What is Reddit CEO Steve Huffman doing?
www.theverge.com
Tech companies aren’t just businesses, they’re investments.
  • dhork@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    One of the weirder phenomena of the low interest rate era in tech was a tendency to see companies primarily as investments. The goal was not to have a functional business, but an exit, often via IPO or acquisition. I have begun to wonder if that explains what Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been up to lately.

    I can’t pretend to know what King Steven is thinking, but his proclamations have certainly driven me to the exit. Two months ago at this time I had no clue King Steven would banish me for preferring BaconReader over the app with his Royal Warrant.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    Is spez wrong? The community is openly letting themselves get cucked. Look at how r/place has already given up on revolting and is instead working together to boost Reddit’s IPO value. The closed subreddit protests gave up. Nobody is caring about moderators being replaced. People are still going about the site like normal. So is spez really wrong that this was going to pass because the users clearly don’t care if they’re getting fucked, just like how people somehow still hang on to Twitter.

    • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I mean… Twitter isn’t doing great now. This one controversy won’t sink Reddit, but it opened the door for competitors to grab a foothold. When the API issues were happening, people were scrambling for an alternative and there was nothing there. However, for the next Reddit controversy there will be a more mature Lemmy/kbin as an alternative with superior third party apps.

      • Johnvanjim@lemmy.world
        11·
        1 year ago

        controversy won’t sink Reddit, but it opened the door for competitors to grab a foothold. When the API issues were happening, people were scrambling for an alternative and there was nothing there. However, for the next Reddit controversy there will be a more mature Lemmy/kbin as an alternative with superior third party apps.

        Enshittification commencing…

  • DrPop@lemmy.one
    0·
    1 year ago

    Was that really why people didn’t like Ellen Pao. I just didn’t like the way she was suppressing non damaging information not banning hate subs. Getting rid of the IAMA liaison was a bad call.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      It’s called a glass cliff. The board wanted to do a bunch of really unpopular things, so they chose her to implement those changes and take the heat from the user base with her. Companies do it all the time, almost always it’s a woman, so “you just hate her because she is a woman” can be used as deflect. That’s why it’s called that, it looks like a woman breaking through the glass ceiling but it’s just a bunch of old white males pushing her off a glass cliff.

  • kingthrillgore@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I haven’t been able to post a comment on The Verge since the redesign. Huh.

    Anyways: All of spez’s spedding can be explained easily enough: He is in IPO exit mode. He wants out of this business so he can go be a piece of shit.

    He really thinks he can get the valuation on reddit. I’m here to tell him he’s delusional. The window came and went with the interest rates. An adjusted value with a new S-1 is going to be a serious write down on the real value and that’s when his days are numbered.

    He basically upset 5% of the user base and even that small amount has done irreversible harm to reddit. Everyone knows he wants out. Everyone knows he’s fudging MDAUs. Everyone knows reddit has never been profitable. Was it worth it, you tumbling duckweed?

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      The horrifying thought of this whole ordeal is that, no matter how well or how poorly Reddit’s IPO goes, Spez still walks away from this thing as a millionaire. Golden parachutes and all.

      • Windex007@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s unlikely that the IPO will happen any time soon. Nobody wants to IPO while public sentiment is bad.

        I think it’s possible Huffman will get booted before the IPO. I also think a lot of his bonuses are contingent on the IPO.

        Like, he’s going to make bank no matter what… But if it’s any consolation, he’s probably going to fuck himself out of a significant amount of the potential total.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s probably not even 5%, but it was a part of the site that felt so strongly about their engagement that they preferred specific apps to use for that engagement. And we are seeing that evicting that small percentage had an huge effect on the quality of the place, providing the content that kept the rest engaged.

      I know people who are casual Reddit users and don’t care at all about the API access. But they can see that Reddit has jumped the shark. Content is far less interesting to them, so they are spending less time there.

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
    13·
    1 year ago

    Some of the communities that closed down in response to the API changes explicitly shifted to Discord

    Sigh

    Legitimately one of the most annoying things out of all of this is how so many tech writers have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to explaining the feelings and behavior of reddit communities. Like they don’t ever seem to interview anyone or ask direct questions to understand what is happening, they just take a cursory glance at comment threads and pinned posts, and assume they understand what’s going on. I can’t count how many articles I have read that get the facts about this whole situation right but still seem to completely misunderstand it.

    They did not “shift” to Discord, they used already established Discord channels in lieu of the subreddit, until the subreddit came back.

    Many subs already had parallel discord channels, but users don’t use one or the other, they use both. Because Discord is a fundamentally different kind of platform. It’s exactly the same way that many forums back in the day would also have chat rooms attached. Same community, using two different methods of online communication, at the same time, for different purposes. No one would ever have suggested IRC was equatable to a forum.

    All that happened was when the subs closed, users congregated in the Discord to stay connected. It was never going to be a new permanent home. They were not seeking a new home, that’s the critical part. I’ve seen very, very few people suggest Discord as a permanent replacement and if they are it gets shot down. They were simply waiting out the protest on Discord until they could go back to Reddit or, if an alternative showed up, go there. It was a bomb shelter.

    • InvaderDJ@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Didn’t /r/malefashionadvice explicitly close the subreddit and recommend everyone go to their Discord? I can’t check it now since I’m at work, but if I remember right, it is still closed with the mods saying they expect to be removed at any point.