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.'