A Systems Thinking Approach to Understanding Reddit’s Current “API War” with its Moderators

I’m currently refreshing one of my courses on Systems Thinking. As I was drawing one of the new slide graphics - “Accidental Adversaries Archetype” – I suddenly realised it could provide a significant insight into the current war going on between Reddit and its moderators.

I should provide some context for all of this. Regarding Reddit – the most successful website in terms of building a huge numbers of highly-active communities. Obviously I restrict my browsing to /r/MachineLearning/, /r/philosophy/ and /r/oxforduni/ and have never once visited /r/funnycats/. Honestly.

But my viewing pleasure has been disrupted recently due to the on-going war between Reddit and its moderators. The moderators create, manage, promote and police each of the thousands of ‘sub-reddits’ .. individual communities of interest.

Many of the ‘sub-reddits’ have been effectively switched off by their moderators. And this has happened because Reddit announced a huge increase in the price for its ‘Application Programming Interfaces’ (APIs). Those APIs are used by 3rd party software application vendors to run software tools used by many moderators. API usage has been priced at a level that is prohibitively expensive for most tool providers – and they in turn are promptly disconnecting from Reddit. Consequently many moderators who rely on those tools to police huge volumes of user-traffic are finding that they are no longer able to do so. And with a significant level of rancour sub-reddits have been ‘going dark’ .. effectively being switched off in protest at the changes.

Reddit founders, owners and shareholders are being accused of being aloof and disruptive. Moderators are responding by closing down large tracts of the website.

But how does all of this happen? Who does it benefit? What is the way out of the problem? Maybe Systems Thinking can provide some insights …

One hugely powerful tool in the armoury for System Thinking practitioners is way of understanding and naming re-occurring patterns in human systems. These patterns are called ‘Archetypes’ and they are used by Systems Thinkers to help recognise and ‘decode’ commonly occurring situations. Archetypes include: ‘Fixes that Backfire’, ‘Limits to growth’ and ‘Shifting the burden’.

Of particular relevance here is an Archetype called “Accidental Adversaries’ and it has been eloquently described by Jennifer Kemeny in the classic book “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook”. In essence the Accidental Adversary Archetype describes a situation in which

“.. groups of people who ought to be in partnership with each other, and who want to be in partnership with each other (or at least state that they do), end up bitterly opposed”

This certainly sounds familiar. After all, the Reddit organisation certainly benefits hugely from its army of unpaid moderators. And presumably those moderators give up their time and energy because they derive some benefit from the platform – interest, engagement, activism, profile and so on. It is hard to see that the moderators would have given so much time and energy to maintaining Reddit’s content over the year without the platform providing significant value in one way or another.

So what could explain the current level of animosity? The rancour and vitriol expressed on Reddit itself has been quite extraordinary. A question-and-answer session by a senior leader from Reddit was widely derided on the site. I don’t know anything about the personalities involved but it is hard for me to believe that this has not been a very stressful time for the Reddit leadership team. And for the Moderators. One would have to be almost pathologically robust for it not to be.

The general pattern for the ’Accidental Adversaries Archetype’ is shown in the graphic at the head of this posting. In the graphic below I have filled in the generic diagram with specific observations from the Reddit API war. I would encourage you to review it and add your own observations and insights.

A key feature of the ’Accidental Adversaries Archetype’ is that the participants start to build highly-negative mental models of the other group. They become ‘enemies’ rather than ‘collaborators’. Each side imagines the other as evil, malicious, Machiavellian trouble-makers intent on making life difficult for them. They tend to forget their original purpose in collaboration. They tend to focus on the bad and lose sight of the common good.

Simply put, both sides put their efforts into undermining the other – and both sides feel justified because of the visible ‘bad behaviours’ and perceived ill-intent of the other.

But what of that common good? Given the extraordinarily large number of very smart people who are part of the Reddit eco-system can it really be the case that there is no solution that is not really good for both sides? Are there really even ‘sides’ at all? I’m not convinced there really are.

In the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook Kemeny proposes some strategies which are difficult to argue with. Firstly, it is important to understand the ‘Systems’ nature of the problem. The other actors are not acting vindictively ‘against’ you. Rather, they are acting rationally within their frame of reference. Secondly, it inevitably means dialogue that looks for the common value. Thirdly it is for both sides to work out how they can help, rather than hinder the other team with the problems they are facing.

Is there not an opportunity to facilitate the two sides coming together? An online conference surely cannot be beyond the technical and organisational skills within such a large community.

I’m hoping that somebody starts to look at the current situation more systemically and starts to do the right thing. I for one am missing my daily fix of /r/funnyCats /r/machineLearning.