Reddit is publicly extending an olive branch to the moderator community that it largely enraged over recent weeks. In a post on Wednesday, a Reddit employee detailed outreach efforts from the company, including new weekly feedback sessions, that it hopes can help repair ties with the social media platform and over 50,000 volunteer mods that it relies on. But as you might expect, mods remain skeptical.
Extending an olive branch
A Reddit admin going by Go_JasonWaterfalls on the site and claiming the title of Reddit VP of community (Ars attempted to confirm the identity of /u/Go_JasonWaterfalls, but Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt declined to confirm the employee's identity by name) acknowledged the shattered relationship between mods—who spend thousands of hours providing free labor and have recently engaged in variously disruptive forms of protest over API pricing on the site—and Reddit—which has responded to said protests by ousting some protesting moderators from their posts. The company has also offered contentious interviews with CEO Steve Huffman. Reddit also reportedly forced some subreddits that moderators labeled "not safe for work" as a form of protest (claiming to have taken member polls beforehand) to revert back to "safe for work" and threatened to forcibly reopen subreddits that had gone private in protest.
"So, we’ve all had a... time on Reddit lately," Go_JasonWaterfalls wrote. "And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the 'now what?' conversation."