All Reddit had to do was STFU and wait for a month or two. Lack of any reaction or results is probably the most demotivating thing in all human experience. Go forward with the plan, say nothing, give no interviews, send no messages, do nothing to the mods or the subreddits, and within just a couple weeks, the users would get bored and force the place to return to normal. Either through pressuring their mods or just starting new subreddits with the same theme as the closed ones. The effect on the front page and the common lurker would be minimal and transient.
Instead, Spez has to go around slinging shit from his diaper at literally every opportunity, taking more and more extreme actions, hiding behind a fake mod name, saying super salty things to everyone, etc. He’s basically the only person continuing to add fuel to this dumpster fire. It’s literally just him. If he got sick or hit by a bus or something and had to shut up for even just a week while he was recovering, Reddit would lose interest in the whole thing, because without a visible enemy to fight, the users would turn their frustrations on each other. But he’s clearly suffering from some deep psychic wound that keeps him from being able to shut his pie hole.
He can’t reverse course and admit defeat now, reddit will keep trying to strongarm mods because they have to win and show that they’re in control and not their mods or their users. Ultimately they do have all the power and can ban everyone and remove all the mods and replace them, but it will damage the site. Spez doesn’t care though, even if the entire site is burned to the ground, he’ll have won. And he’ll blame everyone else for his loss of IPO value.
It’s not just spez. It’s the board that probably made the decision to disable API access, and that can remove spez if they choose to. But they won’t, because they want the enshittification necessary to let them cash out once they go public.
Maybe he’s a willing scapegoat for the board with a promised golden parachute? I just can’t think of how somebody can get that far and be so tone deaf.
No like even today, if he came out with an honest apology video and offered to work with devs on a reasonable API price plan he could still mostly recover and keep all the low effort users.
But for some reason he’s hell bent on actually crashing the community. Even the lurkers are starting to jump ship. It’s either sociopathic narcissism or a high school shaped ego, but he just can’t let it go.
After reading Spez’s interviews I deleted the reddit bookmark on my browser. Once Apollo shuts down I’m deleting the only reddit app on my devices. That dude is a tool.
I downloaded an extension that can automatically redirect me to another website that way if, by force of habit, I try to go to reddit, it redirects me here.
I had only planned to leave Reddit once their API pricing impacted apps. But then spez/Huffman decided to go around bad mouthing all of us old guard reditors and moderators, so now fuck him. I’m not going back even for a day or two.
I left Reddit and deleted my accounts a few hours after the subs went dark and my feed dried up. I don’t use mobile apps, I have no horse in that race at all.
It just wasn’t an enjoyable place to be anymore, and that’s all because of spez.
My guess, a month or two delay doesn’t fit into their timeline. It shows with the rush to API change, and the “convenient” July 1 (3rd quarter) start date. They’re going all out to prove Fidelity’s valuation downgrade wrong, and show a full quarter of Reddit’s revenue potential.
All Reddit had to do was STFU and wait for a month or two. Lack of any reaction or results is probably the most demotivating thing in all human experience. Go forward with the plan, say nothing, give no interviews, send no messages, do nothing to the mods or the subreddits, and within just a couple weeks, the users would get bored and force the place to return to normal. Either through pressuring their mods or just starting new subreddits with the same theme as the closed ones. The effect on the front page and the common lurker would be minimal and transient.
Instead, Spez has to go around slinging shit from his diaper at literally every opportunity, taking more and more extreme actions, hiding behind a fake mod name, saying super salty things to everyone, etc. He’s basically the only person continuing to add fuel to this dumpster fire. It’s literally just him. If he got sick or hit by a bus or something and had to shut up for even just a week while he was recovering, Reddit would lose interest in the whole thing, because without a visible enemy to fight, the users would turn their frustrations on each other. But he’s clearly suffering from some deep psychic wound that keeps him from being able to shut his pie hole.
Spez has an ego problem and now he’s in too deep.
He can’t reverse course and admit defeat now, reddit will keep trying to strongarm mods because they have to win and show that they’re in control and not their mods or their users. Ultimately they do have all the power and can ban everyone and remove all the mods and replace them, but it will damage the site. Spez doesn’t care though, even if the entire site is burned to the ground, he’ll have won. And he’ll blame everyone else for his loss of IPO value.
It’s not just spez. It’s the board that probably made the decision to disable API access, and that can remove spez if they choose to. But they won’t, because they want the enshittification necessary to let them cash out once they go public.
Maybe he’s a willing scapegoat for the board with a promised golden parachute? I just can’t think of how somebody can get that far and be so tone deaf.
I bet my lunch that Spez and all the board will sell their stock and leave.
No like even today, if he came out with an honest apology video and offered to work with devs on a reasonable API price plan he could still mostly recover and keep all the low effort users.
But for some reason he’s hell bent on actually crashing the community. Even the lurkers are starting to jump ship. It’s either sociopathic narcissism or a high school shaped ego, but he just can’t let it go.
Former lurker here! I jumped shipped and have posted more on Lemmy in my first week than 11 years on Reddit.
He’s had a bit too much of the attitude of, “I’m the founder. All must bow to me”.
I’ve had to deal with a lot of that at work before :)
After reading Spez’s interviews I deleted the reddit bookmark on my browser. Once Apollo shuts down I’m deleting the only reddit app on my devices. That dude is a tool.
I downloaded an extension that can automatically redirect me to another website that way if, by force of habit, I try to go to reddit, it redirects me here.
I had only planned to leave Reddit once their API pricing impacted apps. But then spez/Huffman decided to go around bad mouthing all of us old guard reditors and moderators, so now fuck him. I’m not going back even for a day or two.
I left Reddit and deleted my accounts a few hours after the subs went dark and my feed dried up. I don’t use mobile apps, I have no horse in that race at all.
It just wasn’t an enjoyable place to be anymore, and that’s all because of spez.
My guess, a month or two delay doesn’t fit into their timeline. It shows with the rush to API change, and the “convenient” July 1 (3rd quarter) start date. They’re going all out to prove Fidelity’s valuation downgrade wrong, and show a full quarter of Reddit’s revenue potential.