Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has decided to just keep on talking. After his disastrous AMA helped inspire more subreddits to join a 48 hour blackout, and his dismissal of the protesting subred…
“Reddit represents one of the largest data sets of just human beings talking about interesting things,” Huffman said. “We are not in the business of giving that away for free.”
I mean holy shit dude. Do you listen to yourself? Where did that “data set of just human beings talking about interesting things” come from? It came from millions of people who gave you that content for free. And many of them used the site through third party apps because those apps made your site much more useful without charging you a dime.
The entitlement of Huffman is astounding.
He got free content and free app development work and now he’s going around whining about how “we’re not in the business of giving that away for free.”
Yikes.
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Huffman is engaging in the cardinal sin of the internet: trying to charge for something that has always been free. And acting as if he’s entitled to that money, and it’s the people who don’t want to pay who are the problem.
And, again, Huffman seems like all entitlement all the time:
“They need to pay for this. That is fair.”
I mean… the users of Reddit could just as easily turn around and say the same thing to Huffman for all the free labor, content, and data they’ve provided to him.
I mean genuinely if your charging for access to the content I have created then I am I entitled to a portion of your revenue. Same as Adsense on YT not that I want to turn it into a race to the bottom for engagement like those scenarios are conducive to. But if we want to make it about money we can make it about money /u/spez.
If I were an executive and If I was even 2% clued into the effect this is having on shifting the conversation to fediverse type projects I would be shitting myself. Not because this will have an immediately noticeable effect on my bottom line, but that it will continue to grow organically. We already crossed the threshold of momentum needed to self sustain, its all up from here especially as the tools and systems mature.
Just look at the tech literate around us start to question “yeah why the fuck are we leaving social media in the hands of corporations???”
There’s not a better incentive to build a better product when they ran most of the independent boards into the ground, leaving them at a relative high.
I don’t think there’s a universe they can compete with free when interest is going up. All the reversals and user hostile policies are going to drive people away, how quickly that bothers Hoffman, the board and ohanian is probably just a matter to how quickly they can unload through the IPO.
I agree, and the hard pivot outwardly over policies and the near antagonistic stance the admin team has suddenly taken has got to be a precursor to something we not be aware of yet. Spez feels like a willing scapegoat to make a few million as he parachutes out when it blows up. They will use him to implement the unpopular decisions, get it “profitable” leading up to the IPO then remove spez and bring in a populist type CEO to smooth over the dissent. Maybe give better tools, act like they give a shit but not actually roll back any changes.
We know this tactic as its something wall street does all the time, and something reddit specifically has done before as well.
The current communities we have presently are amazing, but I’m really curious to see the impact of the new Reddit alternative that Jimmy Wales is working on
🤣
also:
I mean genuinely if your charging for access to the content I have created then I am I entitled to a portion of your revenue. Same as Adsense on YT not that I want to turn it into a race to the bottom for engagement like those scenarios are conducive to. But if we want to make it about money we can make it about money /u/spez.
If I were an executive and If I was even 2% clued into the effect this is having on shifting the conversation to fediverse type projects I would be shitting myself. Not because this will have an immediately noticeable effect on my bottom line, but that it will continue to grow organically. We already crossed the threshold of momentum needed to self sustain, its all up from here especially as the tools and systems mature.
Just look at the tech literate around us start to question “yeah why the fuck are we leaving social media in the hands of corporations???”
I’m cynical as ever, but I think it’s a cash out.
There’s not a better incentive to build a better product when they ran most of the independent boards into the ground, leaving them at a relative high.
I don’t think there’s a universe they can compete with free when interest is going up. All the reversals and user hostile policies are going to drive people away, how quickly that bothers Hoffman, the board and ohanian is probably just a matter to how quickly they can unload through the IPO.
I agree, and the hard pivot outwardly over policies and the near antagonistic stance the admin team has suddenly taken has got to be a precursor to something we not be aware of yet. Spez feels like a willing scapegoat to make a few million as he parachutes out when it blows up. They will use him to implement the unpopular decisions, get it “profitable” leading up to the IPO then remove spez and bring in a populist type CEO to smooth over the dissent. Maybe give better tools, act like they give a shit but not actually roll back any changes.
We know this tactic as its something wall street does all the time, and something reddit specifically has done before as well.
The current communities we have presently are amazing, but I’m really curious to see the impact of the new Reddit alternative that Jimmy Wales is working on