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 tea~~ comfortable desk chair describes those workers as the "landed gentry."
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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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.
The man is foreshadowing his own downfall...
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.
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 agree because this is actually quite nice to have the ability to vote out power tripping moderators. But they're only introducing it now because they're getting desperate. What a waste. This CEO is an idiot.
Well it's not like I'm going back anyway since I got perma banned 2 days ago and nuked my account.
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.
So he's out doing damage control with the press.
Which implies there’s damage to control. The subreddit blackout is clearly working.
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.
Spez: update polls set upvotes=99999 where subreddit="/r/jailbait"
Also spez: my people have once again elected me King!
Yeah, if he really believes that, where's the campaign for CEO?
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.
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.
Eventually the site will be so add ridden and exploited it won't matter
The new spez company strategy will work because it has been tried and tested in many dictatorships in human history. The elites and workers (mods) in institutions (subs) critical to the state (company) regularly need to be purged of dissenters (protesters) to signal the strength of the dictator and make a coup (change in leadership) seem impossible. This lets those who are against the current course of the state lose their will to fight and pursue other avenues like flight (why I‘m here). It also gives a feeling of safety to those who don‘t care or support, since they need to see less of us dissenters.
Though, in the long run (and I mean many years), I think it will backfire. People like to read all kinds of comments, even those like mine though they are often cynical/paranoid mess. So without dissenters, it becomes a sludge of sameness that appeals only to the most boring people. Hopefully leading to a growth of decentralised platforms like this that could eventually surpass all corporate social media.
Huffman said, however, that he’d like some form of revenue-sharing.
“I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”
Reddit is only going to get worse. I'm glad I jumped ship when I did.
Another prediction;
Moderator slots will be up for sale at some point as businesses buy them and start pushing their products/services more aggressively.
"normal" moderators who agree will get a small % of the profits.
a small % of the profits
But since Reddit isn't profitable, that means profits are actually negative and they'll have to pay. If they are profitable, no way there's any sort of profit sharing. At best, a discounted reddit t-shirt that they'll be warned against wearing in public due to the additional anti-user policies they'll be putting in place.
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Dead on
It's really a shame that everything good and valuable in the world has to be boiled down to a fucking dollar sign..
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.
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.
Fuck u/gallowboob
What a choad.
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.
Imagine justifying to yourself the idea that you own the contents of other peoples' conversations.
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.
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 they say their biggest portion of revenue comes from the ads they serve on the official platform then why block the option for devs to serve ads and give the revenue or profit share from it.
Huffman makes no sense in any way, it’s like he’s playing volleyball with himself and arguing against his own points. Devs are wanting to pay for the api but they have been given an untenable timeline and outrageous costs.
Let's be honest.
A lot of us left because we saw the writing on the wall, even if we were a bit ambiguous on the exact details.
Enshittification to the max and as fast as possible.
Reddit user of over 10 years: I’m done. Let’s say they reverse course; it’s clear what they want to do and where they want to take the platform.
Enshittification has begun. It can’t be stopped, it’s self sustaining now.
Yep. It's not that Reddit is unusable in the official app, it's that it's a sign of more shit to come. I don't use other social media for a reason, Reddit doesn't have the command over my life that they think they do.
I've used Relay for over a decade. That app is reddit to me. I however do find the official app unusable.
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Reddit in particular has very little besides it's massive numbers to actually keep users on their platform. I don't use Twitter or Facebook anymore, but at least with those platforms there would be specific celebrity accounts or friends and family that would provide a reason to stay.
Because reddit was so focused on anonymity, you didn't need the "celebrity" accounts to move platforms to make the alternatives feel viable. Even with just a small portion of users moving here it feels completely natural.
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So these votes are going to be done by the people who haven't left reddit in protest and if those of us who have left in protest come back to vote in the polls, reddit will claim that outsiders are brigading the votes so the sub will be reopened. There is no situation where a community vote to remain closed will be respected by the site owners.
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
He's about two sentences away from saying the quiet part out loud. If he sees the mods as landed gentry how does he see the average redditor? the average admin team member? The average spez?
Sure, now he cares so darned much about democratic support and accountability of moderators...
Which I'm not completely sure is a good idea, but still
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.
"We’ve got some old, legacy decisions on how communities are run that we need to kind of work our way out of.”
It's a bit of a reach but looks like out with the old ....
A truly scathing insult from... checks notes... the actual landlord of the site, who treats moderators like they're his serfs.
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