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Every day that passes I’m getting more convinced that the best move to improve the likelihood of a successful IPO (which IMHO this whole API clusterfuck is all

by bhaak 3y ago

Every day that passes I’m getting more convinced that the best move to improve the likelihood of a successful IPO (which IMHO this whole API clusterfuck is all about) is to fire spez and install a sane CEO. How can it be that he is still in charge and hasn’t been fired years ago?

agentgumshoe 3y ago
Because the talent pool more broadly is probably lacking quality, lol.
cragfar 3y ago
A sane CEO would instantly ban all the participating mods of the larger subreddits. And then pick off the rest that didn't get the message.
- runesofdoom 3y ago
  And the same message would still be sent to every user who cares: whatever value you see here is worthless to us, the owners. You have no stake, and we value your experience only as a source of wealth extraction. A lot of users probably don't care. Others probably think that's a fine and proper thing. For myself, it's a reminder and a warning. The reminder is that Reddit is a Cthulhu-esque machine and cannot be trusted. Reddit and myself were always ships whose courses had happened to align, I have been warned that they are changing course to one I will not like. That's all fair enough, but far from admirable. But my takeaway is that the net value of Reddit, to me, is going to be negative for the forseeable future, so my own best course is to block it completely. Others can make their own choices.
fullshark 3y ago
Do you disagree with him here? Mods are too powerful, many have decided to try and murder the site because of something most users don't even care about. The idea that because I volunteered to moderate r/subcultureX for a few years I can make sure www.reddit.com/r/subcultureX can never direct to any content forever is ridiculous.
- procarch2019 3y ago
  Just putting this out there because I guess I don’t know, but is it possible that most users don’t care *yet*. Isn’t it possible that the API changes could have a direct impact on the content or commenting?
  - bhaak 3y ago
    From personal experience I can tell you that pushshift being cut off has impacted my ability to mod. I often looked up suspicious users and seeing what they wrote in other subreddits helped me decide if they were worth the risk of a second chance or if it was less of a hassle to ban them. Especially their deleted or removed comments were often quite enlightening. That's not something Reddit enabled me to do. I could have worked around it. I started archiving thematically similar subreddits myself but it is something that I gladly outsourced and have paid money for instead of doing it myself in an half assed way. And I am a programmer, so I can do such things. Lots of other mods aren't and can't do similar things. Expect lower quality modding (some people will LOL and ask 'even lower?') because of this changes. That I had to pay a 3rd party instead of Reddit is not the fault of the 3rd party. They provided a service that Reddit never did.
- x86x87 3y ago
  nah. there was always a way to remove crappy mods. reddit could and would step in at any point in time. don't mix "there are crappy mods out there" with "all mods are crappy". it's not even close. the reason reddit runs is because of all the unpaid mod labor. reddit should just fucking moderate all subs themselves and after that they can do whatever the fuck they want. what? that's expensive AF and comes with liability? what? you want to eat the cake and also keep the cake? that's cute!
  - fullshark 3y ago
    They will step in eventually, and they are going to respond to this blackout with a new voting mechanism to replace mods it sounds like. Both seem sensible to me.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
Reddit has never had great leadership, much like Twitter. There was an idea that you needed a visionary founder to lead a social media company,which is why @jack and u/spez got brought back, but neither have been good leaders of their companies or great stewards of the community. Instagram and YouTube seem to be examples of social media sites led by non-founders, though those are also subsidiaries.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> I’m getting more convinced that the best move to improve the likelihood of a successful IPO (which IMHO this whole API clusterfuck is all about) is to fire spez and install a sane CEO. Spez’s PR moves aren’t great, but it’s unrealistic to expect a new CEO to go easier on API costs. If anything, a new CEO would make more of a push toward monetization. Reddit has been very light handed about monetization, charging, and tolerating ad blocking. Bring in a new CEO, chosen by the board, and it would likely be a full on squeeze toward making money even if it costs them a vocal minority of users.
- bhaak 3y ago
  It's not that everybody wants the API to be free. Like couple it with Reddit Premium and rate-limit the hell out of free usage. Even the Apollo dev said that he might have been able to pass down the ridiculous price tag down to his users. But not on such short notice, especially after been told earlier this year that no change in API usage would coming this year. This is just bad management and now really bad PR. I can't see that this is good for the IPO. Who in their right mind will throw money at this site now?

by bhaak 3y ago

agentgumshoe 3y ago

Because the talent pool more broadly is probably lacking quality, lol.

cragfar 3y ago

A sane CEO would instantly ban all the participating mods of the larger subreddits. And then pick off the rest that didn't get the message.

runesofdoom 3y ago
And the same message would still be sent to every user who cares: whatever value you see here is worthless to us, the owners. You have no stake, and we value your experience only as a source of wealth extraction. A lot of users probably don't care. Others probably think that's a fine and proper thing. For myself, it's a reminder and a warning. The reminder is that Reddit is a Cthulhu-esque machine and cannot be trusted. Reddit and myself were always ships whose courses had happened to align, I have been warned that they are changing course to one I will not like. That's all fair enough, but far from admirable. But my takeaway is that the net value of Reddit, to me, is going to be negative for the forseeable future, so my own best course is to block it completely. Others can make their own choices.

fullshark 3y ago

Do you disagree with him here? Mods are too powerful, many have decided to try and murder the site because of something most users don't even care about. The idea that because I volunteered to moderate r/subcultureX for a few years I can make sure www.reddit.com/r/subcultureX can never direct to any content forever is ridiculous.

procarch2019 3y ago
Just putting this out there because I guess I don’t know, but is it possible that most users don’t care *yet*. Isn’t it possible that the API changes could have a direct impact on the content or commenting?
- bhaak 3y ago
  From personal experience I can tell you that pushshift being cut off has impacted my ability to mod. I often looked up suspicious users and seeing what they wrote in other subreddits helped me decide if they were worth the risk of a second chance or if it was less of a hassle to ban them. Especially their deleted or removed comments were often quite enlightening. That's not something Reddit enabled me to do. I could have worked around it. I started archiving thematically similar subreddits myself but it is something that I gladly outsourced and have paid money for instead of doing it myself in an half assed way. And I am a programmer, so I can do such things. Lots of other mods aren't and can't do similar things. Expect lower quality modding (some people will LOL and ask 'even lower?') because of this changes. That I had to pay a 3rd party instead of Reddit is not the fault of the 3rd party. They provided a service that Reddit never did.
x86x87 3y ago
nah. there was always a way to remove crappy mods. reddit could and would step in at any point in time. don't mix "there are crappy mods out there" with "all mods are crappy". it's not even close. the reason reddit runs is because of all the unpaid mod labor. reddit should just fucking moderate all subs themselves and after that they can do whatever the fuck they want. what? that's expensive AF and comes with liability? what? you want to eat the cake and also keep the cake? that's cute!
- fullshark 3y ago
  They will step in eventually, and they are going to respond to this blackout with a new voting mechanism to replace mods it sounds like. Both seem sensible to me.

kevinmchugh 3y ago

Reddit has never had great leadership, much like Twitter. There was an idea that you needed a visionary founder to lead a social media company,which is why @jack and u/spez got brought back, but neither have been good leaders of their companies or great stewards of the community. Instagram and YouTube seem to be examples of social media sites led by non-founders, though those are also subsidiaries.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> I’m getting more convinced that the best move to improve the likelihood of a successful IPO (which IMHO this whole API clusterfuck is all about) is to fire spez and install a sane CEO. Spez’s PR moves aren’t great, but it’s unrealistic to expect a new CEO to go easier on API costs. If anything, a new CEO would make more of a push toward monetization. Reddit has been very light handed about monetization, charging, and tolerating ad blocking. Bring in a new CEO, chosen by the board, and it would likely be a full on squeeze toward making money even if it costs them a vocal minority of users.

bhaak 3y ago
It's not that everybody wants the API to be free. Like couple it with Reddit Premium and rate-limit the hell out of free usage. Even the Apollo dev said that he might have been able to pass down the ridiculous price tag down to his users. But not on such short notice, especially after been told earlier this year that no change in API usage would coming this year. This is just bad management and now really bad PR. I can't see that this is good for the IPO. Who in their right mind will throw money at this site now?