STOP saying “fuck u/spez” START saying “FIRE STEVE HUFFMAN”

lemmony@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 1822 points –

“fuck u/spez” means absolutely nothing to anyone who isn’t familiar with Reddit, it’s just noise.

“FIRE STEVE HUFFMAN” is a clear, actionable statement that has a clear target and goal and actually has meaning to people who don’t know what Reddit is (like say, a potential shareholder or investor)

Idk where to put this since r/savethirdpartyapps got banned so post this wherever will get noise if you agree

205

You are viewing a single comment

Also, firing spez does nothing because this wasn’t spez’s decision.

If you look at the history of Reddit’s API, it had a fee until spez became CEO again and made it free. This was when the 3PA took off.

Being the CEO does not mean that you get to actually make major decisions for the company. Think of the CEO as the face of the board of directors. They are the ones that approve/deny major changes.

You want the board changed, not spez.

Why do we want anything to change?

Why are we still sitting on this new platform talking about ways reddit can be saved?

What's happening to reddit is the end result of the sort of platform it is and the current state of the tech industry. With or without spez, its course is set, nothing we do will slow or reverse it.

Feels like maybe there's some younger people here that haven't gone through the death of a platform/site before. Us older social media folks have seen this time and time again, have had to migrate from self-destructing platform to self-destructing platform many times.

So take it from me: reddit is done. No matter what happens next, it is never recovering. There will be no reset button or rolling back anything. The damage is permanent, and the profit incentives run too deep.

Let it go.

I am so tired of this sentiment. You're not wrong about the corporate stuff, but blaming people for wanting it to get better serves no purpose. For all its flaws, Reddit had something that no other site, not even this one, has been able to remotely replicate. I didn't use the site for news, politics, memes, or mindless scrolling. I used it because it was literally the only place to discuss niche topics and interests.

Whether we like it or not, it's the only place where a lot of these niche communities exist. Users that were here since Digg will find a new home, but the one who can barely use a Macbook may not. And I'm all for helping as many of those communities migrate, but the truth is that for many communities, especially the ones less technically inclined, the death of Reddit means the death of that community, and that's really fucking sad.

Niche community boards existed before Reddit, they will exist after Reddit.

Not in a way that's accessible to casual audiences. You can watch literally any show, and chances are there's a sub where you can go talk about it. That was not the case 10 years ago. Unless your show had a cult following, the only people to talk about it with were people you knew. I hope that someday we can turn this site into the same kind of thing, but we aint there yet.

Yes it was a bit of work to find niche subjects in the old days but it was all out there if you really cared. Having communities too accessible to casuals is both a blessing and a curse. Constant conversation is a great time killer but the quality of those conversations really suffers.

It is really a fine line between the two and I think federated social media could actually pull it off. Reddit has been shit for a long time and the API fallout, even though it had no direct impact on the way I used Reddit, was just the last straw. No point trying to save a dieing animal, sometimes the most difficult decision is for the best.

blaming people for wanting it to get better serves no purpose

Yeah. No one is doing that. We're blaming them for tolerating bullshit.

The users played every card they had and Reddit didn't move a fucking millimeter. If they had come up with absolutely any sort of compromise, you could have a decent argument. But Reddit has made it very clear that the only changes that are coming are the continued enshittification.

If users actually stopped contributing to the site, they would have no choice but to roll back the changes and come up with another solution. But not even a small fraction of the site's users slowed down for more than a couple of days.

I mean I agree with this part. That's why I'm commenting on this site and not the other one, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend the other one doesn't exist and that we don't care what's going on there. I agree that everyone should move here, but nevertheless, most of them aren't, and I cannot control that. The fact is that most people are not deep enough into the internet to make a pros and cons list of social media sites. They just use what other people use, or what pops up first on Google. We are neither of those things, and until we are, I have a vested interest in what happens at the other place.

I really hope the fediverse is different. At the very least, that it can evolve in a way that we don't have these jarring "migrations". People can just move to a new platform that federates with the old one, and slowly/gradually move over to the better thing.

Oh I was just informing people. A lot of people think that the CEO decides the direction of the company when that is rarely the case. I’ve been done with Reddit since June 11, I’m just here to watch it burn.

We need to just let reddit die as a sign to all other executives that their customers are the ones who hold the cards.

We weren't the customers. We were the content creators. We gave the site value that was then sold to advertisers, as the cost of keeping the platform running.

Thinking of platforms like reddit as businesses is the inherent problem in the first place. Running ads or having some premium features should only be for the purposes of maintaining the site. The second the people running it decide that it's time to start making profit for themselves is the moment it dies.

That's why I deleted all of my data before leaving. I'm not letting reddit keep my contributions to add to their value. I hope everyone here has done the same.

We need to just let reddit die as a sign to all other executives that their customers are the ones who hold the cards.

The same thing could have been said about Digg. They are too stupid. Companies start out small, and have stars in their eyes instead of money bags, and talk about how they want to be different and want to do good for the world. Then once they grow beyond a certain size, they became the same evil shit as any other corporation. It happens time and time again, and it will continue happening.

That's when the venture capital shareholders kick in and want the money. That's the cause.

Reddit's customers do hold the cards. Users are the product, advertisers (and now, potential investors) are the actual customers.

You want the board changed, not spez.

Katelin Holloway - Former exec of vc capital firm Initialized.

Michael Seibel - Y Combinator partner

Patricia Fili-Krushel - previously the President of ABC TV Network, and an EVP at both NBCUniversal and Time Warner Inc.

Paula Price - Former board member of JP Morgan Chase bank

Porter Gale - CMO at Personal Capital

Robert A. Sauerberg Jr. - President and CEO at Conde Nast

Samuel Altman - president of Y Combinator and now the CEO of OpenAI.

Zubair Jandali - global head of App Developer Ad Sales (owned by google). Ddirector of US performance sales at AdMob.


2 techbro ghouls

4 financial elite bougie pricks

1 TV elite bougie prick

1 advertisement industry ghoul and all round bougie prick

Overall you nailed it, but the terminology you used to summarize those roles is really cringe.

How's that boot taste?

Is that what you say everytime you fail to comprehend a response? Tell me how that makes any sense.

Nah mate it's what I say to americans that see basic political terms as cringe because america has turned their entire system into a politically illiterate joke. You'd probably get a culture shock if you saw me using the word comrade but if you came over here you'd find it is in common use in labour parties all over europe.

You didn't say comrade, or bourgeois. You said techbro ghouls and elite bougie prick. Then proceeded to slander me as a bootlicker despite me agreeing with your point.

Bougie is just shorthand for bourgeoisie you think I want to type that out every fucking time? Half the time I have to double take just to be sure I'm not spelling it wrong even after the 500,000th time writing it.

Worse/ bigger than just the board, even; with higher interest rates, investors are wanting more returns immediately, not just DAUs or some kind of proxy for future returns.

This is why all tech companies are becoming shittier and more expensive to the end-user (cf. Netflix cracking down on password sharing, Twitter (to some extent Muskrat’s entry there was a cover for him to dump money from Tesla without raising suspicion; itself necessary due to it struggling with the same issues in a high interest environment), Google’s anti-ad blocker attempts).

Reddit's API never had a fee, it was always free. Reddit was built in an era where there wasn't really much difference between an API and the HTML view you see, they both had the same backend code, with minor differences on the presentation layer.

RiF had some kind of agreement where they were paying Reddit actual money until shortly after Huffman became CEO. I don't think they were "paying for API access", but they were a third party app that generated revenue for Reddit until Huffman came along.

This is false, look it up. The API had a fee until 2016.

I assure you it was free, as I worked there in 2010-2011, and built many bots and tools using said api thereafter. I never paid a cent, and none of the people using my bots did either

6 more...