Steve Huffman, the Reddit CEO, told NBC News in an interview that a user protest on the site this week is led by a minority of moderators and doesn’t have wide support.
In the interview, Huffman also praised the cost-cutting by Twitter owner Elon Musk, calling the reduced headcount there an example of how a social media site can be without the massive revenue of a company like Google.
He’s repurposing leftist talking points into a pro-corporatist clusterfuck as an attempt at populism. He knows that there are a fair number of people and communities on Reddit that will be overall supportive of these politics.
The idea is to get people thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that term before, it’s bad! And yeah, I’ve dealt with power-tripping mods before, so it must be true!” If they haven’t been paying attention to the finer points of the news around this (blackmail claims on C. Selig, gaslighting about 3rd party apps not wanting to work w/ Reddit, etc.), then this may be enough to get some people on Reddit, Inc.’s side. It worked for some people with Trump, for others with Musk, and with Huffman’s recent praise of Musk’s managerial style…
I don't know if using metaphors where the logical extension of mods being landed gentry is your product being a feudal kingdom, you the king, and the users the peasants is necessarily all that clever of a quote to start spreading around.
The fact that he keeps making comments at all is so weird to me. Like he is truly terrible at PR. Every time he opens his mouth the situation gets worse for him.
ya my immediate reaction was "wow, how tone deaf." It's pretty clear to me that this clown is just repackaging the same talking points the VCs are using to influence his weak-minded ass.
When a tree dies, it dies slowly. The heart of it rots, and then the roots stop growing, and only much later do the branches stop growing new green leaves. By the time the whole trunk falls over, there've been raccoons burrowing into the rotten heartwood for years.
If I can't win I'll make my own rules...Jesus guy just admit you were wrong.
Side note, did anyone see how /r/Pics handled this after they opened back up because it was beautiful. Around 2300 users voted to open /r/Pics again and 37k users voted to keep protesting in their own special way.
Did you see that they removed the top level mod of /r/Piracy and was looking for a new one? Soooo they support piracy now? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35555
I think that goes for all authoritarians really, I mean, post WW2 east Germany was the German Democratic Republic, which was anything but democratic under Soviet occupation. Fascists for sure, but don't think authoritarian communists don't use the same playbook.
While I definitely think it's a bad idea to closely equate the two. You are not that wrong. Fascists are far worse. But authoritarians in general are not desirable. When those in control of absolute power feel threatened for their power the well-being of those underneath them goes out the window. It's how you get waves of genocide under fascists. And dissenters under authoritarian leninist communism shooting themselves in the back of the head three times or falling out of the window backwards onto bullets.
Democracy for the volunteers while Spez maintains the "landed gentry" only for himself. This shithead's lack of self awareness would be comically stupid if it were in any way comical.
Also I can't believe he doesn't see how problematic voting for mod privileges can be. There's a reason reddit has refused to allow users to vote out moderators in the past. If you allow voting, you allow outsidebrigadier, astroturfing, and also just petty mod squabbling. The solution reddit has always offered in the past was "create your own new subreddit for the idea you want and then get people to come over to it". In general it's worked. The existence of r/pics hasn't disallowed other picture-based subreddits from flourishing, same with r/funny and, well, actually funny subs.
Allowing votes on moderation just opens reddit up to a lot of shenanigans that I don't think the admin team is ready for.
So part of the issue with this "democracy" idea and making it easier to vote out mods is that Huffman has literally been found guilty of changing comments.
That, along with the fact that we can't trust reddit to not chime in with false accounts to swing the vote make me dubious that it would work.
I'll start believing in Reddit's commitment to direct democracy when users will be able to also vote out admins and u/spez if they don't like their decisions.
Until then, it's just corporatism under the guise of some fluffy words.
It's like when you let kids vote on what to do for the school faire.
Not only will the teacher and school change the result if they don't like the winning suggestion, you also can't vote to do nothing or protest the event
It's just a way to give you the illusion of autonomy to boost engagement. It's only a choice between the decisions they find (more or less) equally acceptable
Ya I'm honestly getting better more thought provoking content here and stuff I'd never scroll past on reddit cause you have to really narrow your interests down cause how much there is. So I'm learning new stuff.
After seeing what r/pics and r/gifs are doing I doubt voting would work out in his favor anyway. A surprising about of the user base is behind the protest.
It’s just a matter of migrating them to a new platform. Lemmy has a small learning curve, but unfortunately it’s enough to turn off a lot of users. Hopefully with the influx of users, someone smarter than me can figure out how to streamline the user experience here.
“I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”
How ominous. This was an interview excerpt, so I have no way of verifiably knowing what Huffman looked like as he said this... but I'm fairly confident that he must have been rubbing his hands together and salivating as his pupils slowly morphed into dollar signs.
As I go back there now after the protest, I find reddits' content less and less interesting. I used to be able to lose hours on there, now I get bored after 5 minutes and get back to lemmy. It'll keep on existing, but here's hoping many more mainstream and non-techy users like me found the fediverse and know there's valid alternatives now.
Some part of our brains knew we were losing the real people. It hasn't felt right there in awhile. I wonder how many bots we were talking to thinking they weren't.
I've commented more this week than the past year on there.
Tell me about it! I swear they have been making adjustments to their algorithms for the past months year.
Before thee protest, I've been getting increasingly annoyed at the content Reddit decides to show me. The subs I chose to follow are all great and often offer something engaging in the best ways possible, and finding a good piece of content there has never been an issue... expect for the past time, where I got what felt like pre-digested and advertiser-friendly posts that I was supposed to maybe vote on and keep scrolling.
I understand that business is about money, but seeing tech largely following the same practices and strategies just to keep pumping cash for execs to liquidate is so mind-numbing and obnoxious. That's gonna sound stupid, but sometimes I wish the tech people would just kick the finance people out of the field and do their own thing, which is what the average people like, too, simply because that's the conditions when really cool and enjoyable shit is born.
Or maybe we all should just collectively pile up some cash buy some land, build ourselves a self-sustainable settlement and get away from the hungry execs.
The fact that I never saw any content from /r/switchhacks on my feed despite having been subscribed for years led me to believe that Nintendo had had a "discussion" with Reddit and they complied.
I went back there for like 3 minutes today and found myself getting angry at some stupid argument that didn't matter to me really but still got to me. I don't need that, I got enough irl. Lemmy et al. ain't perfect, but at least it's not that shithole.
I honestly found myself browsing Facebook more and more over the past several months, rather than Reddit. It just wasn't holding my interest like it used to. I was a Reddit user from summer '07 until June 11th, 2023, but the switch to the fediverse was easy. I've really enjoyed the last few days here.
Like I give a fuck anyway, reddit is dead to me now. Died a long time ago when my front page, even advice animals, got clogged with political and mediocre posts.
Is anyone else really entertained at this point by watching this pompus asshat's arrogance single-handledly dismantling the pretty solid reputation Reddit has as a social media platform? It's like I blink and he thinks "hmm, how can I say something worse to show everyone how strong and powerful I am?"
I mean if Reddit's going to go down, may as well go down in the most spectacular self-emulation possible. Solid alternatives are already formed and off to the races. Go off my guy.
He just need to hold it together long enough for the IPO. Catch his pay day, and then Reddit can die for all /u/Spez cares about the rotting husk he'll leave behind. Fuck him.
I won't lie, I'm kind of annoyed by the fact that the most active posts here are talking about reddit. Even so, here I am contributing to the "problem"
Don't even need to be that hardcore, just have some self respect. Spez made it clear what he thinks of mods and users. If you don't draw a line here they will just make the "peasants" eat more and more shit in the future.
Does this dude even use reddit? The proper response on reddit to users not agreeing with mods is to start their own sub to fill the void. That's what happened with r/animetitties. But guess what - no one is doing that because we all don't want to see these changes. Sorry to vent more about this loser, but c'mon man.
In the smallish sub I mod (~300k subs) the mods are discussing what to do. One will step down regardless of what happens. One is trying to migrate us to Lemmy, and the others have not made up their minds. From the outside it still looks like it's business as usual though.
Did anybody else lose the ability to report? I guess that's why I got a week ban for "report abuse" even though the linked report was agreed with and actioned by Reddit, they're starting to take down anyone flagging the Christoterroism shit since Spez has allied up with Musk.