EthicalAIReddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout “will pass”
r/programmerhumour announced they would go privately indefinitely cause of this. Here's hoping a lot more subreddits join in, and hoping u/spez regrets every dumb decision he's made in the pasts few months.
I never understood why they decided to come back Wednesday to begin with. Protests don’t work when you schedule an end date.
It's a lower barrier to entry. It's much easier to get people/subreddit to join the protest if they know it's limited in time.
Then once they started the protest it's easier to extend it indefinitely.
Digging in their heels like this just convinces me that I made the right decision as soon as Christian Selig went public with his post. This goes way deeper than just them not listening to moderators and app developers. The CEO of Reddit is willing to kill the platform if we don't get in line—fuck spez. I hope reddit dies a thousand deaths a day as people migrate to the fediverse that fits them best.
samick1This is a good thermometer reading. I'm pretty sure many communities are prepared to extend this indefinitely if current plans aren't reverted. I do believe him when he says
We absolutely must ship what we said we would.
I don't know who the angry VCs are who get to pull his strings but if this gets their attention - it may or it may not - reddit might budge on things a bit.
At the end of the day the company is hopeless to make a profit with him at the helm. This memo sounds slightly nervous and lacks confidence. He has no clue what he's doing.
Yeah last time an executive told me that it didn’t happen and he got fired within 2 years
Same. Angry VC money is a demon that's not worth exercising.
JohannesOliverIt needs to affect revenue. To do that it needs to last.
Still hoping all the mobile developers come together and make a competitor. I like Lemmy but hard to beat how Reddit is structured and the size of the communities is an advantage. Also wouldn't mind Reddit's public offering be a disaster.
Yes Christian should take apollos code and make it fediverse ASAP
He does not seem interested at the moment
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit
NP: I think that we are in an absolute moment of change for what you might call the Web 2.0 era. Have you thought about “I’m just going to take my users and go build a Reddit for ActivityPub”?
DP: Even more specifically, one thing a lot of users have been saying is, “We’re leaving Reddit; we’re gonna go to Lemmy and Kbin!” Those are the two that I keep hearing about. Is there a move that way that you think is real, that you might want to be part of?
Apollo dev: It’s tricky because, to a certain extent, that does sound really interesting. But with Mastodon, for instance, I love it, but I’ve seen so many people — even in the tech community, who totally have the means to make that move if they want to — who have just been too intimidated or just can’t get off Twitter for some reason. In the back of my head, I’m like, if these people who are much smarter than me can’t make that change, is this just like a short-term thing?
It’s hard for me to build another thing. If it just evaporated again, it would be like a double breakup. This has been so exhausting for the last few months. The amount of work it would take to port all the API endpoints over to Lemmy or Kbin or something, that would be a gargantuan amount of work that I’m not sure I have the capacity for. And then just the complexity of making it work. Long term, it’s a big question mark for me that, at this stage, I’m not sure I’m totally interested in pursuing. But it’s also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.
That’s sad. Maybe he can Open Source it as a deceased project then someone else can do the migration work.
StumblinbearI'm actively working on a Lemmy client that will hopefully make it a bit more streamlined. I'm debating hiring a designer I know for it 👀
I'm a UX designer and would gladly donate some time to such a project
It's in early stages so I'm not wholly comfortable bringing other people on due to the non-zero likelihood that I'll lose interest, but it's progressing relatively quickly, so we'll see.
Not sure if you typically browse on mobile and have an Android, by I'm using an app called Jerboa that has a very similar feel to some of the 3rd party Reddit apps. So far, so good 👍
AhmedDid he just try to make it sound like Reddit employees are victims of hate crimes?? LMAO
I mean that was probably good advice tbh
It 100% is. As a customer service manager for a software company, I can say - you wouldn't believe some of the threats we get, just while operating normally, and people are pissed about this.
I wouldn’t do anything to them, but I’d definitely deny them service if I found a reddit employee in the wild.
Aninjanameddaryll"Hi, I'm sorry, but we charge an extra api fee for reddit employees"
"You have an api for a coffee shop"
"Yeah, its the Asshole Prevention Insurance, since the ceo is a giant, gaping asshole that likes to spew his filth all over things, and we want insurance that nobody from there does the same thing."
I have to imagine he thinks people hate Reddit for some irrational unfathomable reasons, rather than just him and the other executives for their actual behavior.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.
There’s your answer on how it’s affecting reddit. May be it’s spez just blushing, but I hope this is a wake up call for the two day blackout subs and they do it indefinitely.
Idk how this is possible either, almost every sub I subscribe to is black, why would that not impact rev?
If everyone who's not using reddit was already using a 3P ad free app, it's possible they're saving money on bandwidth while still serving the same number of ads
ElyssaMy desire to open Reddit compulsively "will pass" too.
unfortunately yes the blackout will eventually pass ... right now i think the only question is at what cost to reddit?
curious what the zeitgeist would be if the vc or fidelity made soez step down, which replaces him and to what net effect?
seeing his credibility is completely shot publicly, is this at all worthy of putting on the table?
deephurtingLooking at the Blackout Tracker it seems a few subs have folded early - r/adviceanimals and r/travel being the largest. Also the news subs and random ones like r/movies or r/photoshopbattles never joined in - were they not on board of their own choice, or controlled from on high?
BlinkerFluidso will Reddit
𝔼𝕔𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕔 ℍ𝕦𝕞𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪Reddit black out needs to keep going. Reddit communities should move to Lemmy or kbin. All reddit communities are self moderated by the people who love their selective communities.
There is no need to scum to a company that cares more about making a buck than to the people that make reddit, reddit.
Lemmy is the new reddit.
While he's probably right, the blackout is giving Reddit users the chance to return to old sources of news and entertainment, or encouraging them to try new communities like Lemmy. Ideally the blackouts continue, but I think the biggest threat to Reddit is a long-game when other alternatives become viable.
I’ve been using beehaw, but more important Feedly (RSS) because:
I can subscribe to YouTube channels, Reddit/Lemmy communities, and independent websites. That’s all my stuff in one place!
It’s algorithmically ranked, but I control the algorithm.
I can get to “inbox zero” and don’t re-see stuff I already read. No more doom scrolling.
That's exactly how I feel about it as well. It's not just that these guys are cartoonishly evil, they are also cartoonishly incompetent.
I have a feeling most of corporate is run by Wily E Coyote.
In all corporations.
I feel it's just that the investor class is controlled by a few dozen people who incentivize and force these behaviour patterns.
I think it’s heptarchy in general. Decisions being made by the “Money people” without the people with other expertise having equal say. Ideally the money people, the engineers, the customer support, etc would all have equal say in decisions. I’m a big fan of coops.
It kinda is in the name with "capitalism".
Unbelievable how out of touch they are with the community.
giddyTone deaf I see
Wow the goddamn arrogance
In an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, former r/jailbait moderator and paedophile Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback
FTFY