Hello r/ community.

We have something that's weighed on our minds and after some serious thought, we want to be as transparent as we've always tried to be with you. To get to the point; we will be participating in the Blackout planned for June 12th but we don't know if it's even worth our energy it to bring some of our subs back, namely r/OregonSwingers, r/OregonGoneWild, and r/OregonMenGoneWild.

More Spam v1.0

Reddit has been making changes behind the scenes that make modding more difficult. First, about a month ago they killed one of the biggest tools we had in our tool belt to fight spam. We hate spam. We loathe spam. We do all we can to make sure you never see spam and in the off-chance something slips by us, we kill it fast. When Reddit removed this tool, it made it more difficult and created more work for us. This was a huge blow for us, but this was all on us, the mods. While you may not have seen much change, know that the past month we have been doing more in the background and that extra 'work' -and that's what it has become in this regard, 'work'- wears on us.

After a lot of arguing with Reddit Admins by almost every respectable mod out there, Reddit finally announced a change to their policy. A win? Nope. Reddit decided that only "approved" moderators will be allowed to use their API and then they put so many limitations on it, we doubt that it will serve our purpose in our fight against spam, even if we made the approved list.

More Spam v2.0

To make it worse, Reddit has also been HELPING spammers with More Spam version 2.0 (their native app). If they cared, they'd disallow linktree/onlyfans/snapchat/etc. from user's personal pages. We know this, you know this, they know this, and spammers know this, yet, Reddit refuses to even acknowledge this.

Why are they doing this? Simple, they need more spammers because it drives traffic up for them to help with their IPO.

These two alone are headaches enough for us. But Reddit Admins aren't done.

Removal of third party apps, the real reason for the blackout

What compounds this more is Reddit has announced some significant changes that's going to make it all really suck for us ALL. Starting on July 1st, Reddit will impose ridiculously exorbitant charges on third-party app developers like Reddit is Fun (aka RIF), Apollo, Baconreader, Narwhal etc. for utilizing their API. This decision has far-reaching consequences that not only hinder app developers and also negatively affect the experience of moderators and users alike. tl;dr: This will shut down ALL third party apps This leaves us with new.reddit and Reddit's native app to mod.

The four of us mods here, and the vast majority of mods throughout Reddit, almost all exclusively mod through Apollo and Reddit Is Fun (RIF) when on mobile, which is about 90% of our time. To be blunt: Without Apollo and RIF, none of us mods think that we will be able to mod to the level that is needed, or deserving to you all.

Again: Reddit's official app is horrible(!!) and we simply cannot fulfill our responsibilities as moderators efficiently if we are only allowed to use Reddit's native app.

Have we reached Digg v4?

Do we come back? We don't know. Every single one of us do this as volunteers because we like doing it, and we do. We have met some great people, we've watched some exciting events and friendships come to fruition, and we've all helped grow some sex-positivity in Oregon. That said, some subs are beacons for spam and they've become a lot of 'work' to maintain to a level we believe you all deserve. If Reddit goes through with their planned changes on the 1st of July, these three subreddits may be placed on private, indefinitely: r/OregonSwingers, r/OregonMenGoneWild, and r/OregonGoneWild. If these don't come back, we just want to say thank you and we hope you had fun. We will keep r/Oregon_Swingers around for those that are verified.

I know this is a small part of your lives and most of you will just look for the next thing; that's cool and we respect that. If you are like most of us 'old-timers' on Reddit, who joined Reddit after the Digg V4 fiasco, we're used to moving on and we'll find the next spot just the same. It does suck for those of us that have invested that past 15 years of our lives helping and watching the communities within Reddit grow, but like Digg, Myspace, AOL, (LOL), all things must eventually come to end. Maybe this is it??

Once Redditors leave, all that will be left is spam, and so far, that's all Reddit seems to care about.