I have a feeling like he is being squeezed by the investors. It feels like they want a tiktok/Instagram clone and he is the one that has to tell the Reddit community.
I don’t think this was his vision for the site or he would have done it years ago.
Like it doesn’t make it less shitty but more understandable I guess?
Whether he was pressured into it or came up with this shit by him self doesn’t make a huge difference in the end. The result is the same 😐
Nah, If he knows this is bad for reddit, he could have resigned or do somethinh else about it. Appolo is like the first app for reddit, he knew he will be asking for 20M/year for their API use. This is just a very bad attempt to make cash in the investor part and spez.
Of course all of this is in my opinion ;)
I get that he may be under pressure to make unpopular decisions, but I still can’t believe that he invited the whole of Reddit to an AMA and then just answered 14 questions - as if that wouldn’t turn out to be the PR disaster it was. Trying to think of a rational explanation beyond “just incompetent” is really hard after that - unless he has some hidden agenda that involves sabotaging Reddit. There’s surely no way he couldn’t have known that AMA would be a disaster.
I think the AMA was to slander the Apollo Dev and make him seem unreasonable. The 1$ per user and month line suggests this to me. Christian just pre-empted it with his post but since they had already made the announcement there was no going back now.
My reaction to the AMA was “…but he’s lying! How did he think that would end?!”
If the Relay for Reddit dev thinks he can do it for $3/month, maybe spez has a point? Please let me know where I’m going wrong with this line of reasoning
There is an interview with him on the verge where he lays his numbers out. One big point was that the people that already bought a yearlong subscription need to be served at great loss. He says it would cost $50,000 for July. Then ofcourse some subscriptions would expire but it would still be a huge chunk of money that had to be paid every month decreasing over the next year.
I don’t know either way but he doesn’t seem like the type to play foul. I’ll edit this comment with the interview if I find it.
Found it on lemmy already lol: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit
Yeah Hanlon’s Razor has been my thought throughout this whole thing. Reddit has been mismanaged for years and it’s unsurprising to me that the CEO would be so out of touch. The fact that he was so lazy and stupid as to get caught copy-pasting canned answers on the recent AMA just confirms. These aren’t exactly the actions of a strategic genius.
He’s not incompetent (well okay, maybe a bit) and he’s not being forced into making these changes. He’s been told these changes will generate a lot of money for investors and him. He’s in on it. I dont know what his vision was years ago but his vision now is money, and money can make someone act funny.
I don’t necessarily blame him. It’s incredibly rare for someone to turn down huge piles of money in order to stick to their original vision.
Yeah maybe I’m cynical but i’m sure Reddit, either before or after the reaction to the API pricing, has done the math and have come to the conclusion that even if they alienate a large portion of mods and all users of 3rd party apps, these changes still are advantageous to them in the long term.
To be honest I think people who are anticipating Reddit grinding to a halt if a lot of mods leave are overly optimistic. Yes, a lot of dedicated mods are leaving which means the quality of moderating and the communities will go down. But there’s no shortage of suckers willing to step up.
At worst, Reddit faces a few rocky months of bad moderation and a small exodus of users (I’d be surprised if more than 10% of users leave for alternatives permanently). The outrage will blow over and a large userbase and moderator pool will remain. And being able to monetise all their users to the fullest extent possible is worth that trade-off to Reddit.
It’s a greedy, scummy move but not as boneheaded as a lot of people are portraying this as. I can totally see some analytics/consulting firm advising this to Reddit
But if the 3rd party mod tools no longer work then the site will be swallowed by spam and bots. Then there will be no reason for anyone to visit.
Aaron Swartz rolling in his grave
I think that /u/spez has his back against the wall. Reddit loses money - a lot of money - and there’s noone left to foot the bill. He’s tried everything: he’s tried advertising, sponsored content, and he’s tried premium memberships (and don’t forget coins!), but all this is simply a drop in the bucket. At this point, if nothing is done, Reddit will likely have to shut down - it probably has 8-14 months left.
Honestly, I think that /u/spez has given up; he sees that Reddit as it was originally envisioned is dead. So, he’s decided to make some superficial changes to polish it up and make it appealing to investors, make an IPO, and then cash out what he can out of it and leave.
Capitalism is trash, the workers wouldn’t make these decisions.
My guess is that the investors have been pushing him for years to make a profit but it’s not been enough, and now they’re forcing his hand. Layoffs and aggressive monetisation.
If this doesn’t “blow over” then I wouldn’t be surprised to see Spez unseated and replaced with someone else - he’s garnered enough I’ll-will that he’s pretty much outlived his usefulness, and the board are likely to be happy to throw him to the wolves in the hopes it’ll appease users. New person might make a couple of concessions to the user base (perhaps halve the API cost as Selig suggests and try to keep Apollo), but ultimately will continue to try to squeeze every dollar possible.
