Reddit is used to brawls between its 57 million daily users. Now its keyboard warriors are directing their ire at its CEO, Steve Huffman. Thousands of moderators overseeing the site’s so-called subreddits are on strike. It’s a wrinkle in Reddit’s plan to go public, and a sign that plan is premature.
I think the only way this ends amicably between the community and Reddit at this point is Huffman is ousted and then they can finally entertain other deals for API access. I’m sure they’re looking at the insane profits AI companies are raking in largely off of data they scraped from sites like Reddit for free and thinking “WTF”. My impression is third party apps got caught kinda in the crossfire on this and weren’t actually their main target, but Huffman has managed to turn it in to some weird kind of ego issue now he’s accusing multiple developers of antagonizing the platform, refusing to work with them, when we have proof from several of them in multiple instances of the direct opposite. Attempts to reach out that go unanswered. An impossibly timeline to implement changes. Trying to throw the Apollo dev under the bus only to double down when confronted with proof he lied to press. Utterly bizarre. He needs to go.
My problem with the AI narrative is that AI companies probably don’t even use the API, they use a web crawler to scrape directly from the website. And any who are using the API can pretty easily switch
@Valdair
@greenfish @BrooklynMan
My take on this is maybe spez is the least problematic. I mean sure. He is a dick and fuckin malicious. But I think he is also just a fall guy. I’m sure these plans were decided by the people pulling the strings in the background.
Ousting spez will not solve the problem. But it is hella satisfying to see though. I bet after this, no matter the outcome, spez will be let go anyways. And still those responsible for the fiasco will be secure in their thrones and also unnamed.
Reddit will not improve, let’s face it. Even if they rescind their decisions now. They have seen what can happen and they’re likely to implement more controls in secret and also gradually.
Maybe they tested a theory of theirs, that’s why we see their move as idiotic. They tested how strong the communty has become, and we’ve shown them all our cards. And now that they survived, they’ll slowly work their way to get the upper hand. Gradually chipping the independence of their userbase.
I’ve already moved on and accepted that the reddit I knew is gone. Even if they decide to make the api free for 3rd party tools. They have seen their weakness and will be slowly patching it off.
I think you give them too much credit. I think spez has a mandate to take the company public by the end of the year and produce a return for his investors. Reddit has been trying to go public since 2021. This was his last ditch effort to make the company profitable before that happens.