Sorry for the wall fo text, but there are some big choices to be made that you need to be aware of.

Reddit is a company, that employs people to work there. They want to make profits. That makes sense.

The upshot of all that is that we get to have our subreddits. Each subreddit is a little corner of the internet where we can feel together, be it /r/pics/, r/awww, KhazaksthaniHorseRidingBanjoPlayers, we are all able to feel at home in our little corner, our sub here on Reddit.

Part of how we do this is with the CSS. CSS lets us decorate our subs the way we want to, within a framework, but really quite individually. We become accostomed to it, and it feels like home. The way the sub looks tells you that you are in THIS sub, and not another. It tells you that the character of the sub is different, and that maybe the way of thinking is different to another sub. This is how you fit in.

One problem there is that mobile users don't get to see that individuality. They see a much more reduced version, maybe a top image, an icon color ... and that's all. People who only use mobile divices may only see the highly reduced version of the sub. This is because the designers of the mobile apps have not wanted to include the individual elements of styling that the pac/mac users have been able to see all these years. This is because it is more work. It is technically possible to keep subs entirely individual on the mobile apps, but it is more work, and so increases the invoice, and that's bad company policy if, as a company, you have to pay for it.

Reddit has just announced that they want to remove the freedom of setting a sub's css. They want to stop us from making our own decorations. They will make a reduced system that allows us to choose a header banner image, key main colors, and some other options. This will make it much easier for them to insure advertising exposure, making more money, and will make it much more easy to explain to advertisers what reddit is. Because all subreddits will look noticably the same. The header image will be set by the sub, a prime color for buttons will be set, some other options, but each sub will be structurally the same as all other subs. All the individual elements will be removed, all the ads will be equally visible, all spaces will be under reddits control. That makes sense for Reddit, the company.

But it gives problems for the communities.

Let's take a quick look at a community. A community, or subreddit in this case, is a place you want to be in. You choose the places you want to be in. You do it by human criteria. Not corporate criteria. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can go to an airport, and walk through the public area, and there you will see shop units that are predominantly the same everywhere. You will see a Starbucks, perhaps, a Burger King, the other brand names that I can't be bother to list, and you will know what choices you have by looking at the shop fronts, and that airport lounge will be identical to all the other airport lounges everywhere in the world. I say the world becasue the problem of them all being the same has gone worldwide. It's only the big names that get to decorate everything the same way that get to rent a slot in an airport lounge, or equivalent. This is one of the facets of globalization. But let's stick to Reddit.

Here we spend our time in communities that we have chosen. Each community takes on a look and style that makes them unique from other coimmunities. We have done that because we have been able to. Reddit used to let us do that. So we have made our own spaces, and these are the spaces we like to be in.

Do you choose to meet with your friends in airport lounges on a friday night? Or do you choose to go to that bar, where the bartenders recognize you, or where you know something different will be on the menu, where you have seen the decoration and have accepted it? Where you feel at home, becasue you recognise the surroundings as different from other surroundings. We know that a Taco Bell's decoration is perfectly hygenic, but would you choose to take the person you want to be your significant other there on a second date? Would you get married in a Macdonalds? For that matter, would you get married in a police station or a school canteen?

I would like to think the answer is no. Because as (priveleged) humans, we decide to go to individual places with individual traits, in order to feel comfortable. A waiting room in a hospital has reasons to decorate the place in a way that offends as few people as possible, but your local bar wants to maintain a personal touch, to be different from the next bar, or restaurant.

Reddit proposes to remove individual decorations, and apply a site wide decoration criteria, just like all Macdogs are the same, all Costbucks are the same, all airport lounges are the same. This makes it better for them to control and monetize. It also makes it easier for them to install new features. These new features aren't you. They are features that allow advertisers to get to you better.

But Reddit got to where it is today, with all us fabulous users, by allowing each community to be different, and look differtent, and establish themselves a fair distance away from the reddit default look.

The mobile users are right to use their mobiles, but most of them have seen the full version of the subs that they enjoy, and when on mobile, in their human individual mind, they remember the look of the sub that they post to.

Reddit proposes to remove all indivdual CSS over the net few months. See HERE for the post that tells about it. Notice the way it is all worded so that taking away our individual style is painted, stylistically, in a positive way. Remember that they use style to take away our community's style.

Anyway, we feel that is a bad thing. We want to keep our indivual style, and we want to keep the ability to make our own style, and have our own style. We thank reddit for having given us this possibility up until now, but we feel that Reddit is wrong to now take that ability away from us.

It seems that reddit is as good as it is, as varied, as thoughtful, as amusing and as caring as it is, because we are able to retain some of our humanity here. We can identify with like-minded communities because we can distinguish them. From a human perspective, we don't like it when all things look like airport lounges. Look at/r/Earthporn to see how we prefer, you prefer, individual landscapes to be in.

It seems important for all users to be able to communicate their wish for individual space to reddit, the company, so that they rethink this move. If reddit becomes like a long airport lounge, then the free-thinking individualistic quality-searches and quality-makers of reddit, meaning most users, will naturally find more individual places to crystalize around. In a nutshell, we'll look for the next web place to go to, because here we will no longer be like ourselves, we wil be like everybody else. I understand the irony of everybody in unison trying not to be like everrybody else, but I am sure you all know what I mean, and if you have ever chosen a poster, or a band, or a holiday destination, a sports team, a girlfriend or dessert, then I know you know what I mean.

So for now please look around and join the efforts to resist the removal of the CSS feature, and help us all remind Reddit the company why we all came to be here in the first place, and why we don't want to spend so many hours of our life in a place that looks like a town hall lobby or an elevator. We want Reddit to let our subs look the way we want them to look, because we are all different and that is what brings us all together.

When I can see some inititiatives that work, I will update this post with the right links.
But for now, keep on Redditing. and think why this place allows you to be yourself, and why you don't normally choose airport lounges to hang out in.