• Nah I think it’s clear he wanted it to leak. He’s just an egomaniac who thinks he’s actually a good leader. That section of the memo was for investor confidence. (It’ll pass, no revenue effect so far, etc.) The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.

        • Obvious tactic, paint the other side as violent and you’ll get sympathy. Won’t someone please think of the corporation.

          Make no mistake, spez would love to see someone in a reddit tshirt beat up on the street. He’d be able to plaster that everywhere he could showing how sad his side is

        •  GraceGH   ( @GraceGH@beehaw.org ) 
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          321 year ago

          The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.

          Glad people aren’t blind to this obvious ploy. When LGBT violence is at an all time high I don’t think you need to be worried about wearing a reddit shirt.

    • He expects so because he’s going to have his admin staff de-mod all the rebels, open the subs back up, and ruthlessly ban anyone who says a word about the controversy. The user population that remains will eventually go back to sleep, and all will be well in Reddit-land.

    • I mean, the charitable read is the CEO of the company reassuring the entire company that they’ll be OK. That’s his entire job. Yes, it’s a pretty crappy thing to say but we all weren’t the intended audience. He’s there to rally the troops and keep morale up.

      That said, fuck u/spez and I’m way happier over here than there.

    • After reading his message I blocked Reddit at DNS level. I wasn’t planning to leave it completely before, but now I’m not planning to unblock it till when u/spez will be there.

      •  Mango   ( @Mango@beehaw.org ) 
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        I predicted forcible demods…

        But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.

        A mod strike!

        Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?

        I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.

        Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.

        I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.

        Edit: they can’t afford to pay people to replace enough mods. Spez deserves a look at what reddit will become BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.

        • Mods are basically the slave labour that make Reddit profitable and allows for its existence.

          The exploit is taking superuser’s hobby or specialty and getting them to work 24/7 in an permanent unpaid internship position that doesn’t run counter to labour laws.

          No one wants to upset that tenuous (and likely quasi-illegal) system of exploitation by empowering the mods to know that they can make changes by organising or going on strike.

          Neither Reddit executives nor the protesting app developers and other API data users have the actual interests of reddit superusers at heart.

        • Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO

          To be fair… reddit was originally designed to be self-moderated by the users… and it use to work really well. It would be a miracle if they moved back to that model and I would no doubt switch back to them from lemmy if they did. Those were the hey days of reddit and the internet as a whole.

  •  Gollan   ( @Gollan@beehaw.org ) 
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    701 year ago

    Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.

    •  nyander   ( @nyander@beehaw.org ) 
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      It’s a corporate us vs them mentality. I don’t think Steve would even ask his own employees for help - the people who are on the ground running the company. The internal memo strongly indicates that Reddit doesn’t have a two-way communication channel with leadership.

      It’s a shame, because refusing to take feedback is what ends up sinking most companies.

    •  Clbull   ( @Clbull@beehaw.org ) 
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      221 year ago

      I don’t think it’s wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he’s vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.

      As for how I’d make money from Reddit in his shoes, I’d:

      1. Add more features for Reddit Premium, like being able to view more than 1,000 items on the front page, video uploads in comments, or enhanced search functionality.
      2. Add OnlyFans-style subscriptions or revenue sharing for partnered subreddits/users, with a 90% to 10% cut between content creators and Reddit.
      3. Bring back RPAN as a full time streaming platform to compete with the likes of Twitch/Kick.
  • Good. I really hope this causes a snowball effect. After spez (fuck spez) basically told all the moderators “fuck you” today, I’d say there is enough momentum to get at least a good half of the participating subs on board with an indefinite blackout. And with more moderators checking their inboxes and feeds tomorrow, “after the blackout,” I anticipate seeing a second wave starting tomorrow and throughout the next week, as these mods return to reddit temporarily to coordinate.

    KEEP IT GOING!!!

  •  Nix   ( @Nix@lemmy.world ) 
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    It was truly unexpected to see how large social networks find new and innovative ways to ride and accelerate their downfall.

    From my perspective:

    • Facebook --> Cambridge Analytica fiasco

    • Twitter --> Elon was bluffing but Twitters Legal team forced him to proceed otherwise the SEC was already looking for blood and an excuse to make his life very difficult for all his previous shenanigans

    • Reddit --> already downhill since just before Ellen Pao nonetheless may I speculate that perhaps one or more of the larger shareholders/investors forced the current situation but Huffman underestimated and did not realize that the power users and pro bono moderators were entirely dependent on third-party apps.

    Moreover, I exclusively used reddit through old.reddit.com I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.

    Sad to see great things go but life continues onward.

    •  Swuden   ( @Swuden@lemmy.world ) 
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      461 year ago

      I honestly don’t care whether or not reddit (the company) gives a shit. I just want users to realize that reddit deserves to be replaced by something more open and user focused.

  • Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.

    A surprising amount of big names there. I figured it would be more obscure/niche subreddits like /r/TaylorSwift, /r/SpaghettiWesterns, or something like that

    • But not for me. I’m forever gone.

      And if there are enough power users (lots of comments, posts) like me who feel the same, it will have an impact.

      There’s a HUGE middle ground between “nothing changes” and “reddit goes out of business.” As we see with Twitter, you can have a zombie platform that persists but slowly loses inertia month after month.

      It’s not that Reddit dies abruptly. It’s that the platform is wounded now and, without attention, will bleed out slowly over many years.

      • My goal is to hurt Reddit’s IPO to prevent a capitalisation on the platforms recent string of real world impacts, such as the Game Stop short squeeze and the intelligence leak that happened on a Discord server.

        I don’t care if Reddit’s CEO caves in, just so long as Reddit doesn’t get the large influx of capital to prevent the corporation from achieving any larger impact like Twitter and Facebook did in their respective times.

        The secondary marketplace to sell your Reddit accounts to bot farmers is very active, accounts are being bought at upwards of $200.

        https://www.upvotes.io/sell-your-reddit-account/

        The social bots work just fine inside reddit’s Infrastructure without 3rd party apps and/or API data.

        Reddit is going to be just another Twitter for the 2024 US election, where the conversation is managed and directed by bots, but pro-democracy based. When that becomes known Wall Street will act accordingly and Reddit won’t be worth much…

      • At a communications conference last week, a Bloomberg reporter told the attendees that most tier 1 journalists are looking for stories on LinkedIn now instead of Twitter. It’s gone from vital to junk in just a few months. Without its moderators, Reddit faces the same fate: lots of activity, but most of it junk.

        • Its not the loss of moderators, its the loss of content. If reddit hadn’t changed their original self moderation model this couldn’t happen. Or at least, not like this.

          Moderators are not responsible for making content, they just moderate a sub where others create content. Originally users moderated content on their own.

          Pretty funny how reddit’s move to authoritarianism has worked against them this time.

    •  Meloku   ( @Meloku@feddit.cl ) 
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      Maybe Spez is right (obligatory fuck /u/spez comment), but this blowout also brought Lemmy and other similar sites to the limelight. We’re on the stage where we early adopters are testing the waters, it’s just a matter of time until a new competitor stands above the others and Spez’s Reddit irónico s going to have to eat those words.

    • a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again

      it’s kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it

      •  ono   ( @ono@lemmy.ca ) 
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        A look at their comment histories might be interesting, to see if they’re the ones contributing content worth reading.

        I suspect I can guess the answer.

        • but that’s not immediate and requires some work and effort (to figure out how federation works, to figure out how Lemmy works, to learn how to create an instance and to make one, to start over with an entirely new community); many on Reddit want the easiest path to get their content

          which again, understandable, but still annoying to see

          • Perhaps… but once a certain amount of people left DIGG for reddit back in the day, the whole thing quickly fell apart. I mean, yea, DIGG still exists and I assume there are people who still use it, but I’ve never met one since I left it about 15 years ago.

            Its not like the API issue is the only reason, much less the main reason people want to leave reddit. A lot of people have been wanting to do it for a long time now, it is only that there haven’t been any other options with a crowd big enough to hold a conversation beyond only a few people. There is a big chance that that is now changing.

      • it’s kind of annoying to see that

        Why would that be annoying? It means the strike is working, it does exactly what it is meant to do. If the consumers don’t find content, they will ultimately move elsewhere

    • Problem is it will work lul. Just read some comments in some subs that are restricted like the Star Wars one. Kinda sad to see people bend over so easily only because they cannot post in their sub for a few days. Like, geez doesn’t matter at all what % of people use 3rd party apps. A little bit of inconvenience doesn’t kill anyone and it’s good to stand up for stuff like this as well.

      • Keep in mind that Reddit is running a propaganda campaign to try to squash the blackout. Notice most of the comments are almost exactly the same. As we saw with Trump, all it takes is a few well placed comments to stir up dissent and get people to parrot dumb talking points. Reddit can easily manipulate votes and comments to make it look like most people don’t care, but obviously they do, because there was the biggest blackout I’ve seen on a social media platform ever.

        • I’m sure they do but I have no doubt a ton of people also simply are in the typical “I don’t care, it doesn’t affect me directly but the subs going dark does so it’s bad” mode as many are with lots of things these days sadly.

      • Digg was a site that was a lot like reddit, it was incredibly popular until they did a site redesign that many users hated and they were unable to roll back, engagement went way down, users looked for alternatives, and reddit got most of the refugees. I haven’t been back on digg for many years.

        I thought reddit learned its lesson from digg given they kept legacy old.reddit.com running even after their own redesign, but they failed to remember that 3rd party interfaces to their API is almost the same thing; users like interfacing with their social media using the UI/UX design they chose and grew accustomed to. If they take that away, it risks alienating users and driving them to alternatives.

        If reddit was smart they’d make it so that people with reddit gold can keep using API access instead of locking them out entirely.

        •  HQC   ( @HQC@beehaw.org ) 
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          221 year ago

          But that would be contrary to Reddit’s actual goals, which is to monetize their user’s data as much as possible. They can’t do that if third party apps are providing a better experience, so they are trying to force everyone to use only the website and apps that are directly controlled by Reddit. So they can track our behavior and sell more ads.

          • I read somewhere that a lot of the API pricing has to do with people training LLM’s on reddit comments for free; reddit wants to get paid for it. I guess they’ll just have to scrape instead. /shrug

            There’s still a lot of tracking that can be done via api calls but you’re right that they lose ad revenue and UI/click info.

            •  HQC   ( @HQC@beehaw.org ) 
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              That is the claim from Reddit, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because LLMs are not using the API to get content from sites like Reddit. They are scraping data from the entire Internet, much like Google does.

              Even if it was using the API, however, it’s still a bullshit excuse because Reddit would be fully within their rights to enforce existing rate limits or other TOS violations.

              Nobody would have been complaining if Reddit revealed that apps like Apollo or OpenAI were abusing the rules that were already in place and everyone agreed to. For that matter, nobody would even be complaining if the pricing and timeline for the changes was anything close to reasonable!

        • What reddit doesn’t seem to get that for many people old.reddit (or a 3rd party app) is reddit for them. If they take that away they’re forcing them to learn a new UI or to get a new app. It’s naive to think that everyone is just going to switch to the official ones. Might aswell find an alternative to reddit and learn to use that.

          •  kofe   ( @kofe@lemmy.world ) 
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            71 year ago

            It’s not just about learning the new interfaces…I’ve used the new site design and have heard the official app is just as bad about shoving ads down our throats. Baconreader made ads at least fairly unobtrusive, but with all the drama I’ve decided: fuck it. I appreciate Lemmy and other decentralized options for being user-funded rather than reliant on corporations

      • Same but different. The site sold out and made some changes that were good for investors, but bad for users. It also happened to slashdot. When that went bad, we all went to digg.

        Looking back, I’m surprised reddit lasted as long as it did. Digg and slashdot still exist, but aren’t what they were in their heyday. I’m sure reddit will continue in some form.

        • Tbf, reddit is infinitely more mainstream than digg and Slashdot ever were. Reddit has well over 500 million monthly active users. We are just reaching 100,000 here.

          I’m all in, I’m committed here and never going back to reddit. But I want to manage expectations about what we should expect in the coming months and years. People need to understand that this isn’t going to be a seamless transition like that one. Part of the reason that was even possible was because reddit got hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital funding as they rapidly grew. We don’t have that option here.

          It will take years for this platform to come anywhere near the current size of reddit, if ever. Now, many of us would argue that reddit was better back when it only had say 50 million MAUs (which was about 10 years ago). That still leaves us 49.9 million users short.

          If we want to build a truly free, independent, decentralized space, it’s going to take a lot more commitment and time than switching from digg to reddit did. And I think it will be a rewarding journey for those that stick around.

          But don’t count your chickens yet people, we are still in the first round and it’s going to take more than this to bring down the big bad reddit. I’m just glad I finally have some way to fight back.

          • Mastodon/Akkoma/Calckey/Misskey/Pleroma side of the fediverse is somewhere over 10 million users right now and it’s already starting to be quite active and having lots of quality content. It went from less than a million users to the current numbers in about six months. We’ll see where Lemmy is in December…

          •  RomanRoy   ( @RomanRoy@lemmy.world ) 
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            Yeah, I’m committed as well, and you’re right about your input.

            A few notes in my mind, tho:

            1 - Reddit became really mainstream, yeah, but I figure a huge part of the user base were tech people. Probably work in tech somehow.

            2 - those who came to Lemmy/kbin already are also tech people, I figure. Right now, I think it is just normal that the first to pull the trigger are in tech. It’s not too friendly to the average user (despite the forum format really not being what the average user goes after today)

            3 - these people will start to contribute to the development, even if not providing actual code and developing apps or creating their instances, most will post issues about their user experience and will have valuable input about the platform.

            4 - I think the true take off of the Fediverse will come once content creators start to post their content in here. And I expect the first of them, at least, to also be tech content creators.

            I’ll try to encourage some of the guys I follow, mainly course creators, to invest a bit in the Fediverse. Some of them already do. I know that Twitter puts food on their table, but it should be easy to automate and crosspost to Mastodon, for example.

            I hate social media overall. It’s not really hatred, I just don’t use most of them, don’t find the motivation and don’t really value what they have to offer me. I think Instagram sucks for searching anything (who would say searching pictures would be hard, huh?).

            I, for one, started lurking on Reddit because of fantasy football. Reddit was really good as a link and content aggregator, and I got most of my news from there. But it depends on Twitter as well, since the reports mainly come from there. And you see where the problem is at? Most of the people who advocate for the Fediverse don’t really use Twitter as well.

            So I can only dream of the day Ian Rapopport will post some breaking news to Mastodon and a bot will auto-crosspost it to /c/fantasyfootball.

            A man can hope about this ideal future.

            Edit: JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I DIDN’T REALIZE MASTODON HAS 7 MILLION USERS ALREADY

  •  vriska1   ( @vriska1@lemm.ee ) 
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    321 year ago

    Also there alot of bots going around Reddit saying the protest is not working and all the subreddit mods are going to be easily replaced, with who I don’t know.