The Blackout

This subreddit, together with over 8000 others have recently protested Reddit's decision to effectively kill third party apps. The reason and more context can be found here in my previous post. The effectiveness of this protest is still very unclear. Many major subreddits are going to continue with the blackout indefinitely, others are going to be set to 'Restricted' or read-only mode. I'll be keeping an eye on the situation and see where this goes.

We're back for now

r/OBSF, and all other NSFW communities are definitely going to be affected by Reddit's new changes, but for us to stay closed isn't really going to make a difference in the same way it will compared to mainstream SFW subreddits. Porn subs can't reach r/All or r/Popular with a protest message, or affect ad-revenue the same way mainstream subs can. I'd rather stay focused on the community we have here and try to keep disruptions to a minimum going ahead.

The way forward

Once third-party apps are gone, it is going to be much harder for me to ensure that this place is free of spam, incivility and off-topic content. One solution I'm considering is to set the sub to 'Restricted'. Then, only approved and verified users will be able to post (regular users can still comment). This will require me to start the transition now already. If you are a regular contributor, don't be surprised when you get an auto generated message saying that your account has been approved - that'll just be me working on moving everyone over seamlessly.

Side note: Yes, verification via modmail is currently EXTREMELY backed up. I'm trying to find time to go through them. If you're in a hurry, please submit your verification directly to OBSF as a post - I'll see it much faster and can action it much faster too.

That's about it from my side. Sorry for the disruption and inconvenience caused by this 'blackout', but it's always worth a shot to stand in solidarity with our fellow users and moderators who rely extensively on something that is being taken away due to greed. Oh, and shoutout to whoever this person was on the Twitch chat.

Please, let me know your thoughts and ideas.

• Cheers, Charles.