Reddit is pledging it will respect the subreddit blackout where thousands of subreddits are currently staying dark<\/a> \u2014 but it\u2019s not clear the company actually will.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are not shutting down discussions or unilaterally reopening communities,\u201d reads a line from a \u201cReddit API Fact Sheet\u201d that the company shared with The Verge<\/em> alongside our full Reddit CEO interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that word \u201cunilaterally\u201d may be doing a awful lot of work \u2014 because Reddit has apparently given itself a framework and justification to eject the moderators who support a blackout, replacing them with those who would re-open the sub. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n On Reddit, the ModCodeofConduct account has informed moderators that it will replace inactive moderators with active ones<\/a>, even if they all agree to \u201cstop moderating\u201d:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n That Reddit admin suggests that it breaks Rule 4 of Reddit\u2019s Moderator Code of Conduct<\/a> and is nothing new \u2014 even though Rule 4 says nothing of the sort. You can read it for yourself:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We asked Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt: Does this post mean that, for a subreddit that has gone dark as part of the protests, Reddit can decide to replace the mods of that subbreddit due to infractions of the\u00a0<\/strong>Mod Code of Conduct<\/strong><\/a>? For example, could Reddit argue that mods of subreddits that have gone dark are in violation of Rule 4?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The first part of his reply: \u201cYes, that would be in violation of rule 4 in the CoC.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rathschmidt writes that \u201cthis isn\u2019t new, and isn\u2019t something that was only activated for our current situation,\u201d suggesting that the admin account in question has a history with the rule that you can look up<\/a>. So far, paging through that history, I\u2019m seeing the account dealing with subreddits that had been totally abandoned or moderators who were unreachable, not active moderators taking their subreddit private with the support (or even lack of support) of their community. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n And again, there\u2019s nothing in Rule 4 about this situation, though Reddit certainly has the right to do whatever it wants with its platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I ask Rathschmidt to confirm: \u201cYes, Reddit does believe that a team of moderators who take their subreddit dark in protest are in violation of the Mod Code of Conduct and can\/should be replaced?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He replies: \u201cNo, I\u2019ve said previously this has nothing to do with a protest. It\u2019s about if they violate the Code of Conduct, not what causes it.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t know how to interpret that, or his other replies explaining that the current actions might be a pastiche of interpretations of different rules instead of just Rule 4 \u2014 but it all makes me wonder if the conspiracy theorists among us were correct. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Paging through various subreddit threads ahead of the blackout, it was pretty common to find Redditors suggesting Huffman would simply purge the moderators from its most popular subreddits and force them back open. There were even allegations<\/a> that it had already happened to r\/AdviceAnimals<\/a> and r\/tumblr, but I originally wrote it off as the moderator drama that happens on Reddit from time to time. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In our interview<\/a>, Huffman told us that he sees Reddit as a \u201cdemocratic living organism created by its users.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEvery once in a while in cities, there\u2019s a protest. And I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing exactly right now. We, even in disagreement, we appreciate that users can care enough to protest on Reddit can protest on Reddit and then our platform is really resilient enough to survive these things,\u201d he told my colleague Jay Peters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cDissent, debate, and discussions are foundational parts of Reddit. We respect our communities\u2019 ability to protest as long as mods follow our Moderator Code of Conduct,\u201d reads another part of the fact sheet. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Reddit has apparently decided this form of protest does not <\/em>follow the rules, may be grounds for a moderator purge \u2014 and may not even be the only way Reddit ejects moderators who participated in the protest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n NBC News writes<\/a> that Huffman \u201cplans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a \u2018landed gentry.\u2019\u201d and suggesting the moderators weren\u2019t following the will of their users. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n That does seem like a possibility, but it reminds me of when Elon Musk suggested that verifying notable people on Twitter created a \u201clords and peasants\u201d system<\/a> just because Twitter needed a new revenue stream.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While many subreddits are still dark, Reddit writes that over 80 percent of its top 5,000 communities (by daily active users) are open, \u201cand we expect this to continue.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n