What is Reddit CEO Steve Huffman doing?::Reddit CEO Steve Huffman seems to be preparing the company for an IPO. But is what’s good for the IPO good for the business?

  • Gorilladrums@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    160
    arrow-down
    39
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t understand this community’s obsession with this man. If you’re no longer on his site then why do you care what happens to him or Reddit? Just move on.

    • DashboTreeFrog@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      136
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it’s like, when you have a horrible breakup and you keep wanting to hear about the horrible things happening in your ex’s life that justifies you leaving them and/or gives you some sweet schadenfreude.

    • CaptainPicard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      87
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Because I used reddit for well over a decade and had hundreds of subs I followed. Friends and communities. Years and years of shared history. It has been a huge part of my life. And this turd is ruining it for everybody, and by everybody I mean millions og people. I’m not obsessed with the guy, but I am interested to know what is going on with the place I spent so many hundreds of hours on. Don’t get me wrong, I glad I found lemmy. It’s a great community, but it’s far from what we left behind. In time we’ll hopefully get there, but in the meantime for sure fuck that piece of shit spez.

      • RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        34
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        My thoughts exactly. Reddit was an immensely widespread and unique collection of so many vibrant niche communities that has grown over nearly two decades and was wilfully destroyed in mere weeks.

        I can’t blame anyone who mourns the loss and resents the greedy pigfucker that killed it.

    • Alteon@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      41
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some people just want to watch the world spez burn. It’s human nature to want “your side” to win, and he’s the face of “the enemy”… Not the reddit community, mind you…Reddit Corporate.

      … But yeah…I agree with you. 😁

      • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Are you sure? Have you ever been in a train wreck before? Maybe it’s fun!

        Update: I just googled “train wrecks” and, while it doesn’t look fun, who really knows for sure?

        • markr@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Well no, and I’ve never seen a live train wreck either. In general I’m fascinated by disasters. The people around me can all be freaking out and I’m like ‘wow this is amazing’. However train wrecks, airplane crashes, and high speed auto wrecks are all obviously dangerous enough so that I in fact have no desire for a first hand experience.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I did a study about that once. The only conclusion I could really make is that people involved in train wrecks don’t like participating in post experiment questionnaires. Though on the bright side, their refusal to answer the questionnaire meant we could sue their families for the cost of the train because being in train wrecks is also apparently associated with not reading contracts.

    • jeffw@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      1 year ago

      This community is about technology and it’s one of the most popular websites.

    • surfrock66@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think watching his moves foretells the future of communities still on Reddit. Lemmy has learned from growing pains in the recent fast growth, but could it handle a true twitter-level meltdown’s influx of users? I think Reddit needs to stay alive a little longer so community federation and migration is possible, THEN Reddit can melt down. Watching the person steering that shop is helpful in gauging urgency.

    • Fester@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I wiped and deleted my account, and haven’t been back except for a few specific searches and occasional clicks from Lemmy links. But part of me still has some hope that there will be changes that lead to a reversal back to free API, or at least that each new story and new fuckup will continue to push more people to Lemmy. More broadly, corporate fuckups in general will hopefully push people to decentralized platforms, so it’s always going to be interesting to read about.

      I mean, we are on a Reddit clone that was created out of spite years ago, so bad news about Reddit will be relevant here for a while.

    • BackStabbath@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m sure some people hover between them. The only reason I still go on reddit sometimes is that Infinity is still working. I think it would go to almost 0 if I genuinely had to use the official app.

    • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Well you better start understanding it, we can’t let go. If Reddit were shattered into a million pieces tomorrow, we would still sing the bitter lamentations about the time they took away our most sacred API.

      • Gorilladrums@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Bruh, all he did was make a minor unpopular financial decision for the sake of the company. Wishing him harm just shows that you’re terminally online. Reddit is literally nothing more than a silly forum to shitpost and watch porn. It’s not important.

      • sarcasticsunrise@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Damn, I got downvoted to fuck for upvoting and supporting an objective post about not giving Reddit any traffic. Granted I’m new on this instance, but that’s a lil weird

      • sarcasticsunrise@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        I agree with OP straight up. Is the tone of my syntax not registering correctly? Am I bein trolled? (Yes)

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    83
    ·
    1 year ago

    Suggesting discord as a competitor to reddit is dumb when discord does not pop up in search results containing information that may provide the solution. Might as well call WhatsApp a competitor to reddit then.

    • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s not all people used reddit for though. I’m also absolutely devastated about the amount of generational knowledge that lives on reddit right now, and sad that some of the biggest contributors of that have probably wiped their accounts by now, but for alot of the community aspects of reddit, and finding groups with similar interest, discord does perfectly well.

      • NightOwl@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        For socializing discord can match it, but it’s really more the database of information that is searchable and viewable by anyone who doesn’t even use reddit and it not being gatewalled that makes Discord not even come close. It’s too much of a closed ecosystem even among discord account users with having to be in a particular server to benefit, and servers have been shut down and information all lost for members too.

        Socializing to me is secondary. Like when it comes to stackoverflow, xda, or whatever random forums pop up in searches it’s really the solution that’s at the forefront of importance than whether these users are friends or whatever for anyone trying to find a relevant answer to their problem.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    1 year ago

    Great article, but it does miss one point IMO. Some fights are more important than others. Pao became unpopular among extremists who wanted to be allowed to push hate speech and discrimination. Funny the article didn’t mention the revenge porn debacle.

    That actually resulted in the Voat fork of reddit, which of course quickly became a cesspool, and ended up failing.

    The fight Pao fought was necessary, for reddit to have a shred of respectability, and to even stay legal, and for reddit to not fall into a hole of hate speech and idiocy. Pao took the fall for decency, and was forced to leave. But AFAIK none of the things she did were reversed, because they were necessary.

    What Steve Huffman is doing is not necessary, on the contrary it’s thoroughly documented to be harmful to reddit as a service in general, and especially for mobile users, and even more so for people who are blind.

    There’s an enormous difference in the importance of the Hill Pao died on, and the hill Spez chose. However the article is pretty spot on about the difference in how the 2 situations are handled, and how Spez is actively making it worse.

  • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    51
    ·
    1 year ago

    I agree with most of this article except about Discord being Reddit’s main competitor. I think Discord has a distinct enough feel that it’s almost kinda separate from other social media. It’s less so like a platform you make posts on and moreso a big text group with lots of features, which is perfect for some communities but stifling for others.

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      53
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t really get a lot of what people want to use Discord for. A couple web forums I used (ram by companies, for specific games) closed and they moved to Discord. How is IRC-style chat a replacement for a forum? They’re totally different formats.

      • protput@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        While I do like discord. It is like you say a completely different format. Shouldn’t be compared to reddit.

        • Proweruser@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Works well enough as a group chat / voice call app. That’s what it’s for. Before discord you had to pay for good group voice calls.

          • xT1TANx@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            ya, just op was saying people are trying to turn it into a chat hub and it’s just not worth. If I want to text my friends I’ll just text them in a group chat.

        • zeppo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          That is an improvement for sure. The problem remains, though, that the info is locked in Discord and won’t show up on search engines.

          • salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yes, but to be fair once again, some might see it as a good thing because it might drive up engagement and discourage lurking. I.e., if you already went through the trouble of creating an account, then why not post or comment?

            • zeppo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              That’s more like Twitter or Facebook, where you have a search result telling you certain info is available, but then you have to sign in to view it. The problem with Discord is not knowing where the info is in the first place, as in which discord community. There could be many that cover a certain game, for instance.

          • salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, the only problem is that even a forum channel would require you to create a Discord account and find that server before you can even see its content and that’s just not acceptable for massive open communities like r/malefashionadvice that seems to be moving to Discord.

        • xcjs@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think discoverability is still a problem.

          I use Discord for real-time communication, but leaving a platform that’s closing up access for a platform with already closed access makes no sense to me. It doesn’t solve the original problem.

          • salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ditto! I think mass participation forums (e.g. r/malefashionadvice) should always be searchable without first having to create an account, find a particular server, join it and then search there. This is just an incredibly slow and ineffective way compared to just doing a search for my problem site:reddit.com in your favorite search engine.

  • jeffw@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    Damn, I forgot about the Victoria Taylor controversy. Brings back some memories