Three Reddit moderators have just told me that Reddit is sending a message to closed communities asking if they plan to reopen. Here’s the full message, taken from screenshots I’ve seen: The 48-hour timing is notable; Reddit mods had asked the company for a response to an open letter by June 29th (which would be 48 hours from now), and that means that this deadline would be up just a day before many popular Reddit apps are set to shut down on June 30th.
Maybe some malicious compliance is needed? If the moderators keep active in their private communities, it would meet the requirements of code of conduct.
Privating subs = mods get replaced. Reddit Inc. is already doing this.
Instead I think that a better strategy is to restrict further and further the scope of the subreddit, while linking and feeding an alternative elsewhere. For example, if the subreddit is about cooking:
While perhaps retro-actively removing posts breaking the new rules.
Still a form of malicious compliance, but I think that it’s more effective to divert Reddit traffic to another community also controlled by the same mod team. And it should be really hard for Reddit Inc. to say “no, you need to allow baking posts here!”, as it’s too sub-specific and Reddit Inc. is completely out of touch with the community.