Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

Many communities on Reddit have used the NSFW (Not Safe For Work) designation in some form to protest Reddit’s new API pricing, which forced apps like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit to shut down, as well as a recent pattern of behavior toward its unpaid volunteer moderators that they find “threatening.” Subreddits, including r/PICS and r/military, had made the NSFW switch, pointing to language from Reddit websites to justify the change.

The moderators of the r/military community said they switched their label to NSFW because “military content has a chance to be violent content” and argued that “this subreddit should have been NSFW already, but we’d never thought to change it until recently,” according to a public post on Thursday.

However, Reddit has sent messages to the mods of those subreddits saying they must “immediately correct” their NSFW labeling, claiming each community “has not historically been considered NSFW nor would they under our current policies.” If the designation isn’t corrected, any moderators involved in that decision will be removed. Those mods may be “subject to additional actions,” such as losing the ability to join future moderator teams.

Going NSFW puts up an age gate and means that the subreddit is not eligible for advertising, creating friction for users, and potentially affecting Reddit’s ability to monetize the channel.

As of Thursday evening, r/PICS had dropped the NSFW designation, along with r/military.

In an email to The Verge, a moderator for the military subreddit said that the mods decided to revert the NSFW designation because the community is a helpful resource for veterans experiencing mental health crises. The mod said that if Reddit removed the team, it could put the community at risk.

Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. For a previous story, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said that “moderators incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct.”

Here is the message from Reddit, as shared by the r/PICS moderators:

This is a final warning for inaccurately labeling your community NSFW which is a violation of the Mod Code of Conduct rule 2. Your subreddit has not historically been considered NSFW nor would they under our current policies.

Please immediately correct the NSFW labeling on your subreddit. Failure to do so will result in action being taken on your moderator team by the end of this week. This means moderators involved in this activity will be removed from this mod team. Moderators may also be subject to additional actions, e.g., losing the ability to join mod teams in the future.

Lastly, if you suddenly begin to post, or approve content that features sexually explicit content to your community in order to justify the NSFW label, we will immediately remove and permanently suspend moderators who have participated in this action.

Rule 2 in the Moderator Code of Conduct says that moderators should “set appropriate and reasonable expectations.” Last month, Reddit admin account ModCodeofConduct said that it’s “not acceptable” to switch from safe for work to NSFW in protest, and a few communities changed back after feeling the pressure from Reddit.

In the case of r/PICS, it switched to focusing entirely on posts about comedian John Oliver after a community vote, and on Monday, the moderators switched it to NSFW because they felt that content in the subreddit was in violation of a Reddit wiki page titled “Reddit Content Policy.” That page defines NSFW as the following: “Content that contains nudity, pornography, or profanity, which a reasonable viewer may not want to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as in a workplace should be tagged as NSFW.”

However, in screenshots of messages between r/PICS and Reddit seen by The Verge, Reddit said that the wiki page is outdated (the last edit was made four years ago) and pointed to a different page, also titled Reddit Content Policy, which doesn’t define rules for NSFW. Rule 6 is perhaps the closest: “Ensure people have predictable experiences on Reddit by properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually-explicit, or offensive.”

On r/PICS, the rules explicitly say that “no explicit pornography or gore” is allowed, and from what I’ve seen, posts in the community hold to that rule. On Wednesday, r/PICS also argued that “the visible marking of r/PICS as NSFW is vital to establishing reasonable expectations.”

The moderators of r/cyberpunkgame made a post on Wednesday about a message from Reddit regarding the community’s NSFW designation, so I asked if they had received this new message as well. “We haven’t received that message, but we stand in support with the communities who did,” the moderators wrote in a Reddit DM to me. “This is a worrying development, and something that hits close to home for Cyberpunk fans. Reddit’s actions are on par with the most dystopian of companies seen in Night City.”