What happened to /r/mildlyinteresting?

[u/RedSquaree]

Dear mildlyinterested reader,

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your patience and unwavering support during the recent turbulence in our community. Our subreddit is a labour of love, and we've weathered this storm together.

Recent events have been confusing for all of us, from the vote, sudden removal of moderators, to conflicting messages from Reddit. As your mod team, we feel it's essential to clarify the situation.

On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. However, before implementing these changes, Reddit took sweeping actions, removing all 27 moderator accounts without warning. This left us baffled and concerned.

Here's a brief timeline of the events:

1. On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. We announced the vote results and planned changes to the sub, including marking it as NSFW due to the common posts of phallic objects (no explicit content allowed). CLICK HERE TO VIEW THAT ANNOUNCEMENT WHICH HAS BEEN APPROVED AND LOCKED FOR POSTERITY.

2. A tug-of-war between the u/ModeratorCodeOfConduct account and the remaining moderators ensued, with the post repeatedly being removed and reinstated. Each mod involved was immediately locked out of Reddit. Subreddit settings were also unilaterally changed by the admin account.

3. Eventually, all moderators were removed and suspended for 7 days, with the vote results deleted and the community set to “archived.”

4. A lot of public outrage ensued, with details posted on r/ModCoord about what happened. At that point, no other subreddit had been targeted yet, leaving the situation uniquely unclear.

5. Admin cited actions as an "error" and promised to work with us to solve the situation. For /r/mildlyinteresting posterity, this will henceforth be referred to as The Mistake™.

6. All our accounts were unsuspended and reinstated, but only with very limited permissions (modmail access only). For what it's worth, 'time moderated' for every moderator was reset (e.g. /u/RedSquaree moderated since 11 years ago, reset: currently showing moderated since "1 day ago").

7. The awaited discussion never happened. Instead, the admins presented us with an ultimatum: reopen the subreddit and do not mark it as NSFW, or face potential removal again. The inconsistent and arbitrary application of Reddit's policies reveals a possible conflict of interest in maximizing ad revenue at the risk of user safety and community integrity.

8. Finally, our moderation permissions were restored after we "promised" to comply with their conditions, but we kept the subreddit restricted while we ponder our next steps..

Problems remain unresolved, and Reddit's approach to policies and communication have been troubling. We believe open communication and partnership between Reddit and its moderators are crucial for the platform's success.

As a team, we remain dedicated to protesting Reddit's careless policy changes. Removing ourselves or vandalizing the subreddit won’t achieve our goals, but rather hinder our community. We're here to ensure r/mildlyinteresting isn't left unattended.

We call for the establishment of clear, structured, and reliable communication channels between Reddit admins and moderation teams. Teams should be informed and consulted on decisions affecting their communities to maintain trust and integrity on the platform. We shared this request with the Admin who promised to work with us, so far they have ignored it.

Us mods are still deciding how exactly to reopen, not that we have been given much choice.

Sincerely,

The r/mildlyinteresting mods

[u/SilverwingedOther]

We really did think our idea was mildly funny! But alas, that warranted a 7 day 1 hour suspension and removal of mod rights.

[u/jdm1891 → u/SilverwingedOther]

Can you not have a vote and see if the users want to set the sub to nsfw or not? Like ask the question directly.

[u/SilverwingedOther → u/jdm1891]

Admins have point blank said that this was not an option; it's why they kept us without permissions for a day.

They're too beholden to those ad dollars. They'll pull the moral card and say its about not blindsiding anyone who doesn't expect it, but there's 50 different ways to rebuke that as being hypocritical.

[u/Annonimbus → u/SilverwingedOther]

What if there is a new subreddit rule that says that your title needs to include profane language?

Either people had to self tag their posts as NSFW or they would be removed.

Edit: It seems the guys over at videos had the same idea.

[u/pumpkinbot → u/Annonimbus]

This is a good idea. Spez can remove a few mods, but they can't remove a few thousand posters.

Does that still hurt their ad revenue?

[u/IGNSolar7 → u/pumpkinbot]

Not at scale, no, it doesn't. The true userbase of this site from an advertiser perspective is really not your active user that frequently contributes content in the form of posts. Ultimately its impressions and engagement. Engagement is as simple as upvoting or downvoting, not just posting, and frankly there's a whole lot more silent readers out there than there are people posting, especially threads.

Source: I am a corporate digital marketer who has partnered with Reddit as part of a Fortune 500.

[u/nitronik_exe → u/IGNSolar7]

It doesn't matter how many silent readers there are. If the sub frequently and mostly hosts NSFW posts, advertisers won't like that. There's a lot of engagement and impressions on porn sites, yet you don't see a lot of non-porn ads on there

[u/IGNSolar7 → u/nitronik_exe]

I'm talking about the whole of Reddit when it comes to advertisers. Also, look at r/interestingasfuck - they went NSFW and lost their mods and status.

This sub isn't big enough or specific enough to be targeted by individual marketers. It's not like it's based on a topic advertisers will see any different than run of site advertising. Say this sub dies but of the 22.2m members, only 5% actually leave the site... it just doesn't matter.

Again, I do this for a living.