I understand that Reddit needs to monetise. It’s not a link aggregate site anymore, hosting video/image files is expensive, Reddit operates at a loss and the 3p users cost them even more. They have reason to be dismayed that they operate at a loss while 3p apps using their API do not.
And I understand their concern with adult content. They can’t control if 3p apps will display it with or without checks, but Reddit hosts it; limiting it on 3p apps is probably the better choice to them than removing it from their site entirely. After all, they’re operating at a loss; they can’t afford the fines and fees. Sexual content is heavily legislated.
But goddamn. Limited negotiation with devs, adversarial communication (to the point of outright animosity), frankly absurd timeframe, the use of accessibility as negotiation for the blackout… there’s no good faith anymore.
Reddit is user-generated. The users are the content, their engagement is Reddit’s product. Users that don’t want to engage with their platform give them less sellable product. The users that engage the most (commenting, contributing, moderating) are the minority, and also the ones most likely to use 3p tools.
Reddit has good grounds for wanting to monetise. There are good reasons for bringing devs to the plate about how to do that. Devs were readily agreeing to covering their costs in calls, and expecting to negotiate what the revenue margin should be. Mutually equitable arrangement.
But this was handled so fucking badly, communicated so fucking badly (by one of the devs too tbh), that an equitable arrangement cannot possibly be reached anymore. Nobody wants to bargain in good faith anymore.
Now all the users want Reddit to cancel all the changes, publicly apologise, and remain operating a loss. Now Reddit wants devs to shut up and pay up, and blame them for the situation they’re in.
Now everybody loses, because devs close apps, high-activity users contribute less or outright leave, and Reddit decays down into a pit of low-interaction lurkers picking over ad-bleached bones, until it’s considered so unprofitable and unrecoverable that it is shut down entirely.
Tbh
HOW THE FUCK DID I OVERESTIMATE SPEZ
The fucking bar was on the ground and he didn’t pass it what the hell
You didn’t expect him to have a shovel.
The bar was on the ground but you didn’t suspect he had descended into the underworld. For all the questions he dodged, one of the only ones he actually answered was trying to commit to the lies he’s been telling about the appollo dev, even after the leaked phone call audio proves it is a lie
what lies were he trying to tell? Sorry, I’m out of the loop
Basically there was a miscommunication on a phone call between Reddit and the Apollo dev where they briefly misconstrued something the Apollo dev said as “threatening” Reddit. The miscommunication was cleared up instantly and amicably in the moment, but then spez went out and started claiming that the Apollo dev had been threatening Reddit and acting in bad faith. The Apollo dev responded by releasing an audio recording of the entire phone conversation (lol) which made it abundantly clear that Reddit were trying to attack his character.
Looks like spez is done with the AMA. His responses constitute 0.07% of comments in the thread.
that’s a moment
I only saw one sarcastic answer. Did he actually say anything of substance?
Few political not answers, some f-you answers, personal attack to Christian.
I would say that PR was disastrous, people rage that he wasn’t prepared for obvious questions and 0 informational value of this AMA.
From his responses you can see reddit will continue their path. and if you think about it, everything is going well for them.
the probability that a critical mass of users will leave is still quite low. they will get rid of a lot of moderators that don’t fall in line. what is left will be a community that won’t mind the direction reddit is going.
reddit will turn boring, but the shareholders won’t care. as long as they manage to keep enough users after the api change the site will recover.
the only positive thing here is that a lot of dedicated people may join other platforms and start building new communities.
Yeah. It’s like a toxic workplace. The old dogs might leave but those who hate change or new guys who don’t know how it used to be will stay
I just find the whole thing really false and shut off.
The answers provided by spez are completely useless and don’t really further any discussion. This is all about damage control for the upcoming IPO in my opinion. Without users, active moderators and people willing to engage and discuss… the product is going to burn at IPO.
Here’s hoping enough people can get into some simple Lemmy instances and help the 'verse grow. Time for me to find communities for LEGO and watches!
Oh there’s a Lego community right now!
What’s the Lego community called? I haven’t been able to find one searching.
I found one at !lego@lemmy.ml
It showed up in community search for me.
What a shit show
so far the AMA has been up for about 20 minutes, and he’s answered 3 questions. heavily downvoted as expected.
And he’s already started with the personal attacks against Christian Selig, the Apollo author. Already. Barely 10 minutes into the AMA and he’s already personally attacking someone. What a piece of shit.
spez has never struck me as particularly capable of reading the moment, so i’m hardly surprised by that.
Archives to some of his “answers”
This is going as well as expected lol
Really appreciate these links! I’ve been curious to see what he’s been saying but didn’t want to give them any traffic.
Went about how I expected it. Awful attempt at PR.
Based on the answers I’m seeing, I’m positive that this change is a result of changing for their IPO. Lots of none answers, but they also aren’t backing down on the absurd pricing.
Having been a manager at a Fortune 500 and getting announcements from Executive level leadership / giving announcements to my reports, this is surprisingly the level of competence I would expect.
Unfortunate, but also a symptom of Reddit being too big for the team to handle. The outflux of users caused by this might actually -help- Reddit in terms of figuring out their revenue stream and getting better leadership.
Sad to see this happening in real time though.
My only thought about this is that I wish people would stop using awards on comments lol. You’re giving the site money! Feel like I gotta spray users with a water bottle like no, no, stop that
Could be that people already have these awards and since they might want to leave reddit, they just give those awards to random comments from the CEO. Probably unlikely, but who knows?
He’s said four things in response to questions - every one of which is a deflecting non-answer and one of which is a personal attack. Lol. What a surprise
spez confirmed Reddit isn’t profitable
We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
Unlike some 3P apps, we have been extremely wasteful with the excessive amount of funding we’ve raised. 🙄
Just what was expected. “Fuck you we are not backing down because we did nothing wrong. I dont understand why all the backlash”
And nothing of value to the Reddit community was gained.
I’m liking it here
Same. This reminds me of old school (10+ years ago reddit). Where you could just find something cool and jump in the comments and talk about it. It wasn’t an argument fest or people plugging their shit or an army of bots it was just people talking about something they all happened to see and like.
To me it sounds like this AMA is more to appease the mod community. The relationship with 3rd party app developers is already in the mud and they are fine with that but they can’t lose their mods if they want Reddit to continue to function.
In saying that, he’s doing an awful job and is making things worse. :popcorn:
They definitely know that if enough Mod’s jump ship then their communities will suffer heavily. I’m going to guess that we’ll see quite a few quit. There will be some that stick around holding on by their fingertips to for communities based around helping others.
But most mods aren’t going to be willing to put in extra free labor especially for a company that keep signalling with actions that helping them isn’t a priority.
