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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company' (www.npr.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In his first interview since thousands of so-called subreddits went dark in protest. Huffman said he is not going to reverse his plan to start charging for outside access to Reddit data.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

he's pitching his arguments to the money folks. At least that's my assumption. It's like this - he sure isn't pitching them to his user base. Aaron Swartz has gotta be spinning in his grave.

The thing is, there was a million different ways spez could have announced they were killing off third party apps that would have been better taken by the user base. At the end of the day 'we can't afford to keep serving ad free content to anyone with an ad free third party ap because we are an ad driven business' would not have been popular but it would have been a lot better than all the smarmy doubletalk, and then to start capping on Apollo's creator when the dude kept all the receipts you're basically making a popular hero of the guy on top of people in the industry already liking him better than you. A bunch of people who would not have really gotten upset are now up in arms and taking offense because they see it as an attack on their community. And homeboy just keeps doubling down on the condescension and patronization on top of that. It is a case study of what not to do. It has strong middle management energy and that's no compliment.

The irony is that if I were a rich investor, or a broker in an investment firm, considering investing in Reddit at this point I think my line would be 'ok, but any deal is contingent on you guys finding a new CEO, this one's toxic.'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and this is exactly what has me so confused over the whole situation. He could not have handled the spin on this any worse, so it really looks like he wasnt even trying.

There's such a big difference between making an unpopular decision and deriding and alienating massive parts of your user-base. I can believe that he's so out of touch that he didn't see how it could play out this way, but does he have such unilateral power that he's allowed to dictate reddit policy single-handedly?

Like, is there nobody else in the company that could have said, "Sp0z, that's going to end horribly, if you say that". Are CEOs just kings now? Completely untouchable? I thought it was just the ones that got their position from injecting capital, so nobody says anything to them in fear that they'll pull the plug.