Several Filipino-related communities on online forum Reddit went private in protest against its new policy.
This move was also in solidarity with thousands of other communities on Reddit. These subreddits became temporarily inaccessible on the same day.
The subreddit r/Philippines, which has so far one million members on the forum, informed the public about going private on its Twitter account on June 6.
This tweet was posted again on Monday, June 12. The subreddit will go back online on June 14.
In an archived post, the moderators of r/Philippines said that this decision was their participation in the site-wide protests against the upcoming paywall for using Reddit’s application programming interface (API).
This update will be imposed on July 1.
“r/Philippines is supportive of all the affected developers, moderators, and users of the upcoming API changes. With that said, we will be participating in the site-wide protests from June 12th to 14th by making the subreddit private,” the moderators said.
“We apologize for any inconveniences that may affect our users, but it is a small price to pay for the greater good of all. As part of the Reddit community, we hope that this move will make Reddit reconsider its course and have a more reasonable approach with its long-standing developers, moderators, and users that helped shape their company. Thank you for understanding,” they added.
Turning private means that users, including members themselves, are locked out from accessing the platform.
I’m pleasantly surprised it actually got some form of media coverage here.