As many have noticed, r/OldHagFashion has been participating in the sitewide protest against planned changes to Reddit’s API system. The API system is essential for enabling 3rd party developers to create Reddit accessory apps. Reddit’s current plans will make it prohibitively expensive for many large-scale 3rd party apps to continue functioning.

We believe participation in this protest is important for three reasons:

1. Reddit has consistently neglected the needs of moderators to effectively run our communities.
2. Reddit has consistently neglected the needs of disabled internet users to participate on this forum.
3. 3rd party developers have consistently stepped up for both groups and they deserve our solidarity.

Speaking from a moderator perspective, we take a proactive approach because we think it’s the best way to create a functional, supportive, inclusive, and safe community. It’s a job that we’ve been happy to do as it’s truly been a pleasure to see this community grow and our users develop their sense style and self confidence. We value being able to be present, communicative, and responsive when needed to protect our community and users. 3rd party apps are essential for that.

Some examples of how we use these apps in our community: We use a bot to inform us when OHF is mentioned elsewhere on Reddit. This has enabled us to protect OHF from brigading and to keep our subreddit off the radar of hate communities. We use a moderator toolbox to view questionable users’ reddit history, enabling us to identify lecherous, fetish, anti-trans, and spam accounts easily. We use a moderator toolbox to track suspected bot accounts to determine if a ban is necessary. We use a bot to automatically identify and remove reposts and stereotyped posts, which keeps OHF unique. We use 3rd party apps for moderation that is more streamlined and robust while on mobile.

Such functionalities are inefficient or non-existent on official reddit apps. Without 3rd party apps, maintaining even a relatively small community like ours as a safe haven would be too time-consuming and difficult. 3rd party apps streamline workflow and enable responsivity to the needs of our community as they arise.

Not all 3rd party tools will be directly affected by the API changes. But all Reddit developers, moderators, and users will be affected indirectly. This move is one in a long trend by Reddit of disregarding the roles that volunteer moderators and developers play in creating vibrant communities. Reddit as it exists is only possible because of the unpaid work mods do, aided by a whole host of 3rd party developers that have heard our needs and stepped up to fill them.

For these reasons, we are going to continue OHF’s participation in the protest. Our current plan is to continue the black out throughout the rest of this week. We will reopen the sub and develop a long term plan Sunday. You can request to be added to the sub as an approved user [edit to add: by commenting here] and we will allow posters to submit to the private subreddit.

Update: thank you all so much for the support and kind words. We have chosen to only participate through a second 48 56 hour period because we know this community means a lot to people. Our plan is, while the sub is private, to host a second discussion on how we can participate in the long term without taking the community fully off line. We'll leave the sub up for a few more hours and plan to take it dark from 12:00pm EST Friday til 8:00pm EST Sunday.