The ongoing battle between Reddit management and community moderators continues apace over the issue of whether the company should start charging for access to its API. These charges would kill many of the tools moderators use. While many communities have blocked access by going 'private', my favourite protest was r/pics, which now posts only 'sexy John Oliver' pictures. You can find the back-and-forth on the r/ModCoord subreddit, which reports how the company is planning to replace moderators and force the communities (called 'subreddits') to open again. "The important takeaway here," write the moderators of r/antiwork, "is Reddit does not care about this community and Reddit does not care about you." Ultimately this will be true of any for-profit company and its users, something educators should very much take into account when making technology or service provision decisions. But the members care. As EFF writes, "It's the latest example of a social media site making a critical mistake: users aren't there for the services, they're there for the community. Building barriers to access is a war of attrition."
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