The Reddit protest continues as one of the largest private communities on the platform, r/malefashionadvice, now urges its users to seek alternative gathering spaces. With over 5 million subscribers, r/malefashionadvice was a valuable resource for fashion tips and discussions. However, users visiting the community will now find a message suggesting they visit the community’s Discord and Substack pages instead.
The Discord platform allows community members to engage in chat discussions and share their fashion insights and inspirations. On the other hand, the Substack page hosts various helpful guides. According to one of the moderators, the sentiment among the community is that the move to Discord has been beneficial as self-moderation has improved due to the high ratio of existing regulars to new members.
It is important to note that the Substack page is not meant to be a subscription-based service; rather, it serves as a platform to transfer the subreddit’s guides while maintaining their formatting. The most popular guide, “Building a Basic Wardrobe,” has gained more than 2,000 views, mainly coming from the Discord community.
However, both the Discord and Substack platforms are much smaller than r/malefashionadvice’s massive subscriber base. The Discord has over 2,000 users, while the Substack has nearly 560 subscribers.
The ongoing tension between Reddit and its largest communities arose due to new API pricing, which led to the closure of some prominent third-party apps. At the height of the protest in mid-June, more than 8,000 communities were set to private. Since then, many have reopened, with some doing so after receiving warnings from Reddit administrators.
Nevertheless, Reddit doesn’t seem pleased with r/malefashionadvice’s decision to remain private. Moderators of the subreddit received a direct message from a Reddit admin, informing them that they would be replaced if they didn’t reopen the community. In response, one of the moderators, Zach, stated that the team had been actively monitoring the moderation queue and addressing content. He also highlighted that the community had only been closed for 13 days.
In June, after reopening briefly, r/malefashionadvice limited posts to discussions about 1700s men’s fashion, upon the community’s request. However, the moderators promptly made the decision to switch the community back to private. Another moderator, known as Walker, explained that after realizing no significant action would be taken by the administrators, they saw a prolonged private state as a more effective way to make an impact.
Despite the message from the Reddit admin, the moderation team of r/malefashionadvice plans to stay until they are officially removed. However, Zach believes that if new moderators are installed and the community reopens, many users won’t return due to the ongoing issues with bots and other malicious activity.
Meanwhile, other communities are undertaking their own protesting actions. The subreddit r/AccidentalRenaissance, which focuses on images resembling Renaissance paintings, has gone private after the resignation of its moderators. They encourage users to join alternative communities on Reddit alternatives such as Kbin and Lemmy. Another community, r/PICS, which only allows posts about comedian John Oliver, is inviting Oliver himself to join the moderation team.
As of now, more than 2,000 subreddits remain private in protest, according to the Reddark tracker. Reddit has yet to comment on the ongoing situation.
