John Oliver is no longer the main focus of three major Reddit communities

Three of Reddit’s biggest communities are no longer solely focused on John Oliver as a form of protest against Reddit. These subreddits made the switch in June to push back on Reddit’s API pricing, which resulted in the shutdown of some popular third-party apps. However, they are now operating similarly to how they did prior to the protests.

One of these subreddits, r/aww (with over 34 million subscribers), recently posted an explanation for the change. The r/aww community had initially voted for the John Oliver rule, but it was not intended to be permanent, as stated by a moderator in a post published earlier this week. The passion for the protest has diminished over the past month, and people have shifted their attention to other matters.

According to the mod, the change resulted in reduced subreddit traffic. Once the subreddit reopened, overall traffic fell to half or a third of normal levels. However, the number of subscribers paradoxically increased more than the number of people unsubscribing. The mod acknowledges that this change likely did not have a significant impact on sitewide traffic since other subreddits filled the content gaps that most users consume.

r/videos (with over 26 million subscribers) had already eliminated the John Oliver rule in June and replaced it with a new rule requiring profanity in post titles after a community vote. However, earlier this month, the r/videos moderators decided to revert to the original rules. A mod explained the decision in a post, reminding users of the initial reasons behind the protest and stating that Reddit still has unresolved issues to address.