July 6, 2023
Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) moderators are hanging up their boots and will no longer organise the popular Q&As as part of a protest against Reddit’s API policy changes.
The moderators of r/IAmA have indicated that they would no longer handle many of the tasks that make AMAs unique, such as recruiting celebrities and high-profile personalities to conduct AMAs, liaising with their PR teams, and hosting a website for scheduling and marketing AMAs.
The moderators say that the new API pricing will make it too difficult and expensive to do these things, and that they no longer have confidence in Reddit’s commitment to AMAs. They also say that the decision to start charging for API access was made without any apparent care for how it would affect the community and the moderators who help tend the subreddits that constitute the site.
The moderators of the r/IAmA subreddit initially did not participate in the blackout to protest API charges and other concerns since they did not feel it would have any effect. They said that demonstrations would not convince Reddit management. Instead, the moderators chose to perform the absolute minimum to keep the subreddit running, primarily dealing with spam and enforcing rules. This basically ended Reddit’s conventional AMAs.
The sources for this piece include an article in ArsTechnica.
