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Reddit CEO slams protesters, calls them “landed gentry”
- h2odragon 3y ago[flagged]
- smoldesu 3y agoNo taxation without representation?
- lisasays 3y agoA CEO trying to play the class card on its own users is of course -- serious cognitive dissonance.
- js2 3y ago> “And I think on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get their first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.” The moderators are volunteers who work for free. The landed gentry were rent seekers who sought to live entirely from that income. If anyone is the landed gentry here, it's Hoffman. Maybe he should allow Reddit users to vote on retaining him as CEO seeing how important democracy is to him. What an asshole.
- tus666 3y ago> Participating communities went “private” making them unviewable even to members. Err no that's not how it works.
- joshuakogut 3y agoRight? Came here to say just that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nhinck2 3y agoHe wants to let users vote out mods? Apart from being a terrible idea in general, has he seen the up-vote ratio of the blackout posts?
- chr-s 3y agoHe'll be counting the votes.
- blibble 3y agoI doubt they'd ever implement it as it would be borderline impossible to make it un-gameable if you were competent (let alone if you're reddit) it's an attempt to try to threaten the mods and split off whatever user support they have divide and rule
- pessimizer 3y agoNo, it's a great idea. The only method of governance we have on the internet is dictatorship by fiat and any introduction of democratic methods, and tools to implement democratic methods, is good. edit: he will find that he will have to pay people, though. If your mods are unpaid, you get mods that get off on power, or are paid from other sources.
- blibble 3y agopresumably if you vote for something spez doesn't like he'll just bring up psql in production and issue a few UPDATE commands until he's happy like he did before
- rurp 3y agoThis CEO sure is hellbent on embarrassing himself. These kinds of comments make me even more skeptical about the company's future.
- favorited 3y agoCEO worth $10 million calling his website's volunteer moderators "landed gentry" sounds about right.
- cmsonger 3y agoCame to say just this. There's no profit sharing here. Mods don't get a cut of any proceeds off the traffic their communities generate. "Landed gentry" is exactly the wrong phrase. The CEO is the landed gentry. The mods are the sharecroppers who have had enough.
- moogly 3y agoSurely he means "unpaid labor"; elsewise my eyes could not roll further back.
- gkoberger 3y agoAs a moderator of a large subreddit (who also doesn't particularly care about Reddit), I'm shocked by how much distain spez (the CEO) has for the users of Reddit. Hey, I get it... running a social media company is really, really hard and monetizing it is even harder. But I just genuinely can't understand how he thinks it makes sense to publicly disparage pretty much everyone who uses his site. There's no way he can make Reddit better if he's decided every single person who contributes content or curation to it is the enemy. I guess he looked at Elon, and thought "man, I hate the people on my site as much as he does, and he's getting away with it." The difference is (and I'm no Elon fan), Elon has enough fans to power through. Nobody even knows who spez is.
- downrightmike 3y agoHe could just pay mods, which would be fair as he is profiteering from their labor.
- gkoberger 3y agoI don't think any mods care about making money off this, and that's fine. They do it because they love a tv show, hobby or (in my case) city. All he needs to do is... not despise the people who his company is built on.
- gingerrr 3y agoI read a comment on one of the many other threads over the last week that paying moderators changes Reddit's liability under section 230 to be stricter. With volunteer moderators, the mods themselves are considered users instead of employees of the company and that apparently matters in a tangible sense. Trying to find the comment since I'm not the expert who was mentioning, but it's likely not that easy/why they haven't just done this already, not counting the extra cost.
- Scion9066 3y agoI'm not sure why them being employees would change their liability since section 230 was explicitly set up to protect moderation decisions by the host. As long as the content is created by third parties and they aren't the ones creating the content, they should be protected. Edit: Were you referring to this post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36320043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36320043
- bluefishinit 3y ago> Huffman said those decisions should, in effect, go to a vote of members. > “What I’m suggesting as a pathway out is actually more democracy,” he said. “We’ve got some old, legacy decisions on how communities are run that we need to kind of work our way out of.” If we're voting on things, I vote to eliminate the ridiculous popup when you view a Reddit page on your mobile phone. Just give me m.reddit.com. Pretty sure that's not the kind of "democracy" that he's talking about though.
- downrightmike 3y agoI vote for a different CEO, this one stinks.
- orra 3y agoIt's funny timing. I think more democracy, or an ability to remove bad moderators has long been required. But Huffman saying it now is odd timing. Especially given the leaked memo which downplayed the impact of the blackout. Maybe there is an impact.
- pknomad 3y agoWhenever I see CEOs make comments like these, I immediately think of https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1633221742817869824/photo/2 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1633221742817869824/ph...
- rjh29 3y ago> (on profit sharing) “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.” Just in case you needed another reason to stay away from Reddit.
- tracerbulletx 3y agoAll of the protest posts are the most upvoted posts on all of the subs by a massive margin, framing it as just a moderator thing is a massive lie.
- weaksauce 3y agowith spuz's history that's all he has is a bunch of shitty lies and deceit.
- DarkmSparks 3y agoDoes Reddit survive this or is it game over? This seems like both sides are going to dig their heals in so hard the rope will snap.
- gkoberger 3y agoReddit only needs to win in the short term. It seems pretty clear spez is cashing in all his chips for an IPO.
- DarkmSparks 3y agoEveryone understands that I think. But they dont seem to understand the chances of a website that recently lost 99% of its traffic having a successful IPO. Or even surviving another 12 months.
- jorblumesea 3y agoI feel like Spez is a good case study of what not to do. The protest would be over if he had better messaging and tact. Every comment just adds fuel to the fire.
- vintagetroisi 3y agoHuffman could've used all this press to do or say anything remotely intelligent. Too bad he hasn't.
- cubefox 3y agoIt would be nice if we didn't feature such rage bait headlines here on HN.
- mtc010170 3y agoNot a fan of rage bait as much as the next person, but these are real quotes from Huffman from a major publication, hardly taken out of context. This is a major story. Why suppress it?
- activiation 3y ago[flagged]
- mtc010170 3y agoSomebody has got to help Steve get a grip. He's doing serious damage to Reddit and his own credibility. I can totally understand his disdain for people who he perceives are trying to ruin "his baby." But he's got to be smarter than this as a CEO. This is a matter of public opinion, and his defiance is just imprudent.
- EMCymatics 3y agoThe moment he was caught editing people's posts and not summarily fired is the exact moment he invalidated every data point that website gathered.
- wolverine876 3y agoThere is a large population of online users looking for an alternative. Where is the market competition? Where is the startup (or other company) leaping into the action to gain this ready-made audience?
- dsir 3y agoI've been working on a platform with a bit of a different take on the online community space. It's sort of a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid. We've built a place to monetarily incentivize ownership over the communities created on the platform. It feels like the people curating the communities should be rewarded for the work that they do. Here's an example community: https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending
- wolverine876 3y agoBut are you jumping to acquire Reddit's disaffected users? Now is the moment, that may never return! Where is the entrepeneurship in IT?
- blibble 3y agorecent developments have erased any preconceived notions that I had that getting to CEO level required some level of basic competence musk, spez, zuck, bobby kotick no, they're just idiots who were in the right place at the right time (and maybe had good advisors, but apparently no longer)
- BackBlast 3y agoWant to know the heart of a man? Give him power.
- rzazueta 3y agoAnd all of their wealth - including that of Gates, Bezos, Ellison, ad nauseum - is built on the knowledge, expertise, and labor of people they ruthlessly exploit and manipulate for their own gain. And everyone still celebrates these assholes. Even as the scales fall from our eyes, they are still supported by their staff and employees, who continue to sell their lives to these narcissistic pieces of shit for a discount. The folks who do the real work should literally walk off the job and go start their own thing together, sharing the work and sharing the proceeds. Cut the rich assholes out of all of it.
- pas 3y agothey also very likely changed over the years. the constant tension and stress of having power and what to do with it. we see how Musk and spez basically got into this egoistic (illusion of grandeur, psychotic) state over their own respective fiefdoms. one more interesting data point about irrational decisions and power: Putin. he clawed his way into the dictatorship from a middling KGB officership. it seems his most competent skill is exactly that, scheming his way into bigger and bigger things/jobs, and of course he absolutely sucks as a leader. all in all what I'm trying to say is that yes, even if some "basic competence" is needed initially, it's irrelevant in the long term
- justanother 3y agoThere seems to be a pattern emerging here, and I've seen something similar in my contracting experience: Once the cheap money dries up, the social network figureheads show you who they really are. Believe them when they tell you.
- cornercasechase 3y ago[flagged]
- gsibble 3y ago[flagged]
- jtode 3y agoMaybe there should be democratic decision making about C-level executive hires as well.
- jameyk 3y agofuck reddit with an hot iron rod
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoLet's be real with ourselves, this has nothing to do with 3rd party apps and everything to do with the plethora of awful automoderating tools that have ruined Reddit. Reddit moderators are almost all a cancer to that site. They do it for free and are threatened that their power tripping fiefdom tools are going awy. Ironically reddit even said most of those tools would hit the free tier anyway. If spez had balls, he would run a script that opens all of the hidden subs, disable the ability to hide/delete subs, and show these jannies erm mods the door. The site has become an absolute cancer with discussion being heavily dictated. I welcome a mass exodus of those "mods".
- sacnoradhq 3y agoWhen a site is run by assholes, the best move is to pack up your toys and play elsewhere. Reddit continues to attract drama, censorship, moderation, and now usability problems that cannot be resolved when the leadership (with user-hostile corporate interests) is damaged beyond repair. It's not difficult to make a site that can add posts and comments. It's difficult to moderate users and moderators in a fair and appropriate manner that respects the interests of the individual and the community: the emotional labor of meta-moderators and UX technical effort of developers is crucial to make a site as civilized as reasonable while allowing enough freedom of expression balanced by reducing and diffusing conflict.
- JoeyBananas 3y agoReddit moderators are entitled to nothing. They aren't altruistically providing some service for the common benefit, they're just sort of occupying the free real estate. Reddit moderators could all walk away from Reddit and that'd be perfectly fine with me, even if it meant that Reddit stopped existing entirely.
- pikseladam 3y agolets start by voting who will be the CEO of reddit.
- rsynnott 3y ago> calls them “landed gentry” Might not be be the best metaphor for him to be using. Historically, when the king gets in conflict with the landed gentry, well, very often the king suddenly finds himself a bit lacking in the head department.