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The mismanagement of Reddit is crazy. I wonder will they fire Huffman. His blatant lying is insane when people have emails to back up their claims against him.

The mismanagement of Reddit is crazy. I wonder will they fire Huffman. His blatant lying is insane when people have emails to back up their claims against him. Seems like he’s on a media blitz to try and change the narrative. You know when you’re doing interviews with The Verge you’re in bother.

themitigating 3y ago
What did he lie about?
- ramraj07 3y ago
  Misrepresented and made up discussions with Apollo app creator. Then caught red handed when the creator released recordings of those calls.
  - JshWright 3y ago
    That's only the most recent incident... A few years back he was caught silently editing users posts that were critical of him.
- quitit 3y ago
  Steve Huffman, aka Spez, falsely claimed that Apollo creator (Christian Selig) had threatened and blackmailed Reddit for $10M. The facts are that no threat nor blackmail attempt was made and Spez had entirely invented and spread the false claims as an attempt to discredit Selig. In response to the false claims, Christian Selig released a recording of the phone call that disproved the claim and cleared his name. As Selig is in Canada, he was legally entitled to record and release the phone call. Huffman took umbrage at this action because it revealed Huffman's deceptive conduct. Later in a Reddit "AMA", Huffman continued stating falsehoods about interactions with Selig, in spite of the evidence. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on-attack-on-apollo-developer-in-drama-filled-ama/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on...
  - CommitSyn 3y ago
    Also that the RIF developer didn't want to work with them, which emails showed was false. There were 4-5 other things that are escaping me at the moment.
    - flutas 3y ago
      > Also that the RIF developer didn't want to work with them, which emails showed was false. Hadn't heard that one, so thanks for mentioning it. Link for others[0]. Interestingly enough something else is mentioned in the article which is even more damning for Spez. > RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. (...) Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fu...
  - stjohnswarts 3y ago
    You can record conversation in lots of US states as well as long as one party on the call knows it's happening. Just thought I'd toss that out there.
  - trogdor 3y ago
    >Spez had entirely invented and spread the false claims That is not exactly true. It sounds like there was a genuine misunderstanding during their call, and that Huffman might have believed - for a portion of the call - that a blackmail attempt was happening. If you listen to the audio, it really does sound like a blackmail attempt. At least that's how I heard it. It also seemed clear that Huffman no longer believed that he had been blackmailed by the end of the call. But it wasn't "entirely invented," and I actually think that Huffman might not have fully believed Selig's explanation of his 'pay me $10 million to make this go away' statement (or whatever Selig's exact language was). Separately, from what I recall, Huffman did not accuse Selig of illegally recording their phone call. Huffman took umbrage over the release of what, IIRC, he referred to as a private conversation, stating that he did not see how he could possibly do business with Selig after that. In fairness, Huffman's statement makes sense in isolation - regardless of whether the call was legally recorded. Which it seems to have been. I think that Huffman looks really bad in all this. But that's a reason to be particularly careful about accuracy in our statements about what happened.
- xtracto 3y ago
  I just want to echo the OTHER completely astounding thing Hufman did: Back when r/the_donald was a thing, the guy edited posts from other people to change the narrative. Now, I dont subscribe to the ideas of the morons in the_donald (I'm even ot from the USA) but I really took offense at what he did... like, what freaking integrity can a person have, when he does that kind of sleazy things. Not even CmdrTaco or his team did it with all the trolls in Slashdoy.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    That's not the only thing either. He also unpersoned Aaron Swartz, removing him from the Reddit Co-founder page, and saying that he wasn't really a founder... After Swartz died. Which is just incredibly scummy. And then there were the comments about owning slaves after an apocalypse. And then there's the Ghislaine Maxwell / maxwellhill theories [0], which bring the Swartz stuff to a very dark place... 0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_the_evidence_that_reddit_user_maxwellhill/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
pndy 3y ago
The longer I'm reading recent stories about reddit, the more H. reminds me of... Bad Luck Brian
Joeri 3y ago
Huffman seems to be drawing inspiration from Elon Musk, according to a recent interview. “Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman said. “Now, they’ve taken the dramatic road,” he added, “and I guess I can’t sit here and say that we’re not either, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.” The puzzle pieces sort of fell into place when I read that, because he's acting like an Elon knock-off. This is why they should replace him, because just like Elon is driving Twitter into the ground, the frantic Elon-like decisions of Huffman are driving reddit into the ground. This isn't about Reddit not being allowed to make money or turn a profit or have a good IPO. The decisions made so far seem to run counter to Reddit's ability to do just that. Who will buy into an IPO of a burning platform that is at war with its own users? How do you make money from an API that's too expensive for people to pay for?
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  But if Reddit survives this, if it's just "clearing house" for a future set of users, and, after a period of lower usage, start growing again, it will be golden; it will be seen as un-killable. Too valuable a resource to fail. As much as I disagree with the gross consumer-unfriendliness of the direction and choices of management, they're sitting on an incredibly valuable data store that will attract search results - I've read a number of comments recently that "site:reddit" is a required filter on Google these days. That's hard to kill.
  - fundad 3y ago
    Yahoo is hard to kill
    - seanp2k2 3y ago
      Ask Jeeves is hard to kill
    - JamesLeonis 3y ago
      Digg is still around too
heywhatupboys 3y ago
> mismanagement this might come as a shock, but a few hundred powertripping übermods aren't really an indicator for the state of reddit as a businesss. They threatened to break their mop, and the custodians immediately surrendered

themitigating 3y ago

What did he lie about?

ramraj07 3y ago
Misrepresented and made up discussions with Apollo app creator. Then caught red handed when the creator released recordings of those calls.
- JshWright 3y ago
  That's only the most recent incident... A few years back he was caught silently editing users posts that were critical of him.
quitit 3y ago
Steve Huffman, aka Spez, falsely claimed that Apollo creator (Christian Selig) had threatened and blackmailed Reddit for $10M. The facts are that no threat nor blackmail attempt was made and Spez had entirely invented and spread the false claims as an attempt to discredit Selig. In response to the false claims, Christian Selig released a recording of the phone call that disproved the claim and cleared his name. As Selig is in Canada, he was legally entitled to record and release the phone call. Huffman took umbrage at this action because it revealed Huffman's deceptive conduct. Later in a Reddit "AMA", Huffman continued stating falsehoods about interactions with Selig, in spite of the evidence. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on-attack-on-apollo-developer-in-drama-filled-ama/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on...
- CommitSyn 3y ago
  Also that the RIF developer didn't want to work with them, which emails showed was false. There were 4-5 other things that are escaping me at the moment.
  - flutas 3y ago
    > Also that the RIF developer didn't want to work with them, which emails showed was false. Hadn't heard that one, so thanks for mentioning it. Link for others[0]. Interestingly enough something else is mentioned in the article which is even more damning for Spez. > RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. (...) Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fu...
- stjohnswarts 3y ago
  You can record conversation in lots of US states as well as long as one party on the call knows it's happening. Just thought I'd toss that out there.
- trogdor 3y ago
  >Spez had entirely invented and spread the false claims That is not exactly true. It sounds like there was a genuine misunderstanding during their call, and that Huffman might have believed - for a portion of the call - that a blackmail attempt was happening. If you listen to the audio, it really does sound like a blackmail attempt. At least that's how I heard it. It also seemed clear that Huffman no longer believed that he had been blackmailed by the end of the call. But it wasn't "entirely invented," and I actually think that Huffman might not have fully believed Selig's explanation of his 'pay me $10 million to make this go away' statement (or whatever Selig's exact language was). Separately, from what I recall, Huffman did not accuse Selig of illegally recording their phone call. Huffman took umbrage over the release of what, IIRC, he referred to as a private conversation, stating that he did not see how he could possibly do business with Selig after that. In fairness, Huffman's statement makes sense in isolation - regardless of whether the call was legally recorded. Which it seems to have been. I think that Huffman looks really bad in all this. But that's a reason to be particularly careful about accuracy in our statements about what happened.
xtracto 3y ago
I just want to echo the OTHER completely astounding thing Hufman did: Back when r/the_donald was a thing, the guy edited posts from other people to change the narrative. Now, I dont subscribe to the ideas of the morons in the_donald (I'm even ot from the USA) but I really took offense at what he did... like, what freaking integrity can a person have, when he does that kind of sleazy things. Not even CmdrTaco or his team did it with all the trolls in Slashdoy.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  That's not the only thing either. He also unpersoned Aaron Swartz, removing him from the Reddit Co-founder page, and saying that he wasn't really a founder... After Swartz died. Which is just incredibly scummy. And then there were the comments about owning slaves after an apocalypse. And then there's the Ghislaine Maxwell / maxwellhill theories [0], which bring the Swartz stuff to a very dark place... 0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_the_evidence_that_reddit_user_maxwellhill/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

pndy 3y ago

The longer I'm reading recent stories about reddit, the more H. reminds me of... Bad Luck Brian

Joeri 3y ago

Huffman seems to be drawing inspiration from Elon Musk, according to a recent interview. “Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman said. “Now, they’ve taken the dramatic road,” he added, “and I guess I can’t sit here and say that we’re not either, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.” The puzzle pieces sort of fell into place when I read that, because he's acting like an Elon knock-off. This is why they should replace him, because just like Elon is driving Twitter into the ground, the frantic Elon-like decisions of Huffman are driving reddit into the ground. This isn't about Reddit not being allowed to make money or turn a profit or have a good IPO. The decisions made so far seem to run counter to Reddit's ability to do just that. Who will buy into an IPO of a burning platform that is at war with its own users? How do you make money from an API that's too expensive for people to pay for?

BLKNSLVR 3y ago
But if Reddit survives this, if it's just "clearing house" for a future set of users, and, after a period of lower usage, start growing again, it will be golden; it will be seen as un-killable. Too valuable a resource to fail. As much as I disagree with the gross consumer-unfriendliness of the direction and choices of management, they're sitting on an incredibly valuable data store that will attract search results - I've read a number of comments recently that "site:reddit" is a required filter on Google these days. That's hard to kill.
- fundad 3y ago
  Yahoo is hard to kill
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    Ask Jeeves is hard to kill
  - JamesLeonis 3y ago
    Digg is still around too

heywhatupboys 3y ago

> mismanagement this might come as a shock, but a few hundred powertripping übermods aren't really an indicator for the state of reddit as a businesss. They threatened to break their mop, and the custodians immediately surrendered