Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's letter to Reddit employees in response to blackout
Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.
There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.
While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations.
Again, we'll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.
Hey! I'm keeping this as it's sharing knowledge with new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.
Same! The mood here reminds me of the good old days when everyone on Reddit wasn't a cynical asshole.
It really was getting bad over there. People were apt to take nearly anything you shared and fill in the blanks with their own imaginary context, then get angry and/or confrontational over it. For example, one of my last interactions was about an elderly uncle of mine who suffered from burns all over his body and gave up living after 50+ days of agony. A sad story with no purpose other than to convey the sad nature of these injuries. Hop on the next morning to find that a guy was berating me, all but certain I was somehow angry that my uncle gave up after 50 days of absolute fucking agony, and assuming I would have preferred the man just suck it up or something. I didn't know what to offer this person other than a good old fashioned "What the fuck are you talking about?"
This type of thing was becoming more and more commonplace. Just angry people expecting and assuming the worst of everyone else. If it wasn't some shitty take on an otherwise innocent post, it was unprovoked outrage over my username, even if absolutely nothing in my conduct or post history stands to suggest I'm pro-Stalin, pro-fascist, or pro-Soviet.
I’m fully committed regardless of how good the replacement is. I paid for Reddit premium every month since 2016 to try and support the thing I loved. I gave out 65+ gold before premium to also support a thing a loved.
I cancelled premium after the AMA and deleted Apollo. No going back period.
This might be why they have not seen a monetary hit yet, it won't be until people's premium cancellations hit that Reddit will see a cash flow issue.
The Humanist Report on YouTube lost monetization last month and he slowly saw his subscriber count drop day by day as people's subscriptions got canceled instead of renewed after 31 days he was somehow still at 9 subscribers. Fortunately he did a video and called out YouTube and people went on his patreon to fund him instead of him relying at all on YouTube. He got monetization back but you can never trust YouTube to not screw people.
Same here. This morning I've removed my ten years worth of content from Reddit as I don't want them to even generate the slightest bit of revenue from it, removed my account and do not feel bad about it in the slightest.
I'm done with the way Reddit handles the community feedback and done with the "don't you dare to have a differing opinion or we'll downvote to oblivion" mentality that prevailed in a number of subreddits.
I deleted 15 years of comments last week. Nothing too valuable lost but it's definitely the end of an era. Looking forward to something new and not corporate owned.
I deleted one 11 year account and 3 three year accounts. The amount of absolute repeat garbage bots on all my homepage, and throughout popular was so bad, it just became Facebook, but angrier.
Is there a fast way to delete comments? I found a nuke Reddit extension but only for chrome and it only did posts. I have a shit ton of comments out there still.
I'm not sure how many users will actually stay away. But if even a small fraction of the mods for these big subs stay away Reddit's gonna have a problem.
Lemmy will pull some mods away, traditional forums will pull some away, and that could really hurt.
However, only time will tell if that ends up happening.
Reddit is already due for a problem regardless of what the mods decide to do. Bots are no longer going to be a thing thus multiplying the work required for a mod by an unknown factor
Yeah many people don't really realize just how bad it is when moderators leave, especially for a platform like Reddit where the mods are unpaid volunteers. On a different platform where they pay moderators they could just hire new ones, but with Reddit currently hemorrhaging money they are very much not going to be able to hire brand new moderators for every mainline sub.
Plus you have to account for the fact that while there are people who might be able to take their place now that number will quickly diminish I say become swamped with work and lack the proper tools to do decent moderation. It does not bode well for Reddit's future.
Yeah I agree, honestly I just get real sick of corporate assholes and get unreasonably angry, so I don't want to "give-in". I've been going back on RIF to spread word of Lemmy to see what I can do, but come July 1st, that won't really be an option anymore since I'll have to navigate through their ad-ridden app and will eventually give them money.
Honestly I'm just waiting to see if short story communities move over. I liked to pass the time reading things like nosleep stories, and if those communities move over here I'll delete Boost and only use Lemmy, but so far I haven't seen much.
I’m so glad to not see ads all over the place. I’m also glad to not see low-level top comments; so far the conversations have been of higher quality, they’re more thought-out. I haven’t been back to Reddit since Monday, and although it’s been a learning curve and a little tough without the amount of content, I’m enjoying lemmy quite a bit.
TBH i didn't know there's something like lemmy in the fediverse before reddit did what they did to shut down subreddits.
But I'm really glad that they did this and that I found lemmy because of it. The whole tech behind it and the decentralization is very fascinating and I'm happy that I can see how it all will evolve over time, hopefully keeping the imo very good and positive course. :)
Maybe I'll look at reddit every now and then, but at least my intention is to stay here and use lemmy more often than reddit. ^-^
I think I'll comment here but mainly lurk there at times. It's still good if I'm looking for something that has to do with my hobbies, unless this booms than that will change things.
Honestly there's nothing reddit offered me that I wasn't already finding on my own. Maybe I'm in the minority but I would rarely search reddit specifically for info as it often got me unanswered threads or nothing specific to my situation or need. I usually figure out most of my own stuff so my needs are very specific.
Tbf, those irrational people do definitely exist. Not that they represent the majority or anything, but even one isolated attack would be a big problem (obviously), so I agree it's best to be on the safe side there.
Oh wow, reading it summarized in your three points instantly reminded me of the behaviour of an emotional abuser. The last one specially hits hard, classic bully telling it's actually the bullied one.
He is delusional or triying to scare the poor Snoos. If anyone is angry about this and looking for a face to punch they have a clear target and is not some dude with a reddit t-shirt.
They are looking for a suit, no tie, popped up collar wearing, venture capital dudebro looking, jailbait ex-moderating, failure of a CEO.
Yup. He made the mods and users the bad guys and he is just trying to be the good guy. He's a dick, probably a narcissist, too. He's the victim, blah blah blah.
Those little Snoos. That company is like a family. A bunch of rockstars. How could those evil mods and users do this to them?!
Yeah this is why I think the 48 hour time limit is unfortunate. I don't think it's going to have much long term effect, and the only real difference is going dark indefinitely until demands are met or just migrating elsewhere.
Thing is, ultimately people do have a choice as to whether they want to continue using Reddit without third-party apps.
I agree that regardless of any blackouts, Reddit will be fine in the end - most people simply don't mind using a Facebook-ified version of Reddit, and that's fine.
My hope isn't that Reddit will fall, it's that alternatives (like Lemmy) will rise, for those of us that do care about these issues.
There is a list of 300+ subs that are staying dark indefinitely. Some have tens of millions of subs. I expect that list will grow as more of this stuff comes out.
That little quip at the end implying that they could be targeted in public over this, with the intention to have journalists write as if we are flying off the handle.
This isn't Rick & Morty's szechuan sauce crowd, these are the moderators and content creators of the website. We are peacefully protesting his poor conduct.
The worst that's happened is that he's had some memes made about him and himself alone.
I suspect that the fact that he had to call out that they are not seeing any significant revenue impact probably means that they actually are seeing an impact.
Yeah, there's no way they aren't seeing an impact of our actions between people canceling Premium and reduced ad impressions because of the private subs.
He's projecting confidence because he wants us to think we're not having any effect on them and come back.
The memo as a whole is encouraging employees to keep working and not lose faith or get scared; that part is telling them that they're not going to get laid off due to declining revenues.
Of course it's all BS, businesses can't predict the future, but I'd agree that advertisers and subscribers didn't suddenly cancel en masse. It'll take more action to see effects there.
Hasn't he also stated Reddit is not generating a profit? Which has got to be another obvious lie, seeing as how long they've operated and how massive their site is.
Judging by other high-profile people who do something that people don't like, he's probably getting a fair amount of death threats so is feeling the hostility. Not sure why he thinks the average employee would be targeted though.
So far I'm not disappointed moving to lemmy. The only thing I haven't found yet is an equivalence to oddly satisfying but I'm sure it'll pop up someday
I am still wondering where all the cat picture communities are. Like cute animal pictures. That is pretty much the only thing that keeps my wife hooked on Reddit.
Looking at this thread in r/technology, it sure looks like most of the newer Redditors were just pissed by the blackout and don’t care about Reddit’s changes. That suggests to me that Reddit is beyond saving.
The way people bow and worship at the feet of billion dollar companies will never cease to amaze me.
A long time ago, back when getting a Gmail address required an invite, I was a big Google fan. They were doing some awesome stuff, and i didn't know much online privacy.
As I got older, and I started learning stuff, I became less and less of a Google fan, and now I avoid them and advocate for others to do so as well.
The abusive relationship people have with megacorps is just... SMH.
Tbf the people that are currently using reddit( and responding) probably care less than the people that actually left/boycotting it ( and they wouldnt be there to voice their opinions)
I also read lots of comments saying that the official app works so don't we share feedbacks to the official team and improve it instead. They never get it. We want to make our own choices of which app to use. Not to be forced to use the only app the official approves!
No matter what this guy says or does, millions have switched to Lemmy not only is it like reddit, its better, its what reddit used to be.
Now, all will calm down for reddit but the boat started to leak and many will not go back. Just like many didn't go back to twitter. We will see a slow and steady increase of fediverse activity.
Not to put a damper on, but it's more like 50k who started posting on lemmy in the past week for a total of 110k. We basically doubled the user count, but still are an order of magnitude away from 1 million.
Well, maybe the 1000000 contained a bit of marketing but the point is that many of the people discussing this here probably didn't know Lemmy existed 3 weeks ago and that number will only increase. There is nothing that can stop the fediverse from eventually overtaking everything else as its not a single entity. Also, growth may not be exclusive either, its not required for reddit to fail so that fedi can succeed. They can coexist.
Yeah I think Lemmy still has a lot of wrinkles to iron out before we can even say "close to", but hey, everything's gotta start somewhere. Here's hoping.
The only thing I'd go back for is to lurk r/FreeGameFindings. I definitely won't be posting anywhere though. I'd rather contribute to a site that respects me.
A lot of this just feels like CEO talk. Obviously they do not want to back down but if enough big subs stay off then they might have to change course. I'm worried about the people who are addicted to reddit.
This shows they aren't gonna back down. If big subreddit s stay blacked out, the mod teams will be replaced. Spez seems super salty that Apollo and others have been able to turn a profit, but after all this time he still hasn't been able to make reddit money.
He hasn't been able to make reddit money because he's trying to turn a great platform into a chimera made out of the worst features of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok
"The most important things right now are to stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward"
How can people write shit like that and not realize that look like a knob
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far
As long as this is true zero fucks will be given.
This pains me as someone who worked in a customer-facing role at a software company. You're at work getting your ass kicked and leadership just shrugs and says it's ok because we're still making money.
You’re at work getting your ass kicked and leadership just shrugs and says it’s ok because we’re still making money.
In my case I was the software developer trying to make the best tool for our users only for management to force us to add more data collection and ways to squeeze a bit more money out of our customers. Profits went up, so it was "a success" and more was planned.
Now I work for the government, trying to make things better for citizens instead of share holders. Feels alot better.
Sorry for replying with a rant; it forced itself out of me.
such things take time, i doubt that many of their clients are making orders and paying on 24h cycle.
even if they did feel some impact, it would be utterly stupid to publicly admit that. (almost as stupid as announcing strike with an end-date, effectively telling the other party "all you have to do is to ignore us for 48 hours".)
I don’t know if I’d take his word at face value. This reads like he’s talking to potential investors, not Reddit’s user base. Of course he’d want to assure them that everything is okay and they should still give him money.
It's an internal message to employees of Reddit. As someone who's been in the corporate world for a long time, I've seen some variation of this message many times. Economic downturn, bad press, low sales, losing expected incoming cash... there are a lot of catalysts for this style of message.
Most messages we're seeing are from users, who want Reddit to crash and burn or just do what the masses want, or whatever. But, on the other side is a bunch of people who may be worried about how this whole thing will affect their livelihood. Even if Reddit stays up another 20 years and not everyone loses their job, what scale will it be? Will Reddit fire some amount of their workforce to make up for lost income? Will I be someone who gets fired?
These are the thoughts that this message is intended to address.
I don't think a larger timeline would have been accepted as easily, 48hrs was very approachable and will result it many subs continuing after having ripped the bandaid off.
"As of Wednesday morning, more than 6,000 subreddits remained inaccessible and in private mode after what began as a two-day voluntary shutdown. The blackout includes popular forums such as r/aww, r/videos and r/music, each of which claims more than 25 million subscribers on the platform. "
I believe there's going to be a moderator exodus. The flippancy with which Steve has handled this, and how he responded here, is going to stick in the craws of their enormous unpaid workforce. These are the people who have been there a decade plus, have seen the ebbs and flows, and are probably no longer willing to be unpaid servants to their clearly demonstrated monetary interests (at the expense of its users [product]). This was a turning point. They have way bigger problems to address than a 48 hour boycott.
Plenty of them will do that simply because they are currently using 3rd party apps, bots and other tools to moderate and won't be able to do it nearly as efficiently afterwards. The people at Reddit seem to have very weird idea of the value of their userbase, where they just look at the huge lurker mass and somehow completely ignore that without mods and content creators, there isn't anything for them to consume.
The question I've always wondered is... how many mods are already paid? Not by reddit, but by other media companies that pay them specifically to tilt the scales and suppress or promote particular viewpoints. Those people will want to remain part of the community - so supporting the blackout, but also if their paycheck comes from having power on reddit, they will also support reopening.
They are either going to have to hire a ton of paid moderators or shut down every non-default sub. The former will be very expensive and the latter will kill the only good thing reddit has going for it.
Between this and the fact that r/AdviceAnimals is apparently back with Reddit moderators, I think Reddit will go on. They own everything and can re-open every subreddit whenever they want. Many of the more technical/informed Reddit users will remain absent from the site but the bulk of casual users will likely remain. Whether the content that's left will satisfy them remains to be seen.
I'm OK with that. I don't need a "forum" with 500 mio users. I need one with 100k.
That is enough users to get subject matter experts from most fields and lively discussions on most topics.
When the userbase grows too much it just gets crowded and only the washed popular bullshit gets through.
I dont know if we have to wait that long. We have seen how a shake-up in some mod structures has changed the quality of a subreddit. Imagine that over multiple big subreddits. It could go really fast within a year.
True, but I still want to take it with stride that he's acknowledging there's something to lose. I don't think the ship can be necessarily saved (because of the all powerful shareholder), and that sucks. But I am feeling a small amount of schadenfreude for the situation.
I would love to watch reddit crash and burn, and for smeg-spez to get fired. But I'm mentally prepared for them to linger on for years and maybe even be profitable as they hang on to the countless dumb-dumbs who just don't know anything more than mindlessly scrolling through endless ads.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can still move on and enjoy what we're building to replace reddit in our daily routine, even if we can't make reddit itself go away like it should.
Unfortunately from what I've seen on big gaming subs is that enough users simply don't care. Take a look at /r/rocketleague for example. Mods made a post saying they can't permanently black out the sub due to it being owned by psyonix and the top comment on that thread has hundreds of up votes and comments saying they don't care about the API changes. It's really that mentality of "I don't care unless I'm personally affected" is why we're in this mess to begin with!
The sad thing is they are personally affected, they're just too damn ignorant to know. Even worse, they cling to their ignorance, which is frankly the worst sin a human being can commit.
I wonder how many of them use a 3rd party app and just don't understand what's about to happen. Or they use a 3rd party app and don't even realize it's 3rd party because they installed it ages ago from the phone store and to them it's just "reddit".
And some of them of course, use the horrible default app and are OK with it.
Honestly at this point, if those folks get stuck in the internet void...I don't think it's a big loss.
A lot of sudreddits are vowing to go dark indefinitely in response to this it looks like. Many were already, but the official position on /r/ModCoord is an indefinite blackout for all but critically important subs.
There's reads really passive aggressive. It clearly wasn't intended to actually say anything meaningful to staff but rather something for 1. media that pickup on (won't anyone think of the poor people attacked for wearing Reddit gear in public!), 2. appeasement of potential investors ahead of the IPO (our bottom line is rock solid folks, thousands of subs gone and no impact on profits!) and 3. an unsubtle dig at and gaslighting of people participating in the blackout (fools! This won't last, you'll all come crawling back and this doesn't affect many subs anyway!).
Spez just keeps doubling down on the Streisand Effect. Challenge accepted arsehole.
I notice he says about a thousand when the article cites closer to 8,000 subs going dark. This is probably the closest they’ll get to admitting the protest did anything at all to Reddit.
I hope this response further pisses off the subs who decided to do a fixed time blackout. The user base cannot be taken for granted. Reddit is only good as the content and the creators along with the mods.
Honestly, whatever Reddit does at this point doesn't matter. Lemmy works decently and for all else, why not try using something different? The internet is a bigger place than it seems. I prefer touching grass to wasting any more time thinking about Reddit.
I'm over the internet being Reddit Twitter Facebook YouTube. Since avoiding Reddit, deleting Facebook and hating twitter I'm actually visiting websites again.
lemmy may be inconvenient or kinda weird imo, but who cares. reddit is lame with them shutting down RiF so fuck em, i could do with less CoNtEnT i guess.
plus it is kinda fun to figure it out. havent had something like this on the net in a while for myself. forgot that sometimes being a netizen is work
"In an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.
The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, is in response to popular subreddits going dark this week in protest of the company’s increased API pricing for third-party apps. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year. More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday, some have said they’ll stay private indefinitely until Reddit makes changes..."
In conversation with a few others? At the prices they were talking about no one will use it. It was something like hundreds of dollars per year per user to reddit.
They are happy to make concessions for the 3PAs that are providing something they need and can't replace right now. But be certain that those 3PAs will be killed off the very moment they're no longer needed.
Absolutely. This is a power grab and nothing more. They will come for those apps next.
I was trying to stress the importance of this to a friend but he doesn't mind using the official Reddit app. I told him that they're coming for old reddit.com next and he got quiet. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.
meaning: the users are our enemy and they hate us....
No Steve, we just hate management, that's who better not wear reddit gear in public... Not the rank and file who don't make the braindead decisions that kill platforms.
Loads of (but not only) tech companies give their employees stuff like umbrellas, backpacks, water bottles where sure you could buy your own but really why bother when you've been given something for free, usually that's pretty good quality, that works.
Sometimes you'll also get actually good clothes that are way beyond "free tshirt" quality as well, eg. I did a placement at a wind turbine manufacturer where all the permanent employees got really nice waterproof gear that was better than the stuff I have as someone who goes hiking fairly regularly, but I don't think that's so much of a tech company thing as probably about 75% of the people working at that company are expected to be outside in the rain on a windfarm, which is exposed to the elements by design, at least once in their career. They didn't have to provide such good kit and certainly not to people working in HR, IT etc. but they did anyway.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public.
Lol, good ole fearmongering.
Also,
The only long term solution is improving our product
Loading shit with ads is hardly improving it. I mean it will make you more money, and thats all that matters under this shitty system of ours, but thats still not improving.
Reddit is going to be a ghost town in a few months at this rate. If they wanted to push the website and app so hard, why not just make using a client a premium feature and charge for it? Give the users the option. Instead they had to go the worst route possible with this.
I wish I could share your confidence, but it's surprising how eager the average person is to let garbage be shoved down their throat before they're willing to change their habits. Just look at twitter, a complete dumpster fire that still has a huge amount of traffic.
I'm willing to bet the large majority of those who simply browse reddit doesn't really care about the whole API shitshow, hell they were probably already using the official app in the first place.
This whole statement strikes me as tone-deaf. They want to "ship" the product, but the product is just removing accessibility. It literally makes the platform worse.
I work on a corporate team and often companies will allow team members to wear anything to work as long as it’s branded. This, employees have an incentive to spend that money to customize their look at work, if that’s important to them. It is to some people.
My company has a code that brings all items down to cost, and I have bought some uniform items that way to mix up what I wear at work.
The company that I work for is a small business with a great local reputation; wearing my company’s logo is a positive for me. Can’t say that would be the case if I worked for Reddit.
All I can say is that for every person voicing their opinion and leaving by making a scene, there are many more of us just silently deleting our comments and posts and just disappearing from reddit. Those are the ones reddit should be concerned about.
Agreed, I've just stopped logging in. I'm not even going to bother deleting posts but I've moved. There's no hope I'm gonna start using the official Reddit app.
I do miss a few subreddits but Lemmy has plenty to keep me busy during my toilet breaks.
What are those subreddits? Maybe there should be a "lemmy community wishlist" community for reddfugees to see about getting conversations rolling. I know I have a few
That's what I did. Deleted all of my 8 years or so of posts and left the account there. Won't delete it yet but not really using it anymore. This fediverse thing is pretty cool.
As a fellow Reddit transfer, so far it feels like it has! There’s a couple of subs that where quite important to me so I’m hoping I can track them down on here, or get them up and going!
A majority will return. But the seed has been sown now. Everything Reddit does to suppress free speech will be highlighted. Every unwarranted punishment will be seen as big brother imprinting its opinion. Reddit is now seen as the bad guy, and people love to see bad guys get their comeuppance.
I for one will do my utmost to avoid reddit. I will never make an account or add content there again. I relied mostly on Reddit for political news. The UK media is terrible as we know.
That statement is eerily like what people like me said when we left reddit over a decade ago. I like your moral enthusiasm, but I think your faith in the morality of other people are misplaced.
I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see, maybe this time...
I just hope Meta doesn't get it's claws into activitypub at the roots. The whole point of this thing is to avoid corporate domination and I don't want them to turn it into a charade.
I don’t think its a bad thing tbh as long as it is in the fediverse. Think of it as email. Google, Microsoft and many others are in the game but email stays the same