Reddit

There is a lot of doublespeak going on, if you pay attention. He keeps referring to 3rd party apps as "competitors" where they really are alternate paths to interact with the platform and provide the content he relies on to sell ads over. He keeps referring to the protesting mods as "not wanting to moderate" when really they are trying to make known how much they rely on third-party tools and how difficult he is making their volunteer job.

It's like he's forgotten why they started the site in the first place. I wonder what Aaron would have thought of all this?

No matter how noble the cause realistically his position and actions were predicable.

That said if they really are in undeleting comments from those who have closed their accounts it's a huge privacy breach and a few years down the line all those inevitable fines from around the world will sink the platform, IPO or not and spez will be welcoming people at Walmart.

Can't wait.

same, I would have probably kept using reddit before his insane press releases this week. Done with it now.

What bothers me most about this is how personal it sounds, and how emotional he's getting. He's not thinking rationally

I dropped in today and there was a huge banner at the top of the page claiming to tell me about how much third-party apps were stealing from Reddit.

Every time spez speaks he literally contradicts himself. I genuinely can't even comprehend the shit that he spews. He literally says multiple contradictory statements in the same sentence. It's like watching someone know they can't win an argument, so instead they just spew random shit hoping something lands.

As someone who’s been on reddit for almost 12 years, who’s also a developer. It really has saddened me to hear so many I’ll things he’s said to other dev teams.

This is the main reason why I’m trying to go all in with Lemmy, subscribing to different communities, etc.

At this point, if Reddit doesn’t make him step down and all these popular third party apps go under because of the API pricing, i will rarely be visiting reddit in the future.

Same. Now that the CEO revealed the mindset that drives reddit behind the curtains, the problem shifted from a matter of convenience (access from APIs) to a matter of principles:

1. the corporation has an authoritarian style of problem-solving;
2. it has no respect for the userbase or the developers, thus it is not transparent,using underhanded tactics to push a narrative and hide their real goals;
3. it wants to control every aspect of our interactions to make the userbase receptive to aggressive marketing;
4. it has no qualms to limit access to content that is 100% created by users, not to use unpaid labor (the mods) to maximize its profits;
5. it sees the userbase and the mods as expendable when they voice an objection on a policy, despite being those they exploit to make their model profitable (reddit is nothing without the moderation and the user-made content)

This type of aggressive capitalism is becoming a poison for the web.
It is going too far, destroying what has made the internet a special place to share information: no limits to exploration, to sharing, to expression. Now they want to create isolated bubbles behind login walls where they can be owners of the info and controllers of the space to sell data, product placements and ads.

Perhaps these new technologies like the fediverse are the answer, the solution to put a brake on this ugly phenomenon.
I hope decentralization will be the beginning of a new "Internet Renaissance", bringing back a bit of the spirit of the 90s.

He's trying to drive a wedge between mods and users, it's disgusting behaviour.

I guess there’s always the chance the board is letting him self destruct to offer him as the sacrificial lamb.

I don't believe spez is self destructing, He's doing what benefits both himself and the board in bringing about these changes. Your right about how the board will probably use him as the sacrificial lamb though, along with giving him a healthy severance package on the way out. Pretty sure they've even pulled that on a smaller scale before with all that AMA staff drama. It's all an attempt to maximize profits for their shareholders when they turn Reddit public, and then they can cash out too. They won't be reverting any of these decisions after, even when they do push spez under the bus, because we users aren't the priority.

I'm probably a lot less negative about Spez than a lot of people here. I mean, end of the day, he spent hundreds of millions of investors' dollars, and he's gotta make a return for them. They weren't donating to him to make a cool forum. They were expecting a return.

And this business model, at a high level, is the norm for dot-coms. Operate in money-losing mode, but have an especially-attractive service to grow the userbase. When you finally get a large userbase, then you have to shift over to monetizing them and being profitable.

I mean, Reddit was inevitably going to reduce user experience to try to generate more money at some point.

But none of that means that what Reddit is doing makes it the most appealing place for me. I mean, I'm over here not because I want Spez or Reddit to burn, but because it's just not really the place I want to be with the changes. I'm not angry, but, for me, kbin is just preferable to Reddit now.

There are fewer users and less content on the Fediverse right now, but that's okay with me. I moved to Reddit back when it was one page with mostly people talking about things of interest to the Reddit staff. It was a lot smaller than the Fediverse is now.

Spez is ruining the site. It is a shame.

same here, I was gonna wait until July after the third party apps stopped working just to slowly adjust to the fediverse, but I deleted my account today after reading about everything that's happened

Who wants to bet this guy is adamantly opposed to ever seeing a therapist