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?
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