2y ago

Slate article: "How CEO Steve Huffman went from being Reddit's co-founder to its much-needed savior at a difficult moment—and how he then became the villain..."

indieweb.social Nitish Pahwa (@nitishpahwa@journa.host)

took a deep dive into how CEO Steve Huffman went from being Reddit's co-founder to its much-needed savior at a difficult moment—and how he then became the villain at the center of Reddit's still-raging protests: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/reddit-protests-steve-huffman-api-chaos.html

39 comments

I honestly think the article should have given a little more focus to the fact the API pricing isn't something disagreed upon, but the main backlash is due to the pricing out of 3rd party apps by making it outrageously expensive. Give at least an extra paragraph describing what happened between Selig and Reddit.
- As well as an unrealistic time table for change (30 days). Selig even offered to discuss giving more time to adapt the apps to what Reddit was wanting, and that's when the lies from Huffman started.
  
  … and all of this after saying in January that there would be no API changes for the foreseeable future “except to possibly make it better.”
  The whole timeline of events exposes Reddit as a very poorly run company lacking a planned out roadmap.

Reddit is gonna burn and we all will witness it. A. Reddit Hangs up its boots and goes Dark. B. u/spez resigns and all third party apps come back. It's already to late. Long live the #fediverse , Kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon
- Random question... I dumped reddit and jumped on to Lemmy. But I keep seeing things about mastadon and kbin also. What the difference between all of them? Are they all federated and sharing the same servers?
  
  They are all federated. They do not share the same servers.
  You're actually commenting on an article on kbin.social.
  
  Lemmy, kbin, and Mastodon are all different ways to view content posted to "the fediverse" which is basically a bunch of different small servers communicating with each other. They're basically different ways to do view and interact with the same posts, kinda like how you use different services (gmail, etc) for email, and then access that still with different software (browsers, or thunderbird, or what have you). For instance, right now I'm responding to your comment from kbin on my desktop browser.
  
  I'm replying to you from Kbin! Federation is great.
  
  I set up accounts on all three and tried them all out before deciding where I wanted to 'live', it's quite easy, might be worth a go to see what you like.
  
  Everyone already mentioned that they’re federated and running on small servers. From a user perspective, Kbin is most similar to Lemmy as they are both similar to Reddit, but they are different in that they are completely different projects. Kbin seems to have fewer instances running right now, so everything on Kbin is a little more concentrated among the instances that do exist. But since you can access both Lemmy and Kbin from either, I’d stick with whichever one has the interface that you prefer.
  Mastodon is similar to Twitter in how it looks and how people use it.
  
  Lemmy is Reddit.
  Mastadon is Twitter.
  Kbin is a bit of both.
  They federate. So imagine using your Reddit account to reply to a tweet. And vice versa.
  They don’t share the same servers - they just communicate with each other. Kind of like how I can use Gmail to write to a friend that uses a Yahoo Mail.
  
  @ryknow replying to you on kbin! Federation is really nice!
  @tchambers @Jcb2016
- Yeah, honestly I just realized today that I haven't been on Reddit at all for anything all week. I've been on Lemmy (on a few different instances ever since this all started, but I'm finally feeling comfortable and not tempted to check Reddit at all.
  
  Me too. I am finding the fediverse meets all my dopamine needs.
  
  I haven’t been on there since the 12th. I’ve been on mastodon and am enjoying it, but was missing the Reddit feel. So I’m trying out kbin.
  
  I still check Reddit for updates on how the protests and the mods over there are doing, but other than that I'm quite comfortable with Kbin, Lemmy and Discord for discussions.

All of this PR probably could have been fixed very easily if they gave a 6 months notice and were going to charge a reasonable fee. I would have paid 3rd party a small fee to use their app to not see ads, but spez had other IPO plans.
- All they needed to do was change how they handled the API for third party apps. Charging for it isn't the issue, it's the prohibitive cost they decided to attach to essentially ALL API access regardless of use, as a response to Large Language Models scrapping the site.
  They could have introduced separate pricing for confirmed 3rd party app usage for individuals. Or they could have introduced individual API tokens for 3rd party app use, and locked it behind something like a reddit gold subscription. Even that would be better than effectively killing all of it off.
  It's clear they did absolutely no brainstorming about other options before deciding to nuke it all.
  
  Fully agree. I'm cautiously going to assume (they have 2000 employees) that they did enough analysis to assume that they would come out of this on the right side. The problem is, they didn't expect spez to be a complete jack off and Apollo to release info that this whole thing was bullshit.
  
  That's what's most mindblowing to me. Like, I would gladly (well, maybe not gladly. There would be grumbling, but still) pay for Reddit Premium if it meant I could still use third party apps. A LOT of people would, even if it's a relatively small percent overall. And the rest would be in the exact situation they are now. Instead of the most dedicated users potentially leaving the platform entirely, they'd be earning Reddit wayyyyy more money than before.
  
  Considering how hungry the industry is for recurring revenue, it's mind boggling the reddit premium route wasn't chosen. They've left so many opportunities to recoup some revenue I'm convinced this was just a ploy to kill of 3PA.
  
  as a response to Large Language Models scrapping the site.
  This might be Reddit's argument, but it doesn't hold much weight. You don't need API access to read a website, a scrapper does that. The 3rd party apps were always the target, since 1) they attack their ad revenue and 2) show the lacks of the official app, which is a liability before the IPO. Also, don't forget that spez went to the media with the "threats" of Selig before he made any public comment.
- ...and if they'd sent the CEO on a corporate-paid submarine trip to the Titanic wreckage. Seriously, I felt for the app developers a lot, but honestly, it was 100% Huffman's interviews that pushed me to delete my account and bid reddit farewell. What an asshat.
- I really hope this drama tanks the ipo price, but I don't have any faith in investor sanity
- The solution is right there in the article and in front of (fuck) /u/spez...make it a part of Reddit Premium. I was on Reddit almost every single day for a decade and not only did I never even think about subbing, most of the time I forgot it even existed. The ridiculously low number of subscribers is Reddit's fault entirely. They could have killed two birds with one stone by saying "members will get an ad-free experience in our app and can try these other apps as well". Win for Reddit (actually gaining subs for their Premium service), for the apps (they stay working), and the users (more options).
  But I guess just destroying everything you spent your life building is a tempting option as well.

its much-needed savior at a difficult moment
The manufactured crisis that allowed him to return as "The Good Guy"?
Yeah, that one.
- Been the villain this whole time
- I'm a bit out of the loop on that one, care to explain?
  
  The brought in Elen Pao to implement all the changes they wanted to make. Spez "stepped back"
  Pao received mountains of vitriol, was seen as the focus of the problems, despite being new to the position.
  Spez them "stepped in" fired Pao (but kept the changes they wanted).
  Spez was then "the good guy" looking out for reddit.

Huffman’s public reactions to Redditors’ outrage haven’t helped. While he once appeared even-keeled yet decisive while dealing with online mobs, he appears to have alienated a far wider swath of users by coming off as hard-nosed, condescending, and stubborn.
This is the big thing that is different this time around, to me. His behavior, towards the community and towards developers, has become more aggressive amd openly hostile. I don't know if his earlier "saving Reddit" moments emboldened him to the point of arrogance, or what.
- Hasn't he almost always been like that? It just helped that it wasn't aimed at users before, but either controversial people, or something that could at least be excused.
  His database-editing negative comments talking about him wasn't anything less controversial, or indicative of a thick skin.
  It might be less his "saving Reddit", and more Elon Musk and Twitter that might be doing it. He basically proved that as a billionaire CEO, you can waltz in and do whatever you like. Even if it's unpopular, a big platform (like Twitter) isn't going to implode immediately, so he can just squeeze out what money he can, and make out reasonably wealthy (or at least, that's the idea), in spite of user unpopularity. "Saving Reddit" seems more like a flimsy justification.

Probably the best article to date about what is truly going on -- very comprehensive and well documented.

This seems weirdly positive about Spez. I didn't really get into Reddit until 2018, but he's had a bad reputation for as long as I was on.

You misspelled "CEO Steve Huffman", it's just "Spaz".
- While I'm generally not one for this sort of thing, I feel like comparing him to someone with cerebral palsy (the origin of "spaz") is a bit harsh.
  At least most of them try to be nice people.
  
  Yeah, calling him that is an insult to people with cerebral palsy lol

I'm so over reddit now. After 14 years on Reddit, I haven't been back in weeks. Lemmy is giving me everything I want.

39 comments