Here’s why:

Updated Thursday 22 June to show latest events

You may have seen that some subreddits have reopened but are still protesting, albeit in different ways as a form of malicious compliance.

Many of the biggest subreddit moderators came up with a new plan: rather than staying “dark”, they would actively enforce their subreddit’s rules - but they would introduce new, very strict, rules, and put them to a vote so they could not be accused of forcing their users to support a protest against their will.

• Some of the subs that reopened held votes resulting in the communities now being dedicated to the British-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host John Oliver.

• Some subreddits are limiting their content. For instance, r/ExplainAFilmPlotBadly now only allow one movie or show each week to be used for clues, and so this week every post is about Home Alone 1.

• Many subreddits have taken a more drastic stance and have declared themselves NSFW (Not Safe For Work). The NSFW filter is intended to protect people from sensitive content and comes with a host of restrictions, such as requiring users to be logged in and confirm that they are over 18. It also means that Reddit does not receive money from showing those pages, since it does not place advertising on those subs.

• With some of these subs it was going to be business as usual with their normal activity but behind a NSFW filter. For instance, r/Garmin users now post “nudes” that actually show the company’s smartwatches without their usual case on. However, because moderators incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both Reddit’s Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct, many subs decided to allow extreme and obscene content.

Reddit is starting to take action. Here’s an account of one subreddit’s experience of this.

The New York Times have an article explaining what changes Reddit are making that these mods are protesting against.

The best places to keep up to date with events are still:

• https://www.redditinc.com/blog/apifacts
• r/ModCoord
• r/Save3rdPartyApps

……

Edited Thursday 15 June to add new information

Now the 48 hour subreddit blackout has ended, it’s almost impossible to tell right now which ones will reopen. Some already did, some may be reopening today, but some have decided to extend the duration of their blackout indefinitely until certain actions have been taken, and others are intending to stay permanently closed regardless.

There’s a list of things the protesters want Reddit to address here.

r/ModCoord are now attempting to make a list of subreddits who are prepared to remain private or otherwise inaccessible indefinitely.

The Reddark website at https://reddark.untone.uk will tell you what subreddits are private right now.

…

The original post remains below:

…

Many subreddits are planning to “go dark” from today. (Monday, 12th June).

This blackout will affect YOU and every other Redditor.

• You will start to see gaps in your feed and in your profiles and notifications. You won’t be able to see any of your posts and comments in those subs anymore, neither will any posts from them show up on any Reddit feeds.

• Once the mods have set a sub as private, on trying to access it you will be greeted by a page saying The moderators of this subreddit have set this community as private. Only approved members can view and take part in its discussions

  

  .

• Everyone except the mods of that sub and Reddit Admin trying to enter will get that message. Regular or occasional contributors, current approved members, normal members, flaired members, lurkers: everyone except the mods of that sub and Reddit Admin are barred from it until they change it back.

• You can ask for re-approval, but don’t expect a response. Even if the mods manually approve everyone once more, this is a huge amount of work and for a two day blackout it’s unlikely to happen. In any event, the blackout is supposed to hurt Reddit’s advertising revenue by not having any users on the site, so re-approving everyone would be counterproductive. It’s safe to assume that participating subs will be “dead” to you for the duration of their protest.

• Private subreddits aren’t searchable on Google (or third-party apps) so any activity you’ve had on them is, for all intents and purposes, invisible while you’re no longer a member.

• Your activity will reappear on your profile should a subreddit that went private returns to public view, but for those subs that intend on remaining closed, that’s the end of the line, I’m afraid.

• Some subs are declaring they’re only going into permanent read only mode. For instance, the main hub of the blackout r/ModCoord have announced that they will NOT be going private, but are enabling Restricted Mode for the protest. That link is the best place to read a complete summary of why, how and where this blackout is happening.

• You can still enter, read and vote on Restricted Subreddits but you won’t be able to post or comment, so for them you’ll be able to see all participation (including yours in your profile) but not respond to it.

• Some subreddits have decided to stay closed for longer than the 48 hour period. Some have even declared their intention to close permanently. These subreddits will, in effect, no longer exist, nor will there be any evidence that they even existed at all until their mods re-open them again.

• There’s another roundup at NewToReddit.

• The BBC have reported on it here.

• A further explanation and discussion can be found at ELI5.

• There’s another take on the matter at SubredditDrama.

• Here’s a general guide to Private Subreddits which explains the differences between private, restricted, and public subreddits.

I got forced to the newest reddit design, and it's genuinely worse in every conceivable way. It is as if I loaded it on mobile, but here I am on a 1440p resolution, with likely more than 50% wasted space across the whole screen.

Meanwhile, the actual content of reddit (which used to fill up almost the entire space) now fills up a tiny portion of the middle, surrounded by non-removable side panels which are also useless during most of your reddit usage experience. Also, the font is harder to read.

I just want to get back to the previous design, but whenever I click a notification from new.reddit , like a comment reply, I am taken to the bad UX again.

Whoever created the newest UX does not care or understand desktop users at all. It's insulting, I feel so sad if this is the direction of reddit. Might have to get used to old.reddit again (edit: links are randomly disappearing when I edit on this new design. It's also buggy like that) again and if they take that away, after also taking apps like apollo away, I think it's officially time to quit it for good.

Over and over again, we are forced to jump through hoops to maintain some level of functionality. Took me a while to get used to the previous design, but I'm just not going to bother with the newest one. It might as well be 9gag or ifunny.

edit: after editing this on the new UX, all URLS disappeared. Great job on QAing this.

EDIT 2: You can find extensions for your browser that can force new, or "old-new" reddit. This is the ONLY consistent way I could find. Personally, I think I am just going to get used back to old.reddit (with RES) and be done with this nonsense! Thanks for the help in the comments :)

edit3: I am using Redirector on Firefox btw. You can find instructions how to set it up within the comments below.

I like reddit. I spend a lot of time on reddit. I enjoy reddit. I also primarily use a browser, not an app, and the new (2024) Reddit UI is, IMO, worse in terms of design and layout. I've laid out a few examples side by side here.

1. the new list view shows literally half the number of posts even in list view, making it much slower to skim to find an interesting one. This is significant for me because I follow a lot of "askX" or "help" subs where I'm frequently skimming many post titles for one I can contribute to.
2. The new version has a much smaller and thus less legible font by default (sorry Reddit, not everyone is 20 yrs old with perfect vision). Despite this it still shows only about the same number of comments. Where's the benefit?
3. Increasing the font size using Ctrl-+ still shows the same number of comments (because the side bar hides itself) but they're crowded together vertically which makes them less legible.
4. The new comment box hides the text formatting buttons behind an extra click. Why? this saves no space, the area is otherwise blank anyway. As a "bonus" (not), autoquoting (selecting text before hitting reply quotes the text) no longer works. That was really useful, reddit!

I know the previous UI had some issues, but they were minor and could have been fixed. The new UI is not better. I don't block ads on reddit, and the number of ads visible to me seems about the same, so no "gain" there for reddit either.

Why do we need this new UI? What can it, objectively, do better?

Messages no longer auto-mark as "read" when you click on them. Even manually doing it doesn't work, only option is to "mark all as read" which is absurd when you have dozens of unread notifs you're trying to go through and keep up with what you have/haven't already read.

Comments sometimes break and show up within another comment.

Clicking on notifications no longer opens in a new tab.

Viewing all notifications/messages no longer lets you click on each notif and be brought to a new tab, it just moves you directly in the tab you already have open, why?

When I try to "revert back to old Reddit" I get sent back to some 2002 era UI where absolutely nothing makes sense. Where is the actual unbroken normal Reddit I could get into yesterday? What is this beta mess? I am not opted into any beta testing, so the only logical conclusion is that this is NOT a beta? That is even worse, because it means this new system was greenlit and a board actually thought it was in a functional state. Jesus.

So many things broken and I've only been here for 5 minutes, what is this??

It really really suck horribly. There is 0 way to revert it aside using the new reddit site and even that one, while it works, it's still so cluttered to me.

I desperately need the new UI back (not the new new UI). Why are you forcing it on us admins? It's very unintuitive. I hate that all sites are changing so much... discord mobile ui was even changed too, and so on. It feels unusable. Nobody asked for this. Please give us an option to revert it

I don’t know if this is even going to go anywhere, but I think all of the higher ups need to understand how the new UI is complete utter garbage. I’m mostly posting here because I don’t see enough people talking about it, it’s almost as if

Since I’m on a mod account, I still have it, but it’s going to go soon.

So this is my plea into the void: Either don’t get rid of it, or fix the new desktop UI.

If you really must get rid of it, fix these things: Allow collapsing of the sidebars, view of karma on the menu bar at the top, and the ability to view combined post and comment karma, as well as fix the performance issues.

Editing custom flairs as a mod is now also impossible.

EDIT: I can also no longer see the exact member count of a subreddit.

Please.

Has anyone seen this yet? I am on Mac Desktop

Reddit considers adding paywalls to subreddits… r/u/Serious?

Redditors, brace yourselves! The beloved social media platform is hinting at a potentially game-changing shift—the introduction of paywalled subreddits. In a recent earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman unveiled plans to unlock new revenue streams beyond traditional ad spending

Huffman’s revelation suggests that certain subreddits may soon offer exclusive content or private areas accessible only to those willing to pay a fee. This move positions the brand a bit closer to platforms like OnlyFans, where creators can monetize their content. However, Redditors might be understandably concerned that this could alienate the community’s free-flowing spirit.

Is this actually coming? What other subreddit can I ask about this?

I'm being Threatened to pay a tax of $100 or loose my account via external up vote botting which I have experienced before and lost 2 accs because of it and requested reviews 10+ times WITH proof but no luck.
Screenshots are here, since up votes only benefit the user it is always blamed on the user them self.any advice other than Reddit itself?

i'd at least like to know :/

Hello, I have a profile online that is adult content and clearly meant for adult connections. I was just DM’d by an individual who claimed to be 13. I indicated their contacting a person my age with my profile content was not appropriate and that they should try to establish connections with individuals in their age range and then blocked them. Is their more that can be done to protect vulnerable young people on Reddit?

It seems bonkers that old.Reddit, with its jurassic-era late 90's UI that oddly reminds me of CRTs, is still supported yet the good one has been nuked in favor of, well, this!

Is it gone for good or is there still a way to get it back, somehow?

I'm not trying to attract any old.reddit.com fanatics here, but new.reddit.com has fallen.

We're finally stuck with the new horrendous mobile-esque UI on desktop forever now. redirector plugins can't do anything when new.reddit.com has the EXACT same UI as reddit.com now.

Does anyone know how to go back to the older UI? This is genuinely so clunky and horrible, new.reddit.com was the only alternative.

I just installed bitdefender around an hour ago and my primary browser is Firefox. Whenever I try to go to a reddit post via Firefox I get a screen telling me to create an account or contact service.

The link to log in or create an account doesn't work and I don't know what might be causing it

I logged out and back in on my browser and now it's permanently stuck on their latest awful reddit.com instead of the one called "new dot reddit".

I have a auto redirector extension but it just gets stuck in an infinite loop since reddit automatically puts it back to their latest reddit

I also don't want to use old reddit since I don't like how it looks and can't find anything

My main account won't even allow me to post, add things to bio or check out any of my posts Insights.

I do get server error alot on that user but I feel like If it was anything serious I would have received an email or something, it's been several days of me being unable to do anything.

Thank you!

I just want to filter out all of everything so I dont get triggered. Can anyone help me figure out so I dont see anything with that word in the subject?

RE: Solved... Thanks to another redditor. on desktop you could use Reddit Enhancement Suite.

Search for the option "User Match Action" and scroll to Keywords -> Hide posts with certain keywords in the title.

Add the keyword you don't want to see, specify where the filter should apply and it should work.

Same can be done with "Flair".

tl;dr I posted here on my previous account (RIP) about someone threatening to lose my account, well they did it its gone forever reddit doesnt seem to give me a second look despite sending a lot of messages, all they did was apply up votes to my posts and report me for it since they can only really trace it back to me, now the same is happening im being threatened again to pay a fee or lose my account, im just trying to grow my page thats all. any help would be great

I use old.reddit.com and when I go to login now it redirects me to a new page. I can't login using the reliable old form boxes. And the first 3 or 4 times of trying to login on this "new.reddit.com/login" site it fails. After refreshing a few times it finally works.

What's even worse is now the site IGNORES my preference I have set for old.reddit.com. It redirects me to new!? Do you actually hate your users Reddit?!

75% of the time when I leave a comment or make a post, it never actually makes it to submission. If I submit a comment, it just vanishes without showing up in the feed. If I submit a post, it takes me back to the subreddits homepage and the post never made it. You have to copy and paste your comments into a notepad and keep re-submitting them until they decide to show up.

I feel like I'm taking cr[a]zy p[i]lls. (I have to say this sentence this way otherwise the website flags my textbox as su[i]cidal and won't let me hit the post button. What in the p[o]lice state is this? Why is everyone okay with this??)

Is de[a]d internet theory being proven right in real-time? (again, why do I have to talk this way?)

Sorry for yet another moan about the new UI, but Reddit is now pretty much unusable for me! Is there any way at all for me to get the "old-new" Reddit back?

I have sensory processing issues, and the new interface is sending me into sensory overload pretty much instantly. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about the new interface that is so bad, but it physically hurts to look at! Maybe the spacing? And possibly the colour pallet? All I really know is that the previous iteration of the UI was actually readable, and this one really isn't!

(P.S. the interface telling me to go post in the subs for people in actual bodily danger when I am trying to tell you why the new UI doesn't work for me is REALLY NOT HELPING!!!!)

I am on the browser version. Tried mobile and desktop versions.

I have been trying to contact Reddit since Nov. 29, when I received an email saying I needed to change the password on my main account due to suspicious activity. I was unable to do so, as I am not getting any of those emails, and now it just tells me I’ve reached the password reset limit if I try again.

• I’ve checked my spam folder
• I checked the app and it appears that my email address is still associated with my account
• I reached out to Reddit through their actual website. Twice.
• I replied to the auto responder emails that Reddit sent to me after submitting the forms (it said I could at the top)

I have no clue what is going on here or why no one from Reddit has even acknowledged me, but it’s starting to get me really annoyed. I have been building my karma, standing, etc. for 6 years without any issues and I’d rather not have to start all over again. I was also just shy of 200 days in a row, working towards that 500 mark for “Basement Dweller” achievement

I got a notice for ban evasion from a sub’s mods. They claim they got a message from admins saying I’m using that account to evade a ban from that sub on another account.

However, I’ve never been b/anned from that sub on any alt account. I don’t even use multiple accounts on that sub. Mods aren’t helping at all.

What can I do?

I’m on iOS Reddit app.

Ive been getting HTTP API call errors for the past 4 days. Tried disabling extensions, different browsers, different PCs and what not to no avail. New reddit works fine so that leads me to believe something has changed on the back end to limit old.reddit.com.

• Night mode: true
• RES Version: 5.24.6
• Browser: Chrome
• Browser Version: 126
• Cookies Enabled: true
• Reddit beta: false

Update: This seems to have helped for me. Not sure if it fixed it, but I havent seen it since. Im also not on reddit that much over the weekend. Will report if I see it again.