Reddit banned more than 90 subreddits yesterday, later restoring them and blaming it on a bug, but some moderators are worried about what the move might signal for the future.
The banned subreddits were all ones allowing NSFW content, but while that is commonly thought of as adult entertainment, it also includes communities as diverse as r/cubancigars and r/transgender_surgeries …
All the banned subreddits had moderators but were banned for being unmoderated. Engadget said it counted more than 90 subreddits newly listed in r/BannedSubs.
Reddit said it was a mistake, caused by over-enthusiastic automated systems designed to remove unmoderated NSFW communities.
Thanks to everyone for flagging the issue regarding subreddits being banned ‘due to being unmoderated’. There was a bug with one of our tools that caused some subreddits to be banned incorrectly. We are actively working on a fix and many of your communities are already back up and running.
But some are questioning this, and wondering what it might say about Reddit’s plans for NSFW subreddits.
So it was reverted? Okay, fine.
1: where’s the RCE or incident report, and will there be a public version?
2: what functionality was being implemented that caused this bug?
3: this appears to have only affected subs flagged as NSFW. Is that the case, or were there more widespread effects that we were unaware of?
4: if a substantial change like this is to be pushed to production, why wasn’t it announced?
5: was the functionality being implemented in any way designed to further limit or restrict access to subreddits flagged as NSFW? If so, why?
Others noted it’s not the first time the exact same thing has happened, with talk of contingency plans
“The explanation given to us in r/modsupport is lacking in my opinion, and I was a bit furious and disappointed that there was no communication to us,” a moderator for r/rule34 told Engadget. “So far, we have no prepared contingency in case this happens another time, but we are currently finding a way to build one, with help of other mods in and outside this subreddit.”
But some Redditors said that whatever went wrong, it’s perfectly understandable for the company to auto-ban unmoderated and abandoned subreddits as those are commonly taken over by spammers, scammers, and those posting CSAM.
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