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You make some good points but if there's one fatal flaw these big tech CEOs and their boards seem to have it's hubris. Reddit doesn't have a moat and it also do

You make some good points but if there's one fatal flaw these big tech CEOs and their boards seem to have it's hubris. Reddit doesn't have a moat and it also doesn't have data that's amazingly interesting. This may very well be part of a power play by Huffman but he's forgotten the only two things that really matter at the end of the day, which are quality and volume/scale. Screwing his mods hurts him on both of those counts, because bottom line is it will result in people leaving and putting their energy into rival projects. Tech giants can and do fall and it almost always happens because they lose sight of those two things which matter and get embroiled in their own internal political navel-gazing BS. If he is sacrificing quality and scale for anything he's slowly signing the death warrant of the business he manages. Mind you this may even be intentional - "let's move this business into the maturation phase where it continually gets shittier and our margins get higher until it collapses and we sell it off or something" is a completely normal and regular strategy, happens all the time, businesses exist to make money for their owners. All businesses go through three phases, growth, maturity, and decline. But as a user or consumer if you see it moving toward the end of the cycle it's usually in your best interest to get the hell out sooner rather than later.

tyre 3y ago
> Reddit doesn't have a moat Reddit has a tremendous moat. Like any social network, its users are the moat. Its usability has gotten worse in the past few years but there simply aren't great alternatives. (Federated services like Lemmy are not serious reddit alternatives.)
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Well it's the long tail of high-effort users, comments, subreddits, that are the moat. The vast majority of content is replaceable by tiktok, twitter, etc...
- safety1st 3y ago
  Users are a pretty weak moat. We know this because if they were a good one, Reddit wouldn't exist. We'd all still be on Myspace or Digg or wherever. Apple, Microsoft, Google, those guys have moats. Leaving their ecosystems is HARD. Leaving Myspace, Digg, Facebook or Reddit just because there are less users somewhere else isn't really that big of a loss. Once people have a good alternative they do it pretty quickly. The history of rapid turnover in social media giants compared to other tech sectors is the proof. If you wanted to be edgy I think you could even argue users are an anti-moat for social media because they age, become uncool, and then the next generation doesn't want to hang out in your uncool boomer space and goes somewhere else. This is FB's current predicament.
- rchaud 3y ago
  It's not much of a moat if Reddit hasn't derived a single cent of profit from it.

tyre 3y ago

> Reddit doesn't have a moat Reddit has a tremendous moat. Like any social network, its users are the moat. Its usability has gotten worse in the past few years but there simply aren't great alternatives. (Federated services like Lemmy are not serious reddit alternatives.)

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Well it's the long tail of high-effort users, comments, subreddits, that are the moat. The vast majority of content is replaceable by tiktok, twitter, etc...
safety1st 3y ago
Users are a pretty weak moat. We know this because if they were a good one, Reddit wouldn't exist. We'd all still be on Myspace or Digg or wherever. Apple, Microsoft, Google, those guys have moats. Leaving their ecosystems is HARD. Leaving Myspace, Digg, Facebook or Reddit just because there are less users somewhere else isn't really that big of a loss. Once people have a good alternative they do it pretty quickly. The history of rapid turnover in social media giants compared to other tech sectors is the proof. If you wanted to be edgy I think you could even argue users are an anti-moat for social media because they age, become uncool, and then the next generation doesn't want to hang out in your uncool boomer space and goes somewhere else. This is FB's current predicament.
rchaud 3y ago
It's not much of a moat if Reddit hasn't derived a single cent of profit from it.