That he’s becoming increasingly more catty and loose with the truth by the day speaks to the protest’s effectiveness. Aside from the dropping engagement numbers, the daily deluge of negative press from major media outlets isn’t doing their valuation any favors, and as the person responsible for this decision, he’s feeling the heat more than anyone.
Also, if they weren’t having any effect, he’d simply maintain the previous party line from before the protests about how the community is free to express itself and protest in any way it sees fit.
Everyone who reads these mass media stories has got to be aware that both the quantity and quality of user interaction are going to impact the profitability and longevity of the site. Reddit already has longevity. It’s trying to position itself as profitable. Seeing the CEO continually giving a big “fuck you” to a large fraction of the userbase (a fraction, yes, but a large one, when you’re talking about quantity and quality of interaction) has got to give investors and potential investors pause.
History teacher here. I find it incredibly ironic that a guy whose entire livelihood depends on unpaid workers to generate profits for him while he sits on his
porch drinking sweet teacomfortable desk chair describes those workers as the “landed gentry.”What I’m suggesting as a pathway out is actually more democracy,”
This sounds like the same nonsense as Elon. All we’ll end up seeing is targeted mobs of Reddit sycophants and randos who don’t actually understand the stakes participating in bogus polls to make it appear like Reddit has a handle on the pulse of the community. Then Reddit can claim to be “fair” and “neutral” and…it’s just absurd.
He is trying to divide users by claiming that a nebulous group is controlling the rest against their will. Classic protest mitigation tactic
Indeed; same “divide and conquer” tactics that politicians often use to retain power.
I actually worked for reddit for a short while almost 3 years ago. He seemed like a really sincere guy in the few all hands type meetings we had, but I guess the truth comes out eventually. Lot of really bad decisions made since, and the cash burn of their insane overexpansion must be hurting
Maybe if they introduced this in good faith months ago people would think it’s a good idea. They reason now is just power hungry admins trying to get their way. Fuck this guy so much.
Honestly, the core point made originally, and that he stated again in this article, makes perfect sense to me: it costs money to run Reddit, which they pay for with ads, and the third party apps make the content available without ads or with ads that go to the app developers. It’s completely reasonable that Reddit would want to get paid for people using their content.
But the way they rolled it out, the slandering of one of the developers, the ridiculously short time for it, the removal of NSFW content, and especially the draconian prices are just unacceptable.
I’m curious as to how much money Reddit are spending on their attempts to change the narrative with articles like this.
Probably one of the reasons why they are not profitable. PR costs.
This is the thing that gets me. I’m fine if Reddit wants to diversify revenue, or ask developers to pay a fair share. But the callous disregard for developers, users, moderators, and communities they built is beyond the pale. I don’t know how someone can look at the timeline of events and how Reddit has handled this and think, “this is a company that deserves my money”. Huffman’s comments in the press alone, leaked or not, make him look like a giant d*uche canoe. The moment my saved posts are transferred out I’m gone.
Did you just censor the word douche?
Ayyyyye don’t at me.
…yes. Yes I did.
I really hate this guy’s face as of late. Didn’t really care for it during the WSB hearing but now I really hate it.
With bigger subs, this strategy may actually work. A lot of Redditors just want to scroll, and they want their content. They don’t care how it gets there.
Eventually the site will be so add ridden and exploited it won’t matter
Yeah I’m seeing that a lot. Floods of comments about how dumb the blackout was and that they just want to browse Reddit. I know r/SquaredCircle pledged to go dark indefinitely and there was a lot of outrage about it. I’ll be very interested to see if it comes back as that was a sizeable subreddit
I’ve read that, at times in the past, Reddit has used bots or plants in comment threads to stear the conversation. It makes me wonder if any of that is happening now. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but at this point I have very little trust in the Reddit staff.
Now he’s going to let users vote out powermods!? What happened when his buddies like gallowboob get voted out? This is going to be hilarious.
Oh, they are gonna remove admins by having their own sub vote them out “democratically”. I guess thats better PR than doing it themselves? Sounds like a feature that could easily be misused too, if they do it wrong.
Yeah, if he really believes that, where’s the campaign for CEO?
federated social is a better way forward in every way possible that matters (to me). these entitled pricks believe they own the labour of the people that actually create the content.
if the mods are “landed gentry” then he is part of the reddit royal family and their reign has been rendered useless (to me). there is no democracy when the serfs are an afterthought to the king and court; the equivalent of monkeys trained to dance and press buttons.
Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”
Wait, what? Huffman himself is “landed gentry”; moderators are among those who have to do the actual work.
Imagine justifying to yourself the idea that you own the contents of other peoples’ conversations.
It would be interesting to see what happens if some of the 3rd-party devs that are being screwed over by spez make some lemmy/kbin apps that are superior to the reddit app.
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,” he said.
Someone get this man a hearing aid, because he’s gone completely tone deaf.
