[AMA] Hi, I’m /u/spez, CEO of Reddit, coming to you to talk about my recent acquisition of Lemmy and some upcoming changes. Ask me anything!

czarrie@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 794 points –

Thanks for joining me today! I'm here at the Reddit corporate parking lot, spot 269 (nice!), and being assisted today by Victoria all by myself because friends only tie down your ambitions.

Founded in 1978 as a men's discount shoe store on the west side of Philadelphia (born and raised), Reddit has, despite our best efforts, experienced an unprecedented explosion in popularity in the past decade. As of this morning, we are now home to over 16.5 million subscribers, of which a good 11% are associated with human beings, creating over 13 original posts each and every week!

As a business, our primary goal has been maintaining this platform at the expense of our users. As a result, we recently made the decision to acquire one of our upcoming competitors, Lemmy. This sale finalized as of Sunday, July 2nd, for a price that will not be disclosed because our VCs might be reading this.

Effectively immediately, we have enacted a few new featifits (a benefit and a feature combined) that will hopefully pay for the new sous chef will benefeat the Lemmy community. These include:

  • A newly revamped federation system that will allow Reddit posts to be viewed on Lemmy. This will be limited to one randomly selected subreddits every month, as chosen by myself, and I've been pretty much into cat girls this year, so they'll probably be cat girl-related
  • A unique new post sorting algorithm that compliments the above, boosting all posts that do, possibly may, or will feature cat girls after I have edited them
  • 500 Spezbux that can be redeemed for Speztokens at any point
  • An unshakable sense of dread about the future course of technology
  • Full length ads for Carl Jr's that will be sent directly to your inbox each hour and can be viewed for additional Spezgild
  • New scents

And much much more! Also, as is tradition for this AMA, we will not be answering any questions at this time, but please, feel free to waste your time and ask anyway!

111

Hi spez!! Is the jailbait subreddit you were moderating coming to lemmy?

Edit: thanks for le gold!!

Edit 2: wow 69 upvotes nice

Edit 3: 420 UPDOOOOTS??? BLAZE IT LOL

edit 4: thanks for the gold kind stranger! i’ve never gotten an award before!!!

(real edit: i have short term memory and forgot your first edit acknowledged the gold…)

No problem that would happen in reddit too, we're just missing the award speech edit thanking the community, a pet and keanu reeves

I can’t be the only one who expected a shittymorph ending, with in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcers table.

Breaking news: Reddit CEO purchases free software: "still not the dumbest decision I've made this month" says Spez in rare moment of self-awareness

feel free to waste your time and ask anyway!

Are you staring in the sequel to Rampart?

Thank you for your question about Rampart. Unfortunately we have no news to share about Rampart.

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or never read this question again?

So there’s this invincible snail…and if it catches you this post disappears from your memory

Did you kill Aaron?

Why couldn't it have been you and not Aaron? It's is because you're zero threat?

I can confirm. I, the one true spez that likes feeling people up inappropriately as per my username, did kill aaron. Then felt him up while furiously masturbating. Some will say there is no evidence, some will say that this is actionable libel.

-spez

If you were in a room with Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, could you stop fellating yourself long enough to give disappointing blowjobs to all your heroes?

Thanks so much for the time to address us lesser people!

So with your head up your butt, I've always wondered... how do you see the screen to make posts? Are you wearing a VR headset inside there or something?

The April fools jokes are gonna be fire next year

Hi u/spez! This is exciting news. I'm looking forward to your valuable insight into the question of how to go several days without pooping. Three day's worth would be optimal, but I'm sure everyone would be interested in your vision for a future without enshittification

ohh, hyped about the scents.... my olfactory nerve is trembling in anticipation, and I'm losing control of my sphincter. Which is never a good combination.

This announcement is supsiciously light on NFTs.

Will there be any new collectible avatars to help commemorate this occasion?

Can I have the password for your Reddit account?

The rest of the Lemmy community: *defederates Lemmy.ml and forks Jerboa, the web interface and the server software* (because thats all spez would get if he tried to buy lemmy *basks in the buty of the Fediverse*)

Buty....hehehe im a spez loyalist and that makes me smart when my narwhal awards convert to common stock

As someone who is a real person and not a bot programmed by Reddit, I have to ask how are you bravely handling all of the negative publicity that our handsome and fearless leader doesn't deserve but is getting anyway. Anyway, I'm a real person and not a bot, and certainly not paid by Reddit to post this.

got scared for a sec then remembered nobody can acquire Lemmy 😅

How do you feel about all the people who want to have intercourse with you?

Hi u/spez I was wondering: When am I going to get the money? It's just that my wife has been very vocal about it. "Where is the money?" "When are you going to get the money?" And so on.

You mean the Mob only did me a favor to get something in return? Oh, u/Fat Tony... I will say good day to you, sir.

Dear spez: when will you bring back the best subreddit ever? You know the one you used to moderate before the SJWs made you delete it?

Will Reddit develop a voice reader that features your voice? I have no idea what you sound like, but you look like you must have a terrific radio-voice. Definitely don't look like someone who'd be whiney and annoying.

Are you realizing your decisions have ruined the site in ways I didn't even think of? (RemindMe bot dead, etc)

And if not is that due to the typical Silicon Valley pompous, ego driven, narcissistic beef brain bullshit?

Are black holes just another form of a pulsar and when will the US finally learn that burgers taste better with mayo.

Thank you.

Mayo on the bottom and ketchup on top. Unless I have some homemade whiskey bbq sauce.

Murican here: We put mayo on burgers all the time, what makes you think we don't?

Well, they don't offer mayo at Burger King and McDonalds where I live, plus every US movie I've ever seen that reflects on burgers in Europe bitches about them having mayo, so... I just assumed.

Weird, McDonalds has mayo here or at least they had it on their deluxe. I don't eat at McDonalds too often, but I'd say mayo is a pretty normal thing to put on a burger here just generally speaking. I just saw a commercial for Burger King as I was typing this and there was mayo on the burgers lol, maybe it's a regional thing?

IDK maybe. But they're the only burger places that don't have mayo, everyone else does 🤷.

Definitely strange, I can't think of a burger place I've been to that doesn't at least offer mayo as an option if not as a standard topping on at least 1 burger. In any event, I agree: On most burgers mayo is a solid condiment choice!

I utterly hate mayo on beef.

On chicken or ham is fine. On fish as tartar sauce, it's great. Beef? Fuck no.

Hi u/spez! This is exciting news. I'm looking forward to your valuable insight into the question of how to go several days without pooping. Three day's worth would be optimal, but I'm sure everyone would be interested in your vision for a future without enshittification

Why am I attracted to the hooves of a centaur, but not a horse?

Lemmy is open source and federated so cannot be bought. The fediverse is what the Internet was supposed to be.

Well, it could be bought, in the sense that the name and repo could have their ownership transferred, but that just means someone is gonna fork it.

Kind of like when Oracle bought OpenOffice, everyone moved to the fork, LibreOffice.

I feel that the creators of Open Office were trying to keep from laughing when that deal was going through because they knew exactly what was going to happen.

Is your residence well guarded? I have a few drones and some... bom- I mean explo- UH.. things I'd love to give you!

I tried to comment but Lemmy kinda sucks and only works maybe 40% of the time.

oh of course this one posted...

I'll have you know the unposted one was better. a real zinger

Switch instances. Join vlemmy.net or feddit.nl.

Question from a noob: are you guys making new accounts for every instance? How do you keep track of that? Or are my login credentials supposed to work across instances as long as they're federated? I went to vlemmy.net and neither of the above is working. But also there's a button that says "support Lemmy" and Lemmy.world is where I made this account... so wouldn't I logically be able to use the same login credentials? I'm so lost!

Nah, I have a few (like 5 👀 😁) mainly because of my multiple personality disorder (gotta divide your personal life from what you secretly like and/or admire, people might ask your Lemmy account link one day and follow you, lol 😂).

No, your login info works only for the instance you've got your account on. Federation only works for content, not accounts. Moving accounts from instance to instance is planned as a feature, but not there yet at the moment. Communities as well, it's planned to be able to move them from instance to instance, just not being worked on currently cuz of the influx of bugs and other more important features.

You have to make an account on vlemmy.net in order to be able to log into that instance. Same goes for any other instance. But you don't have to make an account on every instance. 2 of the accounts I have are alts/backups, just in case something goes down with some of the instances I currently have an accoount on.

lemmy.world is overloaded, it's understandable. This happens to any site that goes through sudden massive growth.

As a benefit of Lemmy and the Fediverse though, you're free to join any instance and have basically the same content. And the smaller ones should be running faster.

you need to change instances stat. lemmy.world is massively overloaded on the client side

Are you using an app? Memmy was throwing an error when the server returned HTML instead of an API (“JSON”) response - probably an error page. Seems to be sorted in the most recent update (although yeah if lemmy.world is overloaded then you still might not be able to)