Following a controversial update to its content policy, Reddit announced Thursday that all posts containing the letters A, E, F, I, M, N, O, S, and T (i.e. MANIFESTO) will be automatically removed by the platform's moderation system - unless users subscribe to the new "Vowel Pass+" service at $49.99 monthly.
"W mbl 2 nhnc cmmncn," wrote Reddit board member Robert Patel in an official statement, which continued for six increasingly incomprehensible paragraphs as he attempted to avoid banned letters. "Yr ppl r r ppl, xcp whn bg vwl cm."
The policy has forced major communities to rebrand overnight. r/AmITheAsshole has become "r/WWJK?" (Who Wrong? Judge Kween), while r/relationship_advice transformed into "r/luv_prblm." Within hours, users discovered that posting in Wingdings font bypassed the filter, prompting Reddit to restrict all posts to Comic Sans.
The changes have particularly impacted Reddit's hiring process. Job candidates must now complete their entire interviews using only permitted letters, leading to a peculiar exchange during a recent engineering interview: "Hw wld y fix brwkn API?" "BZZZK PWR KWYK."
"We believe this policy creates a more inclusive environment," said Reddit's Head of Trust and Safety Michael Reeves, communicating through an elaborate series of permitted letters and hand gestures. The statement was immediately removed for containing banned characters.
Users who receive three letter violations must now appeal their bans using only emojis and the remaining legal alphabet. One successful appeal reportedly consisted of "🤖👉📱❌😭" followed by "BWKY PLZ."
At press time, Reddit's most active community had become r/permitted_letters_trade, where users exchange creative ways to express common phrases using only BCGJKPQUWXYZ and medieval runes.
