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British comedian John Oliver has been trending on the social media platform Reddit for a hilarious reason. Earlier last week, millions of Reddit users faced a blackout across the platform by volunteer moderators after the site's CEO announced plans to launch a new policy that prices out third-party apps.
Reddit executives said in April 2023 that beginning June 19, 2023, they will charge developers for usage of its Application Programming Interface (API), which would increase the charges for a third-party app, Apollo, to over $20 million annually.
Now two of the platform's biggest subreddits, r/gifs, and r/pics, have started publishing only images of the 46-year-old personality. However, they have not exactly revealed the reason why they choose him.
On June 16, Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, spoke to NBC News and said that the current system, where the moderators can only be removed by Reddit or other higher-ranking mods, "isn't democratic."
"If you're a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders. And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic."
John Oliver started trending on Reddit after winning a poll
Following Steve Huffman's comments, a moderator for r/Pics posted a poll to decide if the subreddit would continue functioning normally or only allow pictures of John Oliver that are deemed to be "sexy." Users voted for John Oliver's pictures to be posted, garnering 37,331 votes. The post read:
"We – the so-called 'landed gentry' – appreciate that Reddit is made great by its users. Uncompensated contributors populate the platform's many communities with their content, just as volunteer moderators keep spam and bigotry at bay. Since neither we nor Reddit would be here without you, it was only fair to let you determine what r/Pics should include... and you overwhelmingly chose to feature only images of John Oliver looking sexy."
A moderator for r/gifs also shared a note, stating the decision to conduct a poll was prompted by the statements made by Huffman who insinuated that "the desires of the platform's everyday users were being eclipsed by those of moderators."
Now, both the major subreddits have been flooded with pictures and GIFS of Oliver from his show, Last Week Tonight.
The constant sharing of pictures and GIFs have also garnered the attention of John Oliver himself as he shared a response on his Twitter handle. On June 18, the 46-year-old personality tweeted a Twitter thread that had different pictures of him posing hilariously and stills from his television shows.
As of this writing, there have been no updates on the moderators' protest and neither has the Reddit CEO commented on the hilarious trend of only sharing John Oliver's pictures.
