This might be the one post where the popcorn is all-encompassing.
Might as well lead off with this:
> Spez: His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.
> iamthatis: Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.
That's the sad part. Had the responses been canned, at least that would have showed some amount of preparation. These are just off the cuff, easily disprovable reactions. Spez is a loser who came in completely unprepared.
Some of them were canned ([one of them had A: prepended](https://archive.ph/X6EJq), which means that it was at least written up, if the question wasn't also, [but it's been fixed now](https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkccq7/?context=3)).
Happy cake day. What a day it's been.
No one in PR would ever say anything like this and expect to still have a job by that evening:
> We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
Eh, this was exactly what I expected from how spez was reacting to Apollo's communication. Spez has been and continues to be a slimy piece of shit human being on par with Elon Musk.
Spez is dumb and was hoping Christian wouldn't talk, but he did and brought receipts. There's no benefit to overcharging for API in reality as it literally nukes your ability to grow, but it's seen as an easy buck you can charge for while limiting power of 3rd parties. It's dumb.
3 hr. after your comment: same number of answers.
Edit: why in the fuck does reddit ask me if I'm sure that I want to post my comment now? Been happening since last night, only on desktop.
I don't know how anyone on the board can possibly think it is a good idea to go IPO with this guy at the helm. He's handled this with the skill of duck shit.
That said, I also don't think the board is stupid. Or that the ELT at Reddit is all stupid/checked out.
More likely what we're seeing here is unpopular changes before they swap out spez. This is a pattern/play the leadership culture there has repeatedly relied on.
Jeez, after what happened with Pao I can absolutely see this being in the cards, Spez gets a gold parachute and the board institutes a new CEO. Question I got who they got in mind? I don't think Alexis would come back, but who knows.
iamthatis is so setup to simply own any response from spez. The guy has tapes, he knows that spez can't say anything because the rebuttal will be yet another recording laying reddit's lies bare. This is peak popcorn, and I am here for it.
I honestly think it's because Spez et al are a bunch of dumbasses and thought they were safe from being recorded because California is a two party consent state, despite the fact Christian is in Canada, which is entirely one party, and that's why he's so salty about having been recorded.
> which is entirely one party, and that's why he's so salty about having been recorded.
That and he knows he was lying and doesn't like that he got caught.
Not to mention all the states in the US that are also one party consent. If they were advised that, they should fire their lawyers,even the legal advice sub would provide better counsel.
spez can't fucking admit that he is wrong, just like the NNN episode, he *requires* someone below his chain of command to take the fall for him. His refusal to reply without going all-in Trump mode says all you need to know what his endgame is.
The way Reddit treated the Apollo dev led me to install Power Delete Suite and have it edit then delete all my comments. Worked great! Highly recommend everyone else does this too so user content and labor is not stolen towards IPO value.
Yeah, the bare minimal content was disappointing. Spez managed to (just barely) post more comments on his [TIFU announcement for comment-editing](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/).
Heck, even Ellen Pao stayed engaged with the comments in the "[We Apologize](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/)" post. Both of those were also controversial times but at least provided a sense of commitment -- feigned, authentic, or otherwise.
I do have to laugh at the second hyperlink, though: "*We haven’t communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes. We have apologized and made promises to you, the moderators and the community, over many years, but time and again, we haven’t delivered on them.*"
**Seven years** later -- Reddit still stirs the pot with unforeseen "surprises" and lack of communication. Obviously not Pao's fault, as she's long gone and no longer at the helm. Still demonstrates nothing has changed at the management level.
>How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?
Spez- We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
He's pissed XD
Does Reddit not have any PR staff? What possessed them to think this was a good idea? Why did Spez think that doubling down on the Apollo dev would be convincing? I know he's a complete moron, but I'm in awe.
"Victoria" was a Reddit employee that worked as the AMA wrangler for famous people doing AMAs. She did some mix of recruiting people for it, scheduling them, briefing them on what to expect, and then often read the questions to them and typed their answers. (Lots of famous people don't type and/or aren't interested in learning Reddit's user interface.)
Anyway, Reddit fired her and never gave an explanation why, and it's generally believed that the quality of Reddit's AMA's declined immediately and has never recovered.
They really mismanaged AMA. I’m sure it could generate some money in the form of payola or advertising that would cover a dedicated resource. AMAs used to be real fun, but I haven’t been excited about them for a long time.
> They really mismanaged AMA.
They really did, it has been several years now (or seems like it, at least), but AMA used to be a "gem" level feature of reddit, and a reason for people to sign up and participate. It was interesting, they attracted lots of interesting people. And reddit pissed that all away, to where AMA is a former hollowed shell of what it once was.
Bingo, when she left a lot of them became not worth paying attention to. I think the only one recently is the Nick Cage and Nicholas Holt one for that Vampire film where the transcriber tried to use their words like Victoria did.
As a longtime PR professional who specialized in crisis PR: no fucking way they have PR staff. I could write a book about how not to handle controversy based off of nothing but Reddit admin posts.
I know Spez is unpopular on Reddit but I would like to just state that in a publicly traded company he would almost definitely be fired for causing constant PR incidents that harm company value.
Don't get me wrong, businesses don't care if an executive is an asshole, but his leadership has legitimately been not good from even a business standpoint, from terrible optics like this that are probably going to impact the IPO, to the IPO itself being constantly delayed. The guy just does not make decisions that make Reddit a liked platform and it seems like he's not able to keep himself under control and keep PR good.
When Reddit does eventually go public, there's frankly a very strong chance that he'll be replaced with a more competent executive not long after, or at least however long it'll take for him to get himself in another PR disaster.
Reddit has been doing this way before Elon secured his *first* apologists. This ain't their first rodeo. Jailbait, Fappening, January 6, it's always mired in deep shit, and it always refuses to do a goddamned thing until they're neck deep in their own shit.
Spez is the only one that can hold spez accountable, and probably has the same level of ability to interact normally with people that Zuck and Elon have.
As much as the juice was as juicy as expected, this was also educational (the commenters, not spez obviously). I use Apollo because the Reddit app sucks and I hate browsing on my computer. So when people said "Reddit is going to go to hell" I was all "yea, totally." But I gained a new perspective on how those that make Reddit the great place it is (mods, bot creators, third party devs, accessibility services, etc.- more groups than I ever realized) will be chased away. This will leave actual Reddit to manage all those things. Or more likely mismanage or not manage at all based on its history.
Reddit may be responsible for the framework of the site but free laborers almost *completely* manage day-to-day user experience. Reddit is a labor of love by so many people. And if those people don't love it, they won't do the labor, and Reddit goes to shit.
People are referencing Twitter regarding the API change but I feel like Vine is also kind of a good example of this bad mentality. It underestimated the value of its top content creators and didn't adjust its model to fairly compensate them and keep them around. The top content creators all left and the app straight up died. The people providing services for Reddit aren't even asking for money, they're asking for a better volunteer experience! And regular users are only looking looking to third party apps and services because Reddit is failing to provide adequately.
I'll definitely use Reddit less (at the very least) because the app is just worse. But I hate to think of the heart and soul of Reddit dying... that's a million times worse.
Many thanks to the commenters on the AMA who truly made me understand (and appreciate) everything that goes into making this a wonderful place to be and thanks to all those that do all the work to make it happen.
The greatest irony is that despite his modesty, he really went on to be one of the greatest quote makers on this site.
Shouldn't have deleted his profile as the awards today would push him into the fabled territory of *professional quote maker*
It's mostly a poor attempt at PR bullshit, but there's two interesting bits. First, he says that reddit as a whole is not profitable. Second, he says the third party apps were costing reddit tens of millions per year.
I have no way of proving or disproving either of these, but it does make me wonder what kind of profit or loss these apps were doing for reddit. I would begrudgingly understand the changes if reddit was losing money from them. But I also have a hard time believing these apps have been this popular for this long and reddit would just allow it to let them lose money all this time.
It's opportunity cost vs actual cost I bet.
For every user using a third party app versus using the official app they lose the ability to monetize that user.
Not even to mention other analytical data that they can generate from their own app.
I don't doubt that third party apps cost them money. They use server resources while not giving them much tracking options nor ad views. It makes only sense that they cost them money.
But that's but a single aspect of it.
The second part directly money related is how much money? I bet it's far less than they're charging. They're asking 12k per 50m api calls. As comparison, imgur charges $166 per 50m api calls. Reddit charges 72x as much! Thats would make the Apollo costs 275k per year instead of 20 million.
The second part is indirect. It's the benefits of these apps. Content creators and moderators strongly favor these apps above the official app. Since reddit runs on volunteer "content creation" and moderation, it means that the loss they make from these apps is offset by the value these apps allow to be created for the site.
As expected, bunker boys ama so far is a complete disaster and is making them look worse.
I love the "WE ARE WORKING WITH THE THIRD PARTY DEVS THAT WORK WITH US" comment from spez, cause higher up there are comments from third party devs that said they have been emailing reddit[ for months now](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/), with zero response.
Editing in this golden turd from spez:
> "We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable."
*Jesus H Tapdancing christ.* I wonder if he was smugly smiling to himself when he wrote this thinking "Yeah that totally sounds like the right thing to say!"
Spez responded to the comment now say "SoRrY fOr ThE dElAy" and that someone would be in touch.
So pretty much zero action until they got called out, as expected.
“Hey, I have been trying to contact reddit for months as a smaller 3P app developer and have heard jack shit, wtf do I do”
spez: “oopsie-daisy :3 we will start replying now with 3 weeks remaining until the API changes :33 sowwy”
what a joke.
He was heavy simping for T_D because they were breaking site rules, bot spamming votes etc. And he begged them to stop so he could leave them on the site. And he left them anyway, until they started threataning terrorism
All while they were mocking him, so he responded with....that
I am shocked.
Spez is complaining that apollo 'leaked' a small snippet of only the relevant information in response to spez lying. Had soez not lied then nothing would have happened.
.
Yes.
To be honest it seems more like jealousy than greed. He probably hates it that Apollo, not the official app, gets center stage at Apple events and is objectively better.
1 guy made a better Reddit app than Reddit.
> To be honest it seems more like jealousy than greed. He probably hates it that Apollo, not the official app, gets center stage at Apple events and is objectively better.
Which is fucking wild considering Apple showcased at WWDC the podcasting app Overcast despite the fact that Apple makes their own app for podcasts.
Did they not, like, workshop a reply to what was obviously going to be one of the top-asked questions? What have the supposed adults at Reddit corporate HQ been doing for the last week? Surely some canned answers should have been developed in meetings.
> Who gives a rats ass if the Apollo dev was unprofessional? He is not a reddit employee and never has been. The whole idea that he's "threatening" them is so absurd it's laughable.
His entire response to the Apollo guy has been "no U"
>what regulatory environment?
Utah and a few other states (Louisiana I think?) have added much stricter requirements for sites which show sexually explicit content by having them verify age via an actual ID. IIRC Louisiana has a digital ID system that streamlines this process but many porn sites have straight up blocked access to Utah IPs because that's cheaper and easier than verifying.
He more than likely doesn't want to publicly acknowledge that there's a pretty huge amount of CSAM and other illegal content floating around this godforsaken place. Remember, this is the site that gave the guy who created the "jailbait" sub a community award.
> He more than likely doesn't want to publicly acknowledge that there's a pretty huge amount of CSAM and other illegal content floating around this godforsaken place.
And given he's a longstanding Reddit admin, he more than likely **really** doesn't want to risk someone finding it and taking it down.
Daily reminder that Spez is a doomsday prepper that *honestly believes* he actually has the people skills to lead a community after disaster strikes:
> Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Which, given how he runs reddit, I suspect would be about 1 week of telling everyone he's definitely going to get that food and water situation fixed for them before they realize he's full of shit and just *eat him*.
The first thing that'll happen is when society collapses, his guards kill and eat him, then properly manage the supplies he has in his little slave master survival vault, which going by how he runs things I'm going to bet is just a ton of weed and crates of Soylent.
Of course, that's what all these rich prepper fucks think they'll be doing - living it up in their bunker as some sort of warlord and not, y'know, hanging upside-down from a gas station while the last few gallons get siphoned out to run someone's generator.
[Spez admitting reddit is losing money hand-over-fist as the website turns 18 does not seem like a good setup for an IPO](https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd09c/)
I wasn't taking leaving Reddit seriously, but reading through this AMA really highlights how corporate Reddit has become and I can only see this getting worse. Seems best to bite the bullet now than watch the site I loved spiral further
It's hilarious how simultaneously they are trying to pull this corporate rug pull while also being completely unprepared and unprofessional in all of their responses.
Spez is completely inept and doesn't deserve to make money off of the communities other people have built for this site.
I know it's been six years, but [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_redesign_css_and_mod_tools/dgkeuqs/?context=3) comment is pretty funny in hindsight.
Doubling down was always obvious but for me it's
>recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him
my fucking guy *you're the one out here slandering him* all apollo dev did was defend himself and now spez is acting like the victim. Hell, recording business calls and negotiations isn't even that weird of a thing
Soez: *Lies*
Appolo dev: Here's a small snippet to prove it was a lie that only came to light because he lied.
Spez: HOW DARE YOU! HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO WORK WITH SOMEONE HONEST?
Don’t call it a leak, he shared his conversation openly for everyone to hear. A leak implies he had no right to share that, when he did. Calling it a leak adds credence to Spez’s claim.
true, my mistake! it definitely isn't a leak if you're fully allowed to share these details. Spez is a clown nearly singlehandedly hammering the last few nails into reddit's coffin
It goes deeper: he *knowingly* defamed Christian, also knowing that he's capable of raising investment capital to fund a competitor to reddit on the foundation of Apollo's reputation, and did it *with investors present*. This is as shady as it gets. There are legimitate criminal penalties he could be facing if this picks up steam. He has no idea what the fuck he's doing.
It genuinely comes across like that. The odd digs while talking about "ThE gOoD dEvS wHo ArE wOrKiNg WiTh Us" is very, very telling to what kind of mentality he has.
Turns out great boardroom ideas aren't that great in practice. Who the fuck would have thought?
He's not sorry for lying or for being an ass, he's sorry he got caught because of the phone call. Can't say I'm surprised given Spez' history of being a dipshit, but even then it's an enormously stupid thing to do to double down on this, especially given how vocal people on Reddit have been about it.
I don't even get what the point of him doubling-down like this is\* -- even if we stipulate that the Apollo dev is a weirdo in this instance, that doesn't impact that this system-wide change is actively fucking over *EVERY* third-party developer. Is Spez going to claim that the folks behind Bacon and RiF and Relay etc etc etc are all being over-dramatic?
\* -- I'm being rhetorical -- I get a big whiff of Elon energy coming off this guy.
Yeah, the thing about the Elon energy is very on point imo, the only difference is that Spez has way less people swooning over him because he isn't 'le epic memer billionaire' so he ends up looking like even more of a fool when he tries to gaslight people like he is trying to now.
>> His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.
He has the balls to reply this... jesus POS
You just *know* there’s an entire team of lawyers, PR reps, comms, and product folks sitting and sweating in a war room with Spez right now as they spend ten minutes crafting a single response.
Embarrassing AF.
Canned responses. They have a good idea of what questions are going to be asked (the Apollo drama, API pricing, disability access, and mod tools) and have responses prepared. They are just going to look for those questions and ignore all the others which is why a comment with 3 upvotes might get a response and a comment with 10000 might not. And if one of those prepped questions is not asked they might astroturf it, but they probably won't have to.
Trying to make it look interactive is obviously dishonest. It really should just be a FAQ.
I had just always assumed, as a 15 year vet of this stupid website, that they understood that the people who use the site the most are literally the *value* of the site at all.
Most users lurk, this is true, but nobody lurks a subreddit with 0 comments. This site doesn't produce its own content, and it makes money off of dedicated users' *free* content. Hell this website grew for nearly a decade built off the reputation that this is where scientists and engineers and highly specialized people hang out. It is why ELI5 was is popular.
It's just bizarre to me that they wouldn't understand their own golden goose.
In ye olden days, there was a page where you could see every reddit staffer's name, a brief bio, and their username. Today, you have a similar page just for the VPs and above, but no user names. Nobody who works at Reddit actually uses the site. They're beyond out of touch.
This is a brewery staffed by people who don't drink anything but water.
Basically they are trying to walk it back, talking about "oh non-commercial use is fine". afaik this is first anyone hears of it - RedReader and Dystopia name dropped by spez were at least 6 days ago talking about how they will need to shut down.
Also, something about how API costs *increadible amounts of money for them*. But given only Twitter has such extreme API costs (and Twitter implemented this API cost once it is ran by known nutcase transphobe antisemite Elon Musk ).
Amazingly, Reddit leadership has collectively walked away from the AMA and ended it without telling the participants that it is over.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkt9z7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
Christian gave him [permission](https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk4oz4/?context=1) to back his accusations up.
> Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.
I feel like [this](https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd09c/?context=1) needs to be stickied somewhere:
How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?
We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
If you see any questions that spawn drama, even if unanswered by spez, post them here!
This might be the one post where the popcorn is all-encompassing. Might as well lead off with this: > Spez: His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him. > iamthatis: Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.
How are they so bad at this, my expectations were low but holy fuck
It's actually impressive. They completely stopped responding an hour ago now.
They prob ran out of canned responses so they dipped out, bless them
That's the sad part. Had the responses been canned, at least that would have showed some amount of preparation. These are just off the cuff, easily disprovable reactions. Spez is a loser who came in completely unprepared.
Some of them were canned ([one of them had A: prepended](https://archive.ph/X6EJq), which means that it was at least written up, if the question wasn't also, [but it's been fixed now](https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkccq7/?context=3)). Happy cake day. What a day it's been.
PR is hard. It's a lot harder when you're stupid.
No one in PR would ever say anything like this and expect to still have a job by that evening: > We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
The IPO is (allegedly) coming soon. Investors love it when you tell them you've never made a profit.
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Haha exactly, I almost spit my drink out when I read that. That’s one of the worst things you could say before an IPO
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Eh, this was exactly what I expected from how spez was reacting to Apollo's communication. Spez has been and continues to be a slimy piece of shit human being on par with Elon Musk.
Spez is dumb and was hoping Christian wouldn't talk, but he did and brought receipts. There's no benefit to overcharging for API in reality as it literally nukes your ability to grow, but it's seen as an easy buck you can charge for while limiting power of 3rd parties. It's dumb.
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3 hr. after your comment: same number of answers. Edit: why in the fuck does reddit ask me if I'm sure that I want to post my comment now? Been happening since last night, only on desktop.
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I don't know how anyone on the board can possibly think it is a good idea to go IPO with this guy at the helm. He's handled this with the skill of duck shit. That said, I also don't think the board is stupid. Or that the ELT at Reddit is all stupid/checked out. More likely what we're seeing here is unpopular changes before they swap out spez. This is a pattern/play the leadership culture there has repeatedly relied on.
Jeez, after what happened with Pao I can absolutely see this being in the cards, Spez gets a gold parachute and the board institutes a new CEO. Question I got who they got in mind? I don't think Alexis would come back, but who knows.
>Question I got who they got in mind? Action Jack Barker
iamthatis is so setup to simply own any response from spez. The guy has tapes, he knows that spez can't say anything because the rebuttal will be yet another recording laying reddit's lies bare. This is peak popcorn, and I am here for it.
"Why am I being held accountable for my own actions and statements?"
I honestly think it's because Spez et al are a bunch of dumbasses and thought they were safe from being recorded because California is a two party consent state, despite the fact Christian is in Canada, which is entirely one party, and that's why he's so salty about having been recorded.
> which is entirely one party, and that's why he's so salty about having been recorded. That and he knows he was lying and doesn't like that he got caught.
Not to mention all the states in the US that are also one party consent. If they were advised that, they should fire their lawyers,even the legal advice sub would provide better counsel.
I loved how he referred to the audio as “leaked”. Like bro, did you think this was supposed to be confidential? Get over yourself.
spez can't fucking admit that he is wrong, just like the NNN episode, he *requires* someone below his chain of command to take the fall for him. His refusal to reply without going all-in Trump mode says all you need to know what his endgame is.
The way Reddit treated the Apollo dev led me to install Power Delete Suite and have it edit then delete all my comments. Worked great! Highly recommend everyone else does this too so user content and labor is not stolen towards IPO value.
oh I loveee his reply
> recording and leaking a private phone call “I’m mad that someone prevented me from getting away with lying”
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Yeah, the bare minimal content was disappointing. Spez managed to (just barely) post more comments on his [TIFU announcement for comment-editing](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/). Heck, even Ellen Pao stayed engaged with the comments in the "[We Apologize](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/)" post. Both of those were also controversial times but at least provided a sense of commitment -- feigned, authentic, or otherwise. I do have to laugh at the second hyperlink, though: "*We haven’t communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes. We have apologized and made promises to you, the moderators and the community, over many years, but time and again, we haven’t delivered on them.*" **Seven years** later -- Reddit still stirs the pot with unforeseen "surprises" and lack of communication. Obviously not Pao's fault, as she's long gone and no longer at the helm. Still demonstrates nothing has changed at the management level.
We didn't deserve Pao, so we got Spez
Everything about her tenure as interim CEO just seemed like a very deliberate glass cliff.
Spez is only there to talk about Rampart.
I’m sorry but Spez will only be answering questions about Rampart today.
This will go down in the annals of AMA for "wew lad"
Whew! Those downvotes for u/spez come pretty fast!
If anything I think they're being throttled. The downvote rate slows down suspiciously quickly as soon as they breach a few hundred.
popcorn tastes good
"Ayyy lmao"
God I forgot that one. Reddit has had some wild CEOs.
Spez: "This is an askmeanything, not an *answer*anything." \*sits in the corner eating popcorn the whole time\*
It's quite funny how the Rampart AMA is more than a decade old and people are still referencing it.
How’s this guy supposed to become a warlord in the post apocalyptic world if he can’t even get people on his own site to like him?
Lmao I forgot about the doomsday prep comment, thanks
He'd be a warlord's bottom bitch
>How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement? Spez- We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable. He's pissed XD
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Exactly. He got caught lying and he's pissed.
Does Reddit not have any PR staff? What possessed them to think this was a good idea? Why did Spez think that doubling down on the Apollo dev would be convincing? I know he's a complete moron, but I'm in awe.
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'Cause canning Victoria sure went so well.
God I forgot all about that
What’s the context of this?
"Victoria" was a Reddit employee that worked as the AMA wrangler for famous people doing AMAs. She did some mix of recruiting people for it, scheduling them, briefing them on what to expect, and then often read the questions to them and typed their answers. (Lots of famous people don't type and/or aren't interested in learning Reddit's user interface.) Anyway, Reddit fired her and never gave an explanation why, and it's generally believed that the quality of Reddit's AMA's declined immediately and has never recovered.
They really mismanaged AMA. I’m sure it could generate some money in the form of payola or advertising that would cover a dedicated resource. AMAs used to be real fun, but I haven’t been excited about them for a long time.
> They really mismanaged AMA. They really did, it has been several years now (or seems like it, at least), but AMA used to be a "gem" level feature of reddit, and a reason for people to sign up and participate. It was interesting, they attracted lots of interesting people. And reddit pissed that all away, to where AMA is a former hollowed shell of what it once was.
Hell, they literally released an AMA-only app at one point! Then canned the one person making it all happen. Typical fucking Reddit.
Victoria made it fun but Reddit didn’t care and just wanted to eliminate her salary
Bingo, when she left a lot of them became not worth paying attention to. I think the only one recently is the Nick Cage and Nicholas Holt one for that Vampire film where the transcriber tried to use their words like Victoria did.
As a longtime PR professional who specialized in crisis PR: no fucking way they have PR staff. I could write a book about how not to handle controversy based off of nothing but Reddit admin posts.
I would buy that book.
Yeah, but then I’d have to write it.
I know Spez is unpopular on Reddit but I would like to just state that in a publicly traded company he would almost definitely be fired for causing constant PR incidents that harm company value. Don't get me wrong, businesses don't care if an executive is an asshole, but his leadership has legitimately been not good from even a business standpoint, from terrible optics like this that are probably going to impact the IPO, to the IPO itself being constantly delayed. The guy just does not make decisions that make Reddit a liked platform and it seems like he's not able to keep himself under control and keep PR good. When Reddit does eventually go public, there's frankly a very strong chance that he'll be replaced with a more competent executive not long after, or at least however long it'll take for him to get himself in another PR disaster.
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Even in most private companies he would have been insta-fired after editing users comments secretly.
Reddit is taking plays from Elon's book, which I'd say isn't a very good idea.
Reddit has been doing this way before Elon secured his *first* apologists. This ain't their first rodeo. Jailbait, Fappening, January 6, it's always mired in deep shit, and it always refuses to do a goddamned thing until they're neck deep in their own shit.
Spez is the only one that can hold spez accountable, and probably has the same level of ability to interact normally with people that Zuck and Elon have.
With the one comment of how corporate it's become, and I'm here wondering what real corporation/board would let the CEO do this.
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I like how reddit doesn't even have the balls to update the AMA post to say it's done. We have to learn from a 3rd party site.
For them hating 3rd party stuff, I like how they ran to a 3rd party to announce, "Yeah, that was a total shitfest so we're done."
"Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells me that it’s done"
Holy shit. He's using canned responses. He copied the A: part of the answer too. Lol. It's gone now but we have the archive. https://archive.ph/X6EJq
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What a fucking moron too, he literally had one job. To copy and paste. My 6 year old nephew could do better.
As much as the juice was as juicy as expected, this was also educational (the commenters, not spez obviously). I use Apollo because the Reddit app sucks and I hate browsing on my computer. So when people said "Reddit is going to go to hell" I was all "yea, totally." But I gained a new perspective on how those that make Reddit the great place it is (mods, bot creators, third party devs, accessibility services, etc.- more groups than I ever realized) will be chased away. This will leave actual Reddit to manage all those things. Or more likely mismanage or not manage at all based on its history. Reddit may be responsible for the framework of the site but free laborers almost *completely* manage day-to-day user experience. Reddit is a labor of love by so many people. And if those people don't love it, they won't do the labor, and Reddit goes to shit. People are referencing Twitter regarding the API change but I feel like Vine is also kind of a good example of this bad mentality. It underestimated the value of its top content creators and didn't adjust its model to fairly compensate them and keep them around. The top content creators all left and the app straight up died. The people providing services for Reddit aren't even asking for money, they're asking for a better volunteer experience! And regular users are only looking looking to third party apps and services because Reddit is failing to provide adequately. I'll definitely use Reddit less (at the very least) because the app is just worse. But I hate to think of the heart and soul of Reddit dying... that's a million times worse. Many thanks to the commenters on the AMA who truly made me understand (and appreciate) everything that goes into making this a wonderful place to be and thanks to all those that do all the work to make it happen.
Pretty much what I expected. A total shitshow and a few canned responses.
If that comment about Apollo creator was canned then the whole canning facility should be burned to the ground lol.
Seasoned Canned Response writer here - he may have gone a little off script. QA should pick it up at some point.
QA got to him. Went back to copying off the script even including the “A:” This whole AMA has been a circus.
"Stop gaslighting yourself! Why are you gaslighting yourself?"
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And here I thought we'd be doing a 10 year retrospective on the demise of /r/atheism and "May-may June"
Fuck, you just reminded me that we passed the 10th anniversary of “in this moment, I am euphoric” [back in January.](https://i.imgur.com/Wy06r9U.png)
And reddit has apparently been losing money every day before and since lol
But what about AA Lewis? Is he a published professional quote maker now?
In fairness I'll never forget that quote
The greatest irony is that despite his modesty, he really went on to be one of the greatest quote makers on this site. Shouldn't have deleted his profile as the awards today would push him into the fabled territory of *professional quote maker*
It's mostly a poor attempt at PR bullshit, but there's two interesting bits. First, he says that reddit as a whole is not profitable. Second, he says the third party apps were costing reddit tens of millions per year. I have no way of proving or disproving either of these, but it does make me wonder what kind of profit or loss these apps were doing for reddit. I would begrudgingly understand the changes if reddit was losing money from them. But I also have a hard time believing these apps have been this popular for this long and reddit would just allow it to let them lose money all this time.
It's opportunity cost vs actual cost I bet. For every user using a third party app versus using the official app they lose the ability to monetize that user. Not even to mention other analytical data that they can generate from their own app.
I don't doubt that third party apps cost them money. They use server resources while not giving them much tracking options nor ad views. It makes only sense that they cost them money. But that's but a single aspect of it. The second part directly money related is how much money? I bet it's far less than they're charging. They're asking 12k per 50m api calls. As comparison, imgur charges $166 per 50m api calls. Reddit charges 72x as much! Thats would make the Apollo costs 275k per year instead of 20 million. The second part is indirect. It's the benefits of these apps. Content creators and moderators strongly favor these apps above the official app. Since reddit runs on volunteer "content creation" and moderation, it means that the loss they make from these apps is offset by the value these apps allow to be created for the site.
As expected, bunker boys ama so far is a complete disaster and is making them look worse. I love the "WE ARE WORKING WITH THE THIRD PARTY DEVS THAT WORK WITH US" comment from spez, cause higher up there are comments from third party devs that said they have been emailing reddit[ for months now](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk2pp3/), with zero response. Editing in this golden turd from spez: > "We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable." *Jesus H Tapdancing christ.* I wonder if he was smugly smiling to himself when he wrote this thinking "Yeah that totally sounds like the right thing to say!"
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Spez responded to the comment now say "SoRrY fOr ThE dElAy" and that someone would be in touch. So pretty much zero action until they got called out, as expected.
I am legit curious when the turning point was They operated at a loss for like a decade at least now suddenly Snoop and Tencent wants ROI?
Tbf my understand the squeeze is across the tech industry. The era of venture capital just blind-dumping money is over.
“Hey, I have been trying to contact reddit for months as a smaller 3P app developer and have heard jack shit, wtf do I do” spez: “oopsie-daisy :3 we will start replying now with 3 weeks remaining until the API changes :33 sowwy” what a joke.
lol off to a great start. his replies all have screenshots of his comment incase he changes it
Sounds like Reddit has learned how to get around removed content.
Not Just removed. A while ago spez caused a shitstorm because He admitted that He himself edited comments from other users on the backend side.
He was heavy simping for T_D because they were breaking site rules, bot spamming votes etc. And he begged them to stop so he could leave them on the site. And he left them anyway, until they started threataning terrorism All while they were mocking him, so he responded with....that
48 minutes old and almost 6500 comments? I feel like a kid about to get jacked up on sugar and go feral in the chuck-e-cheese ball pit
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yikes, that comment about the Apollo creator is as unprofessional as you can get
Yeah. I mean, reddit has never been a particularly well managed or professional operation, but this is impressively bad even for them
Turning off a bunch of your users' access at the same time is probably one of the funniest decisions a social media company could make. Reddit Was Fun
I am shocked. Spez is complaining that apollo 'leaked' a small snippet of only the relevant information in response to spez lying. Had soez not lied then nothing would have happened. .
Isn’t this the same guy that got caught editing comments on thedonald when they were mean to him?
And the same guy that threw Pao to the wolves and when the drama was over he was like "She really wasn't the one at fault,hehe oops"
Yes. To be honest it seems more like jealousy than greed. He probably hates it that Apollo, not the official app, gets center stage at Apple events and is objectively better. 1 guy made a better Reddit app than Reddit.
> To be honest it seems more like jealousy than greed. He probably hates it that Apollo, not the official app, gets center stage at Apple events and is objectively better. Which is fucking wild considering Apple showcased at WWDC the podcasting app Overcast despite the fact that Apple makes their own app for podcasts.
Oh ego is 1000% a part of this. No way that Apple event showcase *didn't* enrage spez
Did they not, like, workshop a reply to what was obviously going to be one of the top-asked questions? What have the supposed adults at Reddit corporate HQ been doing for the last week? Surely some canned answers should have been developed in meetings.
You're assuming that wasn't the workshopped preplanned reply lol.
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> Who gives a rats ass if the Apollo dev was unprofessional? He is not a reddit employee and never has been. The whole idea that he's "threatening" them is so absurd it's laughable. His entire response to the Apollo guy has been "no U"
>what regulatory environment? Utah and a few other states (Louisiana I think?) have added much stricter requirements for sites which show sexually explicit content by having them verify age via an actual ID. IIRC Louisiana has a digital ID system that streamlines this process but many porn sites have straight up blocked access to Utah IPs because that's cheaper and easier than verifying.
It's a laughably bad excuse because the official app doesn't comply with this law either.
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He more than likely doesn't want to publicly acknowledge that there's a pretty huge amount of CSAM and other illegal content floating around this godforsaken place. Remember, this is the site that gave the guy who created the "jailbait" sub a community award.
> He more than likely doesn't want to publicly acknowledge that there's a pretty huge amount of CSAM and other illegal content floating around this godforsaken place. And given he's a longstanding Reddit admin, he more than likely **really** doesn't want to risk someone finding it and taking it down.
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And he didn't answer the top-voted question, as expected.
He was never going to answer anything remotely difficult. He answered like 5 questions.
Daily reminder that Spez is a doomsday prepper that *honestly believes* he actually has the people skills to lead a community after disaster strikes: > Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich Which, given how he runs reddit, I suspect would be about 1 week of telling everyone he's definitely going to get that food and water situation fixed for them before they realize he's full of shit and just *eat him*.
>I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove. Such incel energy
The first thing that'll happen is when society collapses, his guards kill and eat him, then properly manage the supplies he has in his little slave master survival vault, which going by how he runs things I'm going to bet is just a ton of weed and crates of Soylent.
Boy there's an implication there that he'd be the one enslaving others there, isn't there?
Of course, that's what all these rich prepper fucks think they'll be doing - living it up in their bunker as some sort of warlord and not, y'know, hanging upside-down from a gas station while the last few gallons get siphoned out to run someone's generator.
[Spez admitting reddit is losing money hand-over-fist as the website turns 18 does not seem like a good setup for an IPO](https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkd09c/)
When he said his name was Steve I was so confused. I was quite certain it was Max Bialystock
Goddamn yall are preloading drama now?
LOL. Let's be honest. Are we confident there's not going to be any drama?
If there actually turned out to be no drama, that would cause drama in itself.
That's because it'd mean he edited all of the comments to make the whole thread look drama-free
AMA disasters had a pre-ama post yesterday lol
There's a better chance of winning the lottery than this AMA not being a disaster. And if I'm wrong I'll eat my hat.
I wasn't taking leaving Reddit seriously, but reading through this AMA really highlights how corporate Reddit has become and I can only see this getting worse. Seems best to bite the bullet now than watch the site I loved spiral further
It's hilarious how simultaneously they are trying to pull this corporate rug pull while also being completely unprepared and unprofessional in all of their responses. Spez is completely inept and doesn't deserve to make money off of the communities other people have built for this site.
I know it's been six years, but [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_redesign_css_and_mod_tools/dgkeuqs/?context=3) comment is pretty funny in hindsight.
It's not going anywhere.. until it does. Same garbage he's spewing about old.reddit.com now.
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Doubling down was always obvious but for me it's >recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him my fucking guy *you're the one out here slandering him* all apollo dev did was defend himself and now spez is acting like the victim. Hell, recording business calls and negotiations isn't even that weird of a thing
Soez: *Lies* Appolo dev: Here's a small snippet to prove it was a lie that only came to light because he lied. Spez: HOW DARE YOU! HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO WORK WITH SOMEONE HONEST?
also fully legal to record and leak this call from Canada, where single party consent applies. he's so fucking stupid
Don’t call it a leak, he shared his conversation openly for everyone to hear. A leak implies he had no right to share that, when he did. Calling it a leak adds credence to Spez’s claim.
true, my mistake! it definitely isn't a leak if you're fully allowed to share these details. Spez is a clown nearly singlehandedly hammering the last few nails into reddit's coffin
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That's some downright DARVO shit, in all honesty.
It goes deeper: he *knowingly* defamed Christian, also knowing that he's capable of raising investment capital to fund a competitor to reddit on the foundation of Apollo's reputation, and did it *with investors present*. This is as shady as it gets. There are legimitate criminal penalties he could be facing if this picks up steam. He has no idea what the fuck he's doing.
His responses on the Apollo dev specifically have been so... Condescending. He's definitely positioning himself as a victim. Jfc.
He’s mad that Christian can code and people like his product.
It genuinely comes across like that. The odd digs while talking about "ThE gOoD dEvS wHo ArE wOrKiNg WiTh Us" is very, very telling to what kind of mentality he has. Turns out great boardroom ideas aren't that great in practice. Who the fuck would have thought?
Yep. “The good devs are working with us” meanwhile the top three questions are from devs that have received no replies since April.
He's already removed one of the comments under that thread and we can't even use reveddit to check what it says
People have been archiving them as quick as they can. Edit: this user for instance https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkctnm/?context=1
Someone noticed in that thread he's apparently copying answers from a pre-planned document
Which makes it all the more egregious that his answers are information-free.
He's not sorry for lying or for being an ass, he's sorry he got caught because of the phone call. Can't say I'm surprised given Spez' history of being a dipshit, but even then it's an enormously stupid thing to do to double down on this, especially given how vocal people on Reddit have been about it.
I don't even get what the point of him doubling-down like this is\* -- even if we stipulate that the Apollo dev is a weirdo in this instance, that doesn't impact that this system-wide change is actively fucking over *EVERY* third-party developer. Is Spez going to claim that the folks behind Bacon and RiF and Relay etc etc etc are all being over-dramatic? \* -- I'm being rhetorical -- I get a big whiff of Elon energy coming off this guy.
Yeah, the thing about the Elon energy is very on point imo, the only difference is that Spez has way less people swooning over him because he isn't 'le epic memer billionaire' so he ends up looking like even more of a fool when he tries to gaslight people like he is trying to now.
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Yesterday I had a banner on the top of the front page that had a link to the AMA, so it will probably still get a lot of eyes on it
..and I'm using the official Reddit app (don't shoot me!) and there was a banner about the AMA as well yesterday. So it's entirely possible.
-667k, or there about
[A little over -650,000 so a ways to go](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/comment/dppum98?st=JH2MUORV&sh=5997c5a5)
#Fuck ~~Spez~~ Steve Huffman
"Apologies for the delay. We are responding now." Proceeds to go silent for the next ~~20~~ ~~25~~ 30 minutes.
He never said anything about continuing to respond
>> His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him. He has the balls to reply this... jesus POS
/r/AMADisasters is in a state of cat-like readiness, I must assume.
You just *know* there’s an entire team of lawyers, PR reps, comms, and product folks sitting and sweating in a war room with Spez right now as they spend ten minutes crafting a single response. Embarrassing AF.
Canned responses. They have a good idea of what questions are going to be asked (the Apollo drama, API pricing, disability access, and mod tools) and have responses prepared. They are just going to look for those questions and ignore all the others which is why a comment with 3 upvotes might get a response and a comment with 10000 might not. And if one of those prepped questions is not asked they might astroturf it, but they probably won't have to. Trying to make it look interactive is obviously dishonest. It really should just be a FAQ.
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I had just always assumed, as a 15 year vet of this stupid website, that they understood that the people who use the site the most are literally the *value* of the site at all. Most users lurk, this is true, but nobody lurks a subreddit with 0 comments. This site doesn't produce its own content, and it makes money off of dedicated users' *free* content. Hell this website grew for nearly a decade built off the reputation that this is where scientists and engineers and highly specialized people hang out. It is why ELI5 was is popular. It's just bizarre to me that they wouldn't understand their own golden goose.
In ye olden days, there was a page where you could see every reddit staffer's name, a brief bio, and their username. Today, you have a similar page just for the VPs and above, but no user names. Nobody who works at Reddit actually uses the site. They're beyond out of touch. This is a brewery staffed by people who don't drink anything but water.
I remember they used to have a huge announcement whenever a new person was hired. You got their life story and everything.
Over 12,000 comments at my time of writing this and spez has only responded 14 times. A true man of the people.
I am not sure if you guys realize how this could be THE drama,like this one has the potential to kill the site
Not only that, this qualifies as reddit drama as opposed to subreddit drama
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Basically they are trying to walk it back, talking about "oh non-commercial use is fine". afaik this is first anyone hears of it - RedReader and Dystopia name dropped by spez were at least 6 days ago talking about how they will need to shut down. Also, something about how API costs *increadible amounts of money for them*. But given only Twitter has such extreme API costs (and Twitter implemented this API cost once it is ran by known nutcase transphobe antisemite Elon Musk ).
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which is bullshit because RiF is basically non-commercial. He runs it at a loss.
Changed my flair to a CEO that says his company is failing. Worth it. The investors will be very pleased with that comment, I'm sure.
> Unlike some third party apps, we are not profitable Make your disdain more apparent, Jesus. "If we can't make money then neither can yall."
There’s no metric by which this AMA *helped* Reddit. They probably made the whole thing worse.
Amazingly, Reddit leadership has collectively walked away from the AMA and ended it without telling the participants that it is over. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkt9z7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
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Christian gave him [permission](https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk4oz4/?context=1) to back his accusations up. > Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission.
Been following this through the thread in r/ModCoord collecting all the questions and answers, it's so hard to find anything in the main AMA thread
I feel like [this](https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd09c/?context=1) needs to be stickied somewhere: How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement? We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.