Malicious Compliance

"Now we really, really don't want to mark r/pics as being NSFW," reads the post. "Doing so would mean that we were no longer discoverable, that we would no longer show up in Reddit's main feeds, and that millions of people would be deprived of John Oliver's presence on their screens. It would also have the effect of keeping Reddit from showing advertisements alongside our posts, which we feel would be unfair."

The wording of this post is key, as Reddit has reportedly stepped in previously to remove mods for marking their communities NSFW as a form of protest. "r/pics will not be made NSFW as a form of protest," reads the post in r/pics. "Any such change will be enacted in order to comply with Reddit's policies. If Reddit were to remove moderators from r/pics, that action would go against their own publicly affirmed guidelines."

I have to say, this is actually hilarious. Sure, the admins will step in and switch them with someone else. But the current mods are doing this in the most hypocritically innocent way possible. Acting stupid and being a nuisance is the best way to get under someone’s skin.