60 points

Are people really that angry? I mean I know we live in a crazy world, but this seems a bit much.

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93 points

No, this loser has a persecution fetish, nothing more.

It feeds his narcissism to think people care that much offline.

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19 points

Okay let’s not kid ourselves. I know reddit is quiet right now but the entire website is angry at them. Their inbox is likely full of death threats. People are searching for their employee information.

I get that it’s fun to hate on spez and all but people have hunted employees down for less before. So yeah, while this is a justified protest and I dislike spez, we should all want to keep reddit employees safe right now. Most of them aren’t the problem.

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2 points

It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea of sending death threats, people walking around with so much hate filled up that they lash out at the most detrimental things.

It’s a corporate decision, protests (subreddits going dark) and constructive critiscm from the userbase is the only way to make the voice heard.

I’m happy that another platform (Lemmy) existed which is more suitable and designed like the old.reddit.com layout to migrate to. Otherwise this ordeal would really suck.

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81 points
*

No, I don’t think so. This is coming from the same guy who claimed that the Apollo dev tried to extort him for $10 million and threatened him, when the Apollo Dev had the phone call recorded and proved that he only offered to sell the company.
He’s feeling threatened and trying to make the users participating in the blackout look bad.

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22 points

Anything for that IPO, I guess…

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20 points

Has there ever been an IPO of zero? Because it wouldn’t surprise me at this point…

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18 points

No, but like saying the appolo dev is blackmailing them, spez is trying to twist the narrative

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23 points

He even claims that around a thousand subreddits went dark. It was 8,000. Hundreds are already pledging to stay dark indefinitely, including huge ones like r/aww and r/videos.

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9 points

I wouldn’t be surprised to see sockpuppet accounts starting / running some kind of “r/videosnew” and “r/awwnew” if they stay offline for a longer period of time

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1 point

I think he’s just making it clear that only those with many, many users matter to him, because individuals generate little value for him. He probably only counted the most popular subreddits as worth noticing.

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9 points
*

I imagine he personally is under immense pressure right now, and that probably isn’t doing too well for his decision making. It’s either that or this guy really just doesn’t like the users that would be enabling a very large payday for him and their investors.

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17 points

No, this is just how an out of touch rich dude thinks whenever anyone has criticisms of him or the platform he thinks he owns.

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14 points

No it’s just the common tactic from companies when there isn’t a good reception to one of their decisions. Then they just cherry pick some comments from Twitter or whatever and set the stage.

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9 points

All it takes is one crazy guy. If you think about the size of reddit it makes sense that there is at least one who is willing to harm others

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7 points

The incel terrorists in Canada were both on Reddit, iirc. There are some incredibly fringe communities on Reddit. And Lemmy, for that matter.

So, yeah. Agreed. If 1 in a million is violent, that’s enough people for someone to get hurt.

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6 points

I can’t say I’d assault someone wearing reddit swag, but I’d probably cross the street…

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5 points

Well, considering people are doing bomb threats over bud light right now…

Sad. Sad. Reality.

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13 points

The people pissed about bud light are on Facebook.

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12 points

Right, which is why I can understand it as a “just in case…” type thing, but I really haven’t seen anyone all that upset about it, not to the point where they’re threatening violence against Reddit staff (which wouldn’t make sense anyways, since this is clearly a decision made by the executives, and not regular employees).

Strange times.

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6 points

Oh, you just don’t know the right crazy people.

A quote from someone I know irl, “he’s lucky I don’t live there. I would find him and curb stomp his albino hamster looking ass”.

But even the craziest people I know haven’t suggested that kind of thing about employees.

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6 points

It’s not like he was nice to a Trans person once. They probably won’t get bomb threats.

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3 points

This is pathetic. Making others afraid is how weak, insignificant people feel powerful and important.

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3 points

also of all the people to literally attack employees…redditors are probably the least likely.

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43 points

“We’re being persecuted!!! Violence!!! Give me sympathy!!! I’m not the bad buy here!!!” -Spez.

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16 points

Very appropriate typo. He is indeed a bad buy as well as a bad guy.

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2 points

Yeah, I saw the typo and laughed. What the heck, let it ride!

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27 points
*

The attitude he seems to have bothers me so much.

“[this blowup] will pass”

He doesn’t even seem to take this whole thing seriously. “Give it two weeks, those suckers will have forgotten all about this”. It’s insulting.

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15 points

I’m afraid he might be right though. Lot’s of people don’t really care and seem to be fine with the official app…

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13 points

The key thing will be what the moderators do, they’re the ones with actual leverage. Reddit depends on them doing unpaid labor for the site to function, and while the average user probably just uses the official app and site, the moderators are much more like the third-party app users and often depend on the same or similar tools to do their job. If they take mass action, they could really disrupt things much more than just a temporary blackout. Mass replacement of them would be a lot of hassle, and either lots of money to hire staff to do it or lots of time for fresh new mods to make people angry as they learn the ropes.

But, then again, mods do tend to like the control they get over their little fiefdoms, so I’m not all that optimistic that enough will choose to throw their rings into Mount Doom. We’ll see though.

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1 point

The mods can be replaced by new ones. I’m sure there’s some that would jump at the chance to take over some of the big ones.

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6 points

I don’t really care, I’m off Reddit either way.

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6 points

I CAN DREAM

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14 points

Yeah, you can’t have it both ways:

  1. It’s nothing, it’ll all blow over, they’ll get over it
  2. They’re so angry our employees are in physical danger

I suspect that the truth is he’s feeling a lot of hate just now from the reddit community and he wants the employees to identify with him rather than with the users.

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5 points

I feel like he might be right though, a blackout is no big deal if it’s only 48 hours. Anything short of leaving and moving to another platform is not something to be taken seriously.

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22 points

pr strategy, it’s the user’s fault, make investors and employees fear and hate the user mob and not the poor defenseless company

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17 points

But as defences go, it’s a pretty braindead one - the very people Spez is trying to demonise is his userbase. Why would you invest in a company that has such dangerous users?

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8 points

same reason this all started in the first place, unlike you and me spez sees reddit as entirely independent of its community

to this guy, community is a tool that can be balanced and leveraged rather than central to his brand’s identity

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20 points

„The only long-term solution is improving our product“ What I don’t get is in what way these changes are supposed to improve Reddit. Especially considering that how pissed off many volunteers that Reddit absolutely needs are. Such an unlikeable twat…

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16 points

You don’t understand, what users really crave are live-streams, chats, trending topics and avatars. That’s what reddit is all about /s

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10 points

Not just avatars, NFT avatars!

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3 points

“what, you guys don’t have phones?”

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5 points

„The only long-term solution is improving our product“ What I don’t get is in what way these changes are supposed to improve Reddit

That’s just normal corpo-babble.
Companies always claim to put the customer first and the turn around and increase prices or monetize previously free features.

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