STOP saying “fuck u/spez” START saying “FIRE STEVE HUFFMAN”
“fuck u/spez” means absolutely nothing to anyone who isn’t familiar with Reddit, it’s just noise.
“FIRE STEVE HUFFMAN” is a clear, actionable statement that has a clear target and goal and actually has meaning to people who don’t know what Reddit is (like say, a potential shareholder or investor)
Idk where to put this since r/savethirdpartyapps got banned so post this wherever will get noise if you agree
Lmao you sweet summer child. You think firing him will do shit? The company has cancer. They are trying to go public. Nothing is going to fix whats wrong with the company now. It's terminal.
This is how it goes.
Company makes good product.
Company goes public.
Company becomes shit.
Company dies.
Also, firing spez does nothing because this wasn’t spez’s decision.
If you look at the history of Reddit’s API, it had a fee until spez became CEO again and made it free. This was when the 3PA took off.
Being the CEO does not mean that you get to actually make major decisions for the company. Think of the CEO as the face of the board of directors. They are the ones that approve/deny major changes.
Why are we still sitting on this new platform talking about ways reddit can be saved?
What's happening to reddit is the end result of the sort of platform it is and the current state of the tech industry. With or without spez, its course is set, nothing we do will slow or reverse it.
Feels like maybe there's some younger people here that haven't gone through the death of a platform/site before. Us older social media folks have seen this time and time again, have had to migrate from self-destructing platform to self-destructing platform many times.
So take it from me: reddit is done. No matter what happens next, it is never recovering. There will be no reset button or rolling back anything. The damage is permanent, and the profit incentives run too deep.
I am so tired of this sentiment. You're not wrong about the corporate stuff, but blaming people for wanting it to get better serves no purpose. For all its flaws, Reddit had something that no other site, not even this one, has been able to remotely replicate. I didn't use the site for news, politics, memes, or mindless scrolling. I used it because it was literally the only place to discuss niche topics and interests.
Whether we like it or not, it's the only place where a lot of these niche communities exist. Users that were here since Digg will find a new home, but the one who can barely use a Macbook may not. And I'm all for helping as many of those communities migrate, but the truth is that for many communities, especially the ones less technically inclined, the death of Reddit means the death of that community, and that's really fucking sad.
Not in a way that's accessible to casual audiences. You can watch literally any show, and chances are there's a sub where you can go talk about it. That was not the case 10 years ago. Unless your show had a cult following, the only people to talk about it with were people you knew. I hope that someday we can turn this site into the same kind of thing, but we aint there yet.
Yes it was a bit of work to find niche subjects in the old days but it was all out there if you really cared. Having communities too accessible to casuals is both a blessing and a curse. Constant conversation is a great time killer but the quality of those conversations really suffers.
It is really a fine line between the two and I think federated social media could actually pull it off. Reddit has been shit for a long time and the API fallout, even though it had no direct impact on the way I used Reddit, was just the last straw. No point trying to save a dieing animal, sometimes the most difficult decision is for the best.
blaming people for wanting it to get better serves no purpose
Yeah. No one is doing that. We're blaming them for tolerating bullshit.
The users played every card they had and Reddit didn't move a fucking millimeter. If they had come up with absolutely any sort of compromise, you could have a decent argument. But Reddit has made it very clear that the only changes that are coming are the continued enshittification.
If users actually stopped contributing to the site, they would have no choice but to roll back the changes and come up with another solution. But not even a small fraction of the site's users slowed down for more than a couple of days.
I mean I agree with this part. That's why I'm commenting on this site and not the other one, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend the other one doesn't exist and that we don't care what's going on there. I agree that everyone should move here, but nevertheless, most of them aren't, and I cannot control that. The fact is that most people are not deep enough into the internet to make a pros and cons list of social media sites. They just use what other people use, or what pops up first on Google. We are neither of those things, and until we are, I have a vested interest in what happens at the other place.
Oh I was just informing people. A lot of people think that the CEO decides the direction of the company when that is rarely the case. I’ve been done with Reddit since June 11, I’m just here to watch it burn.
I really hope the fediverse is different. At the very least, that it can evolve in a way that we don't have these jarring "migrations". People can just move to a new platform that federates with the old one, and slowly/gradually move over to the better thing.
We weren't the customers. We were the content creators. We gave the site value that was then sold to advertisers, as the cost of keeping the platform running.
Thinking of platforms like reddit as businesses is the inherent problem in the first place. Running ads or having some premium features should only be for the purposes of maintaining the site. The second the people running it decide that it's time to start making profit for themselves is the moment it dies.
That's why I deleted all of my data before leaving. I'm not letting reddit keep my contributions to add to their value. I hope everyone here has done the same.
We need to just let reddit die as a sign to all other executives that their customers are the ones who hold the cards.
The same thing could have been said about Digg. They are too stupid. Companies start out small, and have stars in their eyes instead of money bags, and talk about how they want to be different and want to do good for the world. Then once they grow beyond a certain size, they became the same evil shit as any other corporation. It happens time and time again, and it will continue happening.
Nah mate it's what I say to americans that see basic political terms as cringe because america has turned their entire system into a politically illiterate joke. You'd probably get a culture shock if you saw me using the word comrade but if you came over here you'd find it is in common use in labour parties all over europe.
You didn't say comrade, or bourgeois. You said techbro ghouls and elite bougie prick. Then proceeded to slander me as a bootlicker despite me agreeing with your point.
Bougie is just shorthand for bourgeoisie you think I want to type that out every fucking time? Half the time I have to double take just to be sure I'm not spelling it wrong even after the 500,000th time writing it.
Worse/ bigger than just the board, even; with higher interest rates, investors are wanting more returns immediately, not just DAUs or some kind of proxy for future returns.
This is why all tech companies are becoming shittier and more expensive to the end-user (cf. Netflix cracking down on password sharing, Twitter (to some extent Muskrat’s entry there was a cover for him to dump money from Tesla without raising suspicion; itself necessary due to it struggling with the same issues in a high interest environment), Google’s anti-ad blocker attempts).
Reddit's API never had a fee, it was always free. Reddit was built in an era where there wasn't really much difference between an API and the HTML view you see, they both had the same backend code, with minor differences on the presentation layer.
RiF had some kind of agreement where they were paying Reddit actual money until shortly after Huffman became CEO. I don't think they were "paying for API access", but they were a third party app that generated revenue for Reddit until Huffman came along.
I assure you it was free, as I worked there in 2010-2011, and built many bots and tools using said api thereafter. I never paid a cent, and none of the people using my bots did either
There are three main good faith issues with respect to the API changes.
1: Existing moderation tools were shut down (but later re-enabled)
2: existing third party apps with better moderation tools and better moderation experiences were cut off unless they paid a large amount of money.
3: Spez sneered at the moderators protesting.
The flipside to each of those is:
1: The API features that enabled the moderation tools also enabled stalking and abuse (like, kids viewing porn, as an example)
2: some of the third party apps were blocking Reddit’s advertisements and running their own adverts, while making Reddit bear the costs (fuskering Reddit)
3: some of the people who have been running subreddits are, uh, the kind of people who fondly remember when Reddit hosted racist groups , who are annoyed or angry that Reddit now has expectations that they not set up “roach motel” subreddits to corner unsuspecting visitors to exploit / hives of harassment & abuse, and who are no longer content to just “watch Reddit die” - the crab bucket phenomenon. They’re not sour over the changes - they were already beyond sour and they are using this as a pretext to harass others.
That is why Reddit was forced to close down the API, for the good of the community.
There are three main good faith issues with respect to the API changes.
Hardly. First, there is zero good faith, and the proof is all around you. Whether you choose to be a sealion about it or not, like with the transcripts of Christian Selig's interactions with Steve Huffman, the January promise to 3PA devs that API status would remain unchanged, the "landed gentry" cracks, the killing of the antispam bots and other moderator tools that were built outside Reddit because Reddit never would, the open lies to and about mods and subs participating in the protests, the shitty and inadequate kludged-together "mod tools" Reddit has shat out over the last three weeks with nothing but promises to replace the rest, and ALLLLLLL the broken promises not just over the years, but over the last month, the proof of zero good faith is all around you . . . and exists in countless iterations and interactions that Reddit can no longer control. But here you are, trying just the same.
And those zero-faith situations, forgetting everything else and speaking solely in regard to the API defrauding of 3rd part app devs, FAR outnumber this arbitrary "three" you pulled out of your ass. Why you even bothered, I have no idea.
Someone else brought up the Rif profitsharing that Spez put an end to several years ago which flatly puts the lie to your claim about ads, but another big one, the one that was the decider for me personally, that you didn't even touch was how the exorbitant API pricing affected the disabled and visually impaired users of Reddit, not just the blind but anyone needing assistive technology or the help of the Transcribers of Reddit, etc, and how to this day none of the YEARS of empty promises of accessibility have ever been fulfilled by Reddit, Inc or its board.
Many of us know what goes into a site that is actually committed to accessibility. Reddit doesn't even come close. I don't want anything to do with a company or a community that "otherizes" its less mainstream users, or makes life even harder for those who need a little more help than average to do well. But don't take my word for it. Take theirs:
the kind of people who fondly remember when Reddit hosted racist groups
Reddit, and /u/spez, have actively embraced and protected everything from r/jailbait to r/fatpeoplehate to r/coontown to r/T_D. Are you forgetting which sub Spez was editing comments in back in 2016, and why? It was T_D, and he was there as an active participant. If Reddit was ever a "roach motel," it was because admin failed to act on the COUNTLESS times hate and bad actors were called to their attention, and still does to this day. It is not only extremely disingenuous, but outright insulting, that you would throw out that shredded rag of lies as another "good faith issue" when the truth is that historically, across the board, Reddit has done absolutely nothing to stop hate and illegal acts (like CSAM) UNTIL it was called out in the media, and that is their practice even now. Why does anyone need to remember anything? No need, it's all STILL there, and will never not be there until Reddit gets called out on it . . . again.
"Three main good faith issues," ha. Dude, you moderate 39 subs. I've read a number of your posts on the moderator subs spouting known and provable falsehoods about the recent actions of Reddit, you've made it easy for anyone wanting to check the veracity of that statement by using the same username on both sites, and to be absolutely, brutally blunt about this: even if there were in some alternate universe a "good faith" argument to be made on behalf of the recent words and actions of Reddit, Inc. you are not the one to make it.
I get accused of being a "Powermod" because I do a lot of grunt moderation work on a lot of large, active subreddits -- and network with a lot of other moderators who are accused of being "powermods". Most of what I do is "serious" about moderation, and I'm considered the "knurd" of the group.
The only way I can imagine that Apollo would be charged premium firehose api access is if Apollo was being a man-in-the-middle between Reddit’s servers and their user base — if Apollo was running a server, which server was authenticating as the users, and then the Apollo server was sending material back to the phone/tablet client app.
Which … should not be happening, for oh-so-many reasons.
For one, if Apollo is doing that to remove Reddit’s advertisements and/or insert their own advertisements … that would be shenanigans.
If Apollo is store-and-forwarding user data — are they complying with California user privacy & GDPR requirements?
etc etc etc
If I’m using a third party app to access Reddit, I do not expect that the API calls made by the app to go through the app publisher’s systems.
So I’m really not grokking how this state of affairs is a crisis for a third party app publisher, unless the third party app publisher architected their app in a completely upside down fashion, or is pulling some sort of MITM shenanigans, or the publisher completely misunderstands what the changes to the API will mean.
crisis
krī′sĭs
noun
A crucial or decisive point or situation, especially a difficult or unstable situation involving an impending change.
Interesting choice of words there. It's a crisis because Reddit fraudulently and deliberately made it one, and destroyed a lot of people's work created over a lot of years in doing so. Not just devs and their employees, but good mods and most importantly, users.
Every single dishonest point you raise is something addressed during a working relationship, not after. And since when is Reddit legally responsible for what any third party has done with its access to the data from the very beginning (clue: it's not).
3PA devs tried to work with Reddit, were led to believe the relationship was satisfactory, and then had it all pulled out from under them with less than 30 days notice.
There are so many untruths in your reply it's not worth bothering with; it's a list of squirrels. "Squirrel!"
Yeah, no. And of course, you didn't touch on any of the real issues, at all, not even to lie about them, so thank you for that tacit acknowledgement anyway.
In short, “where’s the fettucine?”
Gone. Enjoy your fake MDAUs and your spambots.
I get accused of being a “Powermod” because I do a lot of grunt moderation work on a lot of large, active subreddits – and network with a lot of other moderators who are accused of being “powermods”. Most of what I do is “serious” about moderation, and I’m considered the “knurd” of the group.
LOL. I had a look over in r/ModSupport where you spend a good bit of your time. Among the sea of new scabs who don't know how to sticky a comment, some real gems popped up:
A technique that I picked up from @AlexandraErin on Twitter, is reminding people:
"Imagine that you have walked into a restaurant, and there are people seated around a table. You would like to join the conversation they're having; Conduct yourself accordingly."
It's remarkably effective for distinguishing between Good Faith and Bad Faith behaviour, in the minds of users, and in the minds of moderators. "Would this be acceptable behaviour if I were joining a table of people at a restaurant?".
You are clearly a harasser operating in bad faith.
If you like. But I'm not the one chasing after those who left Reddit with a pack of lies and an agenda to sell; I'm just one of those looking at it, and you, in the rearview.
Which is to point out that you are here, in an "ex-pat" Lemmy community dedicated to the subject of Reddit, spouting provable falsehoods to those who have already left Reddit as though it makes any difference at all. Reddit is in its death throes and I'm not coming back.
Project all you like, but I didn't come to Reddit to falsely defend Lemmy to you. The reality of Reddit's actions speaks for itself. And at this point in my life, living in my shoes is a privilege and an honor. I rest easy. Have a nice day.
For me, it would more be about spez getting fucked and not being able to profit from the IPO. Couldn't really care less what happens to reddit at this point, but it would be nice if Steve Huffman got shafted as consequence for his greedy behavior.
And I'm sure if the two guys who actually made the site were still there, they'd have just rolled over and completely killed the spirit of the thing they put their heart and soul into, just because some Chinese holding company wants to increase profits next quarter...
Do you think he's the end of the line? It doesn't matter who's in his position, they'll be making the same choices he does, because he answers to the shareholders.
Nah, I know he's not the end of the line. Reddit is dead to me regardless, it's not like I'd go back if Huffman left. It's more just about seeing him fail as a direct result of the stupid decisions he made so smugly.
Yeah, it doesn't matter if they hire another CEO or put another board in charge. The outcome will remain the same. They're trying to IPO, get their cash, and then from then on, they'll be bending over for investors.
Reddit as we knew it is long gone. Its time to move on.
Why there’s always the top comment in any kind of protest with a Sweet summer child already giving up at the start?
I heard this is a very American thing and I would suggest you guys to change that attitude and start fighting for your rights for once. If you keep all giving up your rights will be eaten by the corporations even further.
I agree, but more just trying to move the meaningless into something meaningful. Reddits gonna die most likely because capital is gonna capital. But at the very least this dickwad could go, he’s an asshole, and the company would be marginally better without him, and idk karma would be nice if it was possible no?
I agree that it would be nice if Huffman got the boot, but I think it wouldn’t be good to let the other managing scumbags say, “hey, big scumbag gone, no one here but us Good Guys(TM),” which might be what they’re already planning to do.
It isn’t meaningful. It’s just picking one fall guy for your ire, and not coincidentally it’s the only Reddit executive anyone knows. Just leave the site if you don’t like the direction the Board is taking the company. Otherwise you’re still driving their user engagement numbers.