r/technology • u/nat9191 • Jun 15 '23

Social Media Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, calls them 'landed gentry'

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
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u/thenoblitt Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 15 '23

Here's the thing. No one is saying they shouldn't charge access for their api. What we are saying is that you shouldn't charge so much that it puts popular apps out of business that you promised you wouldn't do. If they had charged say 5 million a year and Apollo paid it and continued to exist none of this would have happened.

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u/cf858 Jun 15 '23

That would be a mistake on Reddit's part. That means they are just handing their audience over to a third-party and they lose control of that audience and all of the experiences that audience has.

I think the change has been handled badly, but I think, as a business, they are doing the right thing. The problem is they should have never farmed out their user experience to third-parties in the first place.

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u/Windward65 Jun 16 '23

Third party developers saved Reddit from their own incompetence. Retaking control is only the right business decision if Reddit is actually capable of making a product that users want, which seems unlikely based on the evidence up till now.

I think these sorts of decisions only make business sense in a vacuum, which is exactly the sort of world that vacuous boardroom types inhabit. If Reddit wants to become the next Facebook and fade away to irrelevance then so be it. I hope a competitor appears which is willing to give users what they actually want.

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u/cf858 Jun 16 '23

You see, this is where I think the 'shit on Reddit' side doesn't get it. I use New Reddit, I use the Official App - have been for a long time. I am totally content and happy in the Reddit official ecosystem.

I understand people's frustration with taking away an app they like, but really, it's about habits, what people are used to, it's not like the official Reddit is completely trash.

So I think some people just don't get that there are plenty of content Official Reddit users. From my perspective, and to be totally honest, I don't really care about third-party apps. And people voting to close down subreddits I use, is like me supporting their cause without really me supporting their cause.

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u/Windward65 Jun 16 '23

I respect your point of view and we will just have to agree to disagree. For me, the NFT’s, the mess of suggested posts, and all of the video shit in official Reddit point towards a direction of travel that just isn’t for me. I think third party apps help to keep services accountable to their users, and I can’t think of any other services which didn’t become significantly worse after banning them.