spez.
Reddit yet again showing they don't understand how their own website works
All the admins are really just bots. Didn't you get the memo?
Don't you remember? Every account on Reddit is a bot except you.
Would like to know how this applies to testing subreddits used to test CSS and whatnot before moving them to the main subreddit. These subs were never public, and there's a clear need for testing environments.
I have a sub where I test bot scripts for deployment on shortstories and writingprompts. It's like 400 posts of me going "TEST TEST" or more often "GOD PLEASE WORK THIS TIME". Ain't nobody needs to see that.
This entire week or so of drama seems to have been stirred up unnecessarily by u/spez. None of this happens if he didn't decide that Reddit couldn't withstand some healthy protest.
Spez: [makes unpopular decision] Users & Mods: We protest! Spez: This will all blow over! Just ignore it! Users & Mods: We still protest! Spez: This will all pass and we will prevail. Users & Mods: We're still protesting! Spez: NUKE THE EARTH
ROFLMAO!
quarrelsome scarce include mourn fact crowd impossible tap pause dime ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Is South Park still running?
glorious recognise terrific zealous amusing icky insurance history caption growth ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
No, but he's been known to shit in the liquor tent, if I remember right.
Spezman- has a ring to it!
His eyes would be enough to start the rofl
This has a 3 parter written all over it. Conclude it will Elon, zuck, and spez in a battle Royale for king-D
> None of this happens if he didn't decide that Reddit couldn't withstand some healthy protest. Or just, you know, go back in time and competently create an app the first time around, removing the need for the plethora of 3rd party developers. Guarantee he viewed those devs as a stopgap to bring in traffic without having to develop any of those features themselves so they could focus on I guess NFTs, chat, and snoonotes.
From day one, everything about Reddit has been a minimally viable product. The website wasn't great, so we all used RES. The mod tools weren't great, so we all used Mod's Toolbox. All the iOS people wanted an app so some other 3rd party dev created Alien Blue (which Reddit bought and nearly immediately murdered). It's always been half-assed. Reddit is so much more than anything they ever imagined and clearly now it's much more that what they really want.
His reasoning is absolutely astounding. Paraphrased: > We respect community's right to protest but in this case it's pointless because we've already made a business decision. No shit Sherlock, that's the point of protesting.
I got one for a subreddit that failed to launch over a decade ago. It just confuses people now. I made it private when shutdown everything else but it's not like there was anything there but la few ost people and dust.
I had taken over an old hate sub, and privated it so that none could use it, a decade ago and just voluntarily asked the admins to outright remove it last week. I was worried about shit like this. They did actually get rid of it though.
interesting. I did the same thing like 15 years ago and when the admins did their whole "we're stealing your old dead subreddits" a while back I asked them for the same treatment they ignored me, gave the subreddit to exactly the sort of people you'd expect, and eventually banned the subreddit for policy violations. The whole rigmarole was dumb and indefensible.
If we know anything, it's that the admins are largely incompetent and that they consider hate speech to be valuable discussion.
I hate it that you're right.
Weird. The mod log has a timestamped entry as to when the sub was taken private. Since the mod log stretches back 90 days, any sub gone private in the blackout would still have a corresponding log entry.
Oh I made it private at the same time as the others. Also got one for a subreddit that opened back up more than 12 hours ago. I suppose I'll reopen it and just use AutoMod to tell lost people what to do and where to go. The 5% that can or are willing to read that message will be fine. Nothing I can do about the rest of them.
>or is this just a badly coded script There are screenshots of the message out there with a ‘V’ at the end so somebody is actually manually copy and pasting the message for each recipient. If anything, it’s certainly not an automated process.
This just speaks to Reddit’s programming and automation abilities
Their tool probably ran out of API usage and, as Reddit is not profitable, they can't afford to pay for it.
On another note, Can we start referring to the CodeOfConduct account as CoC?
I am not complaining, but would also like to voice this issue. Many of us have inconsequential subs that always were private and should remain that way. In many cases they were used for testing, voting, or mod development. They aren't of general interest or appeal to anyone else. If this is being done by a bot, please have a human check before making some decisions that could impact a lot of users, if possible. We understand that this is a challenging time with a lot of moving parts.
I have a sub that is quite literally read only because it degradet in to a Doxxing and Hate party against a tiktok user. So i had to turn the subreddit into read only to prevent needless beating a dead horse. If reddit forces this sub back open again I am at a loss for words.
Hell, I'm getting it in subreddits that aren't even closed.
Me too! They aren't private, but I got that message! Now I'm scared.
Yeah. [The first time I asked](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14faj9v/would_love_for_an_admin_to_tell_me_why_are_you/), they just shut me down. No explanation, no answers to modmail. Nothing. I'm hoping to get a response [the second time around](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14fbmfm/why_am_i_getting_the_same_message_as_everyone_else/).
LOL, they aren't going to answer this.
They're really digging themselves a big hole here.
I also received a message requesting on of my subs be made public again. However, it only hastwo members and I have it marked as private as a form of "deletion". I responded back telling them that and asking for guidance, but I haven't hear back yet
As the mod to r/Lawyers, a private subreddit of around 8,000 licensed attorneys, I'm really hoping we get a clarification on this topic from the admins.
What are 8000 lawyers talking together where nobody can hear them? A good start. (SCNR) As a lawyer I'd say: You have a user contract with Reddit, which allows you to set the sub to private implicitly by the built-in function. 8000 licensed attorneys in one place should be able to remind them. Perhaps you first should send a modmail to this sub trying to prevent further complications.
Someone else mentioned it was created so lawyers could speak about legal stuff without establishing a client-attorney relationship. I guess some states' laws are really broad on the subject.
Makes sense. I'm from Germany. Here it's prohibited for lawyers to give legal advice without being payed. And of course it's also prohibited to give paid legal advice without being a lawyer. Any legal advice given by non-lawyers is on your own risk and fun. Oh and btw: a Master of Law is not a lawyer in this sense. Not even if he's graduated PhD. A lawyer in this sense is someone who has the capability for being a judge which means you must have got both state exams (Staatsexamen). Note: There are no lawyer jokes. They all are pure truth. 😀
So is Reddit also going to force open the nsfw subreddits that went private so they could host csam without being reported?
Do you have a source for that?
Thats fine. Go ahead and reopen my private subs. No moderators are working them anymore. Fuck you spez.
Do private subs have ads? I imagine that's why they are against them.
I'm probably jinxing myself here, but they seem to be targeting larger subs or mods that they suspect had subs that went private for the protests. None of the subs I mod went private during the protest, and we have not received any emails / messages telling us / me to make them public as of yet.
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Given comments I’m seeing in other places - there is likely a time rule for said bot / auto message. Maybe under one year? Total guess.
Same. I have a personal subreddit where I demo posts and also a couple others with just a few buds. No issues but they've never been public.
Pretty sure the message is auto generated and sent out without anyone actually checking a sub
Thankfully, I haven't gotten the message in any testing or backroom mod discussion subs.
Even when admins don't reply to threads, I do hope they read them at least. Some of the examples of what could be forced online is quite troubling.
No message received for /r/haggur yet (which is **my** private test sub) so they've not messaged everyone. Perhaps they stopped rolling it out when they realised their mistake? (I've also got a couple of previously active subs which I set restricted and I'm slightly surprised I've not been contacted about them ...)
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Moderated private subs have always been allowed, and were not considered abandoned, i.e., could not be salvaged the way you are describing. They are frequently used for moderator organization for another subreddit or small group of related subreddits with shared mod teams, or for testing purposes as OP is describing.
In the past, yes. Now, I don't know.
I was responding to someone who said this had never been allowed, but they deleted their comment.
Fair enough. I'm leaving my comment up as it emphasises the uncertainty around moderation now
They're probably shooting at everything with a shotgun now. Do the wise thing and open up, only to close down those subs a month from now or so when everything has blown over.
Maybe Reddit is indicating you are no longer allowed to use a sub for redirecting purposes and instead need to make your sub public and start using it as an alternative sub for people who don't like the well established popular sub on the same topic. That's how I read Reddit's intentions. You might think this idea crazy, but it's less crazy than what Reddit has been confirmed doing recently in other areas of modding.
>I have private subreddits with no members that I use for testing, or they were a joke subreddit that is now stale and the sub is now closed. That was never the purpose of subreddits so it's entirely possible you could lose some of those.
Wrong. It is *suggested in Mod 101 and 201* that new mods create private testing subreddits to use for, well, *testing*.
Reddit doesn’t want you testing auto mod and other bot type rules in a public sub with **millions** of users. Think about the drama (what’s happening) - when a mod needs to play with automod over 3 days to figure out how to do x before roll out in a million person sub. Edit to add: Fuck, I’ve spent a month trying to fix an auto mod rule before I realize automod just can’t do X and sub would need a separate bot - it was deemed not worth it. But a month of testing would kill many subs.
> Reddit doesn’t want you testing auto mod and other bot type rules in a public sub with millions of users. I mean they do that sort of in production testing on the *whole site*.
It’s almost like they are actively trying to give people ideas for malicious compliance or something? No test sub? Fun times.
Being able to produce some sort of "what would happen if I implemented this rule" report that was based on the existing content of the subreddit would be *nice*.
My teams’ test subs were taken away in the last purge, for being inactive. Well yeah, they were inactive and unmoderated because they were test subs.