The news: Reddit is changing its community moderator policies to prevent a repeat of last year’s near-sitewide blackout protest. Under the new rules, moderators must submit requests before taking public communities private or labeling them as “not safe for work,” effectively giving Reddit the final say over major changes to availability.

• Communities with under 5,000 members or less than 30 days old will be able to change their status automatically.
• The move follows summer 2023 unrest, when over 1,000 popular Reddit communities went private or turned on NSFW labels to protest API and accessibility changes, leaving many of the platform’s most-visited communities inaccessible for days.