7 ms·

I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

76 points by throw0101b 3y ago

DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
kstrauser 3y ago
Here's a cached (and incomplete, not-all-comments-expanded) version if you're like me and trying to stay away from the Reddit website right now: https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/https://old.reddi...
kaladin-jasnah 3y ago
It's fascinating to see how his responses have changed to be more out-of-touch so dramatically since he did this AMA and now. Not knowing too much about how Reddit has changed over the years, I wonder what the timeline is for his change.
- faeyanpiraat 3y ago
  Money corrupts, I guess?
  - echelon 3y ago
    Steve Huffman exited once before. Did he get equity to return again as CEO? I don't understand why he'd return instead of starting something new.
    - whyenot 3y ago
      Hipmunk wasn’t doing well and Reddit had just chewed through two different CEOs. Maybe he needed somewhere to go, and was up for a challenge?
    - Moto7451 3y ago
      He surely did. It’s usually part of comp packages for any member of the C suite. I was the second engineering hire at a lifestyle business turned VC funded startup. After we went public and I could see disclosures including how many shares were paid out to the C Suite. The board and some first time C Suite members got the same level of equity in their comp package that I had received over six years of working there. Some replacement/new C Suite positions that had been in the C Suite prior received a few times what I received to start and received additional packages every year. Rank has its privileges.
      - vinhboy 3y ago
        I'm curious what is the normal equity share given to board members? Is their advisory worth six years of engineering?
        ydidntithnkftht 3y ago
        Varying sources but anything from .25% to 3% or more depending on how they get their seat I think. Some with no vesting schedules at all. https://medium.com/@theBoardlist/three-things-no-one-tells-you-about-your-first-startup-board-role-c018addf95e4 https://medium.com/@theBoardlist/three-things-no-one-tells-y...
- baby 3y ago
  My guess is that with massive communities like that, good feedback is lost in the ocean of shitty users overreacting. At some point you build up a shield and can't really have meaningful interactions with your users. I bet this is what happened with Facebook.
  - babyshake 3y ago
    This also happens frequently with celebrities and pop stars. I'm impressed by the likes of Taylor Swift who at least appear to have a genuine love for their fans despite what must be a lot of pretty crazy behavior on the part of the most extreme fans.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Some of whom sue her, hehe.
wackget 3y ago
His response to the top comment: > reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization isn't a short-term concern of ours. Yes, we will continue to experiment with different efforts so that when time is right we know what works and what does not. So it was always about money. Guess their "experiments" have concluded that pissing off your entire user base is a strategy which works.
- lobochrome 3y ago
  It's a private company. What else was it supposed to be about? Distributing VC money to users?
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. You could just make something valuable that people like and want to use, and have that mostly be the end goal. You probably won't get incredibly rich, though.
    - Y_Y 3y ago
      That sounds great, but I feel like the VC firms that would allow you to start up in the first place aren't going to go for it.
      - chongli 3y ago
        Yeah. If you want to build a lifestyle business then you can't take VC money. The grassroots approach is not an easy one and can take a very long time to grow! But in the end you retain complete control over the business.
    - FormerBandmate 3y ago
      Reddit has a fiduciary duty to it's shareholders. Spez is an employee, Reddit is mostly owned by a cable/magazine company lol
    - PragmaticPulp 3y ago
bittercynic 3y ago
I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I stopped, and I've gained some time and energy. Seems like a win-win.
- 9erdelta 3y ago
  Similar for me. I exclusively used reddit via old. or apollo, and mostly just lurked. I have some good memories of some communities there but by and large it's not something I enjoy anymore. For community I'm on discord, for being in the loop I'm on twitter and HN.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  > In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. The reddit experience I've had in the last few days is actually the best I've had since I signed up 12-13 years ago. All the smaller niche subreddits I forgot about are back to front and center, all the community interaction is on AskReddit, answers, etc again and the overall communal aspect is back. It reminds me of how much the site has really changed and, like you, I'll probably be gone once it goes back to normal.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    Why will Reddit going back to normal stop you from enjoying the smaller subreddits? I use Reddit all the time and literally never see anything from those monstrous multi million user subreddits.
    - t-writescode 3y ago
      Discoverability. There’s a very real value in stumbling upon places you wouldn’t know to search for.
alberth 3y ago
The old adage of “there’s no free lunch”, continues to remain true.
binkHN 3y ago
> One of my first priorities is to re-establish a relationship with the community. Not sure if it was ever re-established, but it's surely burned down again now.
AmericanOP 3y ago
"Are there any specific plans for the Alien Blue app that you can share?" > "I have lots of ideas! But, I'm sad to say, I don't want to publicize them here until I've got more support internally. It's shitty if you're on a product/dev team to come into work and find everything's been upended without any of your input." Took three years but now we know the answer.
keyme 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gurchik 3y ago
It's interesting to see this comment[1] from him that users should still be able to see content from a deleted post or comment if they want to. It used to be possible to do this by searching for it in Pushshift, but for as long as I've been aware of Pushshift it seems the admins have hated this. I've seen comments that this is a violation of privacy and can be used for targeted harassment. I understand the complaints Reddit has had recently about Pushshift being used to sell Reddit's content, but it seems that's not the only thing that's changed. 1: https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/cszvwgm/ https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman...
ppg677 3y ago
Isn't the third-party API access issue all about preventing Reddit from being overrun by AI/LLM robots? I suppose nothing is stopping them from using web interfaces but it does seem a bit harder than just using APIs
- landr0id 3y ago
  Not necessarily. The conversation with the Apollo dev was about the missed opportunity cost of having the user on the official platform. The $20m/year number was referring to opportunity cost, not the actual cost. To me that unpacks to a mix of lost potential value on having the user on the official client for data harvesting + advertising purposes + having full control over user experience, and subtly trying to get rid of 3rd party clients without just shutting the APIs down.
23B1 3y ago
Most CEOs would have figured out after eight years to deflect and absorb downward pressure from investors while incorporating feedback from Reddit's key resource: users, who provide content for free. It's a damn shame that Huffman didn't get the sort of guidance and counseling to walk that wire.
redog 3y ago
16 years since I moved to reddit from ....mostly slashdot.... I actually pre-empted the blackout and went cold turkey a few days early. I feel like I need a sobriety avatar but honestly I'm satiating with a combination of other feeds. I'm pretty sure I showed up around the time slashdot were writing about reddit re-writing the site in python: https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/http://www.aarons...
- ramgine 3y ago
  Can you summarize your other feeds? I actually created an account here on HN during the blackout for my tech info but constant tech info gets exhausting after a while.
  - redog 3y ago
    mostly spike.news & curated news feeds @ mastodon none of which are adequate for dialog IMO but I run irc and discord for that mostly when I'm not harassing chatgpt
kypro 3y ago
A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often. But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience. But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like just kept dropping and at the same time I was receiving an increasing (and significant) number of hateful messages. I guess I don't play the Reddit game very well. I generally aim to be controversial since I believe the most productive type of speech is speech that is both highly controversial and well reasoned. Agreeing may earn upvotes and social goodwill, but if all you ever do is agree with those around you using new words you may as well not contribute anything. I think Reddit's incentivisation of agreeableness, it's clamp down on controversial subreddits and its popularity basically guarantees conversations on Reddit today are maximally unproductive. If someone has a new opinion they are downvoted, and if that opinion is also hard to refute downing is often paired with abuse. I know this isn't really on topic – I have nothing interesting to say about their childish CEO or narrow-sighted push for monetisation. I guess I'm kinda just sad about what Reddit as become. I like HN because discussion here are rich – there's generally a wide and interesting range of views for any given topic. But HN is fundamentally limited since topics are generally tech / business related. And this is the gap I wish Reddit could have filled.
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  100% agree. Reddit is now completely dominated by repulsive echo chambers ruled by angry opinionated mods. Any idea contrary to the hive mind is either agressively downvoted and shouted down, and/or blocked/banned by overzealous mods. Just as one example, try daring to say that most men aren't rapists in https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes ... Can't quite find the link right now but there was a well upvoted post there that was simply, "god I hate men." They're not even interested in discussion at all. It's such a toxic misandristic subreddit, under a paper-thin pretense of being about female empowerment. I'm really not a person who clutches pearls often, I think what gets me is the silencing of any dissent. Posters shouldn't be getting banned for simply expressing an alternative opinion with no rudeness. Rule 3 on there is "no tactless posts generalizing gender". But every third post is about how all men do x... Subreddit rules mean nothing when interpreted by rabidly terrible mods, so coming into any new subreddit I don't feel comfortable to post anymore, lest another such mod should ban me for having an opinion. I definitely think it has gotten much worse overall in the last couple of years. That's why HN is so great... I often see opposing worldviews expressed here without animosity between posters.
dbg31415 3y ago
Aged like milk.
31337Logic 3y ago
Nah, Steve. I'm good. Thanks.

76 points by throw0101b 3y ago

[dead]

Here's a cached (and incomplete, not-all-comments-expanded) version if you're like me and trying to stay away from the Reddit website right now: https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/https://old.reddi...

kaladin-jasnah 3y ago

It's fascinating to see how his responses have changed to be more out-of-touch so dramatically since he did this AMA and now. Not knowing too much about how Reddit has changed over the years, I wonder what the timeline is for his change.

faeyanpiraat 3y ago
Money corrupts, I guess?
- echelon 3y ago
  Steve Huffman exited once before. Did he get equity to return again as CEO? I don't understand why he'd return instead of starting something new.
  - whyenot 3y ago
    Hipmunk wasn’t doing well and Reddit had just chewed through two different CEOs. Maybe he needed somewhere to go, and was up for a challenge?
  - Moto7451 3y ago
    He surely did. It’s usually part of comp packages for any member of the C suite. I was the second engineering hire at a lifestyle business turned VC funded startup. After we went public and I could see disclosures including how many shares were paid out to the C Suite. The board and some first time C Suite members got the same level of equity in their comp package that I had received over six years of working there. Some replacement/new C Suite positions that had been in the C Suite prior received a few times what I received to start and received additional packages every year. Rank has its privileges.
    - vinhboy 3y ago
      I'm curious what is the normal equity share given to board members? Is their advisory worth six years of engineering?
      - ydidntithnkftht 3y ago
        Varying sources but anything from .25% to 3% or more depending on how they get their seat I think. Some with no vesting schedules at all. https://medium.com/@theBoardlist/three-things-no-one-tells-you-about-your-first-startup-board-role-c018addf95e4 https://medium.com/@theBoardlist/three-things-no-one-tells-y...
baby 3y ago
My guess is that with massive communities like that, good feedback is lost in the ocean of shitty users overreacting. At some point you build up a shield and can't really have meaningful interactions with your users. I bet this is what happened with Facebook.
- babyshake 3y ago
  This also happens frequently with celebrities and pop stars. I'm impressed by the likes of Taylor Swift who at least appear to have a genuine love for their fans despite what must be a lot of pretty crazy behavior on the part of the most extreme fans.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Some of whom sue her, hehe.

wackget 3y ago

His response to the top comment: > reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization isn't a short-term concern of ours. Yes, we will continue to experiment with different efforts so that when time is right we know what works and what does not. So it was always about money. Guess their "experiments" have concluded that pissing off your entire user base is a strategy which works.

lobochrome 3y ago
It's a private company. What else was it supposed to be about? Distributing VC money to users?
- meepmorp 3y ago
  You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. You could just make something valuable that people like and want to use, and have that mostly be the end goal. You probably won't get incredibly rich, though.
  - Y_Y 3y ago
    That sounds great, but I feel like the VC firms that would allow you to start up in the first place aren't going to go for it.
    - chongli 3y ago
      Yeah. If you want to build a lifestyle business then you can't take VC money. The grassroots approach is not an easy one and can take a very long time to grow! But in the end you retain complete control over the business.
  - FormerBandmate 3y ago
    Reddit has a fiduciary duty to it's shareholders. Spez is an employee, Reddit is mostly owned by a cable/magazine company lol
  - PragmaticPulp 3y ago

bittercynic 3y ago

I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I stopped, and I've gained some time and energy. Seems like a win-win.

9erdelta 3y ago
Similar for me. I exclusively used reddit via old. or apollo, and mostly just lurked. I have some good memories of some communities there but by and large it's not something I enjoy anymore. For community I'm on discord, for being in the loop I'm on twitter and HN.
deaddodo 3y ago
> In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. The reddit experience I've had in the last few days is actually the best I've had since I signed up 12-13 years ago. All the smaller niche subreddits I forgot about are back to front and center, all the community interaction is on AskReddit, answers, etc again and the overall communal aspect is back. It reminds me of how much the site has really changed and, like you, I'll probably be gone once it goes back to normal.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  Why will Reddit going back to normal stop you from enjoying the smaller subreddits? I use Reddit all the time and literally never see anything from those monstrous multi million user subreddits.
  - t-writescode 3y ago
    Discoverability. There’s a very real value in stumbling upon places you wouldn’t know to search for.

alberth 3y ago

The old adage of “there’s no free lunch”, continues to remain true.

binkHN 3y ago

> One of my first priorities is to re-establish a relationship with the community. Not sure if it was ever re-established, but it's surely burned down again now.

AmericanOP 3y ago

"Are there any specific plans for the Alien Blue app that you can share?" > "I have lots of ideas! But, I'm sad to say, I don't want to publicize them here until I've got more support internally. It's shitty if you're on a product/dev team to come into work and find everything's been upended without any of your input." Took three years but now we know the answer.

keyme 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gurchik 3y ago

It's interesting to see this comment[1] from him that users should still be able to see content from a deleted post or comment if they want to. It used to be possible to do this by searching for it in Pushshift, but for as long as I've been aware of Pushshift it seems the admins have hated this. I've seen comments that this is a violation of privacy and can be used for targeted harassment. I understand the complaints Reddit has had recently about Pushshift being used to sell Reddit's content, but it seems that's not the only thing that's changed. 1: https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/cszvwgm/ https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman...

ppg677 3y ago

Isn't the third-party API access issue all about preventing Reddit from being overrun by AI/LLM robots? I suppose nothing is stopping them from using web interfaces but it does seem a bit harder than just using APIs

landr0id 3y ago
Not necessarily. The conversation with the Apollo dev was about the missed opportunity cost of having the user on the official platform. The $20m/year number was referring to opportunity cost, not the actual cost. To me that unpacks to a mix of lost potential value on having the user on the official client for data harvesting + advertising purposes + having full control over user experience, and subtly trying to get rid of 3rd party clients without just shutting the APIs down.

23B1 3y ago

Most CEOs would have figured out after eight years to deflect and absorb downward pressure from investors while incorporating feedback from Reddit's key resource: users, who provide content for free. It's a damn shame that Huffman didn't get the sort of guidance and counseling to walk that wire.

redog 3y ago

16 years since I moved to reddit from ....mostly slashdot.... I actually pre-empted the blackout and went cold turkey a few days early. I feel like I need a sobriety avatar but honestly I'm satiating with a combination of other feeds. I'm pretty sure I showed up around the time slashdot were writing about reddit re-writing the site in python: https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit https://web.archive.org/web/20190616155639/http://www.aarons...

ramgine 3y ago
Can you summarize your other feeds? I actually created an account here on HN during the blackout for my tech info but constant tech info gets exhausting after a while.
- redog 3y ago
  mostly spike.news & curated news feeds @ mastodon none of which are adequate for dialog IMO but I run irc and discord for that mostly when I'm not harassing chatgpt

kypro 3y ago

A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often. But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience. But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like just kept dropping and at the same time I was receiving an increasing (and significant) number of hateful messages. I guess I don't play the Reddit game very well. I generally aim to be controversial since I believe the most productive type of speech is speech that is both highly controversial and well reasoned. Agreeing may earn upvotes and social goodwill, but if all you ever do is agree with those around you using new words you may as well not contribute anything. I think Reddit's incentivisation of agreeableness, it's clamp down on controversial subreddits and its popularity basically guarantees conversations on Reddit today are maximally unproductive. If someone has a new opinion they are downvoted, and if that opinion is also hard to refute downing is often paired with abuse. I know this isn't really on topic – I have nothing interesting to say about their childish CEO or narrow-sighted push for monetisation. I guess I'm kinda just sad about what Reddit as become. I like HN because discussion here are rich – there's generally a wide and interesting range of views for any given topic. But HN is fundamentally limited since topics are generally tech / business related. And this is the gap I wish Reddit could have filled.

brokenmachine 3y ago
100% agree. Reddit is now completely dominated by repulsive echo chambers ruled by angry opinionated mods. Any idea contrary to the hive mind is either agressively downvoted and shouted down, and/or blocked/banned by overzealous mods. Just as one example, try daring to say that most men aren't rapists in https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes ... Can't quite find the link right now but there was a well upvoted post there that was simply, "god I hate men." They're not even interested in discussion at all. It's such a toxic misandristic subreddit, under a paper-thin pretense of being about female empowerment. I'm really not a person who clutches pearls often, I think what gets me is the silencing of any dissent. Posters shouldn't be getting banned for simply expressing an alternative opinion with no rudeness. Rule 3 on there is "no tactless posts generalizing gender". But every third post is about how all men do x... Subreddit rules mean nothing when interpreted by rabidly terrible mods, so coming into any new subreddit I don't feel comfortable to post anymore, lest another such mod should ban me for having an opinion. I definitely think it has gotten much worse overall in the last couple of years. That's why HN is so great... I often see opposing worldviews expressed here without animosity between posters.

dbg31415 3y ago

Aged like milk.

31337Logic 3y ago

Nah, Steve. I'm good. Thanks.