That's more a prudish American culture thing than a reddit-specific thing. We went to see the latest Guardians movie over the weekend, in which they foleyed out the line "classy hoes" from No Sleep Till Brooklyn, and showed all sorts of violence, gory deaths, and lots of pretty fucking serious child abuse. And finally dropped the first f-bomb in any MCU movie, in the line "open the fucking door," which was said not in anger, but in exasperation.

America loves its violence, but don't you dare make any reference to anything close to sexuality.

huh, I remember they actually banned a sub (WatchPeopleDie, IIRC) about footage where people actually dying, like the sub is full of videos of people's last moment, not like the PeopleFuckingDying which is a funneh sub, or WatchPeopleDieInside which is another funneh sub. Maybe it's too morbid.

Its that good old American puritanical spirit at work

Well, whether Reddit likes it or not, mods were a department of specialists working on some unique aspects of their business.

That whole department got told to get bent, in essence fired, but they don't even have contracts in place preventing "disgruntled employee" stuff.

This is what happens.

If Reddit had just kept their mouth shut, 2 days after the blackout most subs would be back online and the others would eventually follow.
But no Spez had to open his mouth and take actions, forcing subs to open again, telling lies about the app creators.
Basically turning all of Reddit against him.

I think its going to end up a successful move for them.

They built a platform. The users built the site over the years with minimal interaction from reddit.

They now have a platform, millions of users, and full control of what they want on that platform.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now, they want the traffic but don't want the problems that come with mostly community driven content.
All the profile redesigns, ability to "follow" users, profile pics, awards, all that has been an indication of the direction over the last few years. The last few steps was to kick out the problem users and be left with those who don't really give a shit and just want to see memes on their phone while they take a shit. The people who hear about reddit and just grab the official app from the store. The people who don't care about APIs and protests and modding or accessibility tools. Just eyeballs to look at their ads.

Those people will stay. It doesn't matter if 25% of the community leaves, because the natural growth in the next few months from the eyeballs will claw it back over time.

Once they have an obedient user base who are strictly bound to what reddit want them to see, think TikTok or facebook users, that's when they will see off. And it will pay off handsomely.

It's an intentional tanking of the company :)

r/mildlyinteresting did not encourage it, and Reddit lied about that, and their removal and suspension was revoked by a different admin than the one who removed and suspended them. Here is the post, "The Reddit Admins are lying - r/MildlyInteresting did NOT allow or encourage users to post ANY sexually explicit content, see draft of now-deleted announcement":

"Wait, volunteers? Did they just said they don't have to pay 99% of their workforce? Sign me up!" -- People who own property for a living

I think its an early test version of a script to automate the process of demodding subs that turned on the NSFW tag.
It was a small scope test to see what could happen.

Won't SOMEBODY PLEASE think of the children!!!

I'm so fucking sick of people using 'protecting vulnerable people' as a front for them being shitty. It's so obvious that they don't actually give a shit about them.

lol, I witnessed that historical moment, essentially r/worldnews become a wild west where any post is acceptable, and it's all 50/50 NSFW, you either get a naked lady or a butthole, while r/anime_titties are the proper sub for world news..