/r/asl has been private since June 12, in solidarity with subreddits such as /r/blind and /r/Save3rdPartyApps, and with the thousands of other subreddits that - with the support of their users - chose to set their subreddits to either restricted mode or to private mode.

The net effect of this was widespread. Media coverage has been nonstop, reddit's advertisers are not happy, and reddit has been on an active disinformation campaign. In our initial assessment of how long the subreddit might remain private, we chose to wait for reddit's now-infamous AMA which was nothing short of a disaster. Coming out of that, we were absolutely unimpressed with the response from reddit leadership and their refusal to commit to providing tools that have been promised for years, and yet are still unavailable the better part of 20 years into reddit's existence.

We are not interested in giving up and giving in. The admins insist this will all blow over soon and they are not taking it seriously.

At this time, many subreddits remain private. Many others have resumed normal activity. Some have polled their users, which is what /r/asl is doing here. Please note that this poll is not binding for several reasons. Bot activity has risen significantly on reddit in the last week. Indeed, ChatGPT has frequently been used to astroturf a wide-ranging number of subreddits across this website. This means that polls are not fully reliable, but we want to see what our users think. Please vote in the poll below.

While moderators and users site-wide collaborate to determine the next steps, we'll remain in restricted mode for the time being. For more information on where things stand in general, please visit /r/Save3rdPartyApps.

Thanks to /u/baltimore-mods for much of this post's language.

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