Anyone else read this? The arrogance is palpable.
I can’t believe this POS got away with lying about the developer of Apollo threatening to blackmail them. Why aren’t these interviewers asking about that?
Christian Selig is too decent and mature for his own good. In his place, I’d probably make the [immature, bad] decision to go scorched earth.
When he says the API was never meant for viewing apps he’s completely ignoring that for the longest time reddit didn’t even have an official app.
Also, their official app is LITERALLY based on a third party app! When everything was transitioning to new reddit they tried to build an app and it was fucking terrible so they bought out the most successful third party reddit app for iOS; Alien Blue. Even if you go into the theme settings on the android app the default theme is still called Alien Blue.
It’s just so tone deaf. And he’s totally lying about users not supporting the blackout. All the subreddits I was on where the mods asked people what they wanted to do, most of the comments were in favor of keeping them dark indefinitely. The rest were agreeing to the blackout in general. I don’t remember seeing a single person objecting.
He’s probably relying on the fact that the numbers are now skewed in favor of people against the blackout because those of us who were pro are extricating ourselves from the site and not posting/commenting/interacting with content as much, if at all.
That’s exactly what’s happening, the people who are disgruntled enough have either left or maybe like me just commenting occasionally to promote lemmy. This leaves all the people who don’t care. I’m hoping it’s going to be a slow bleed and reddit will eventually wither.
Pretty much - I took a look at Reddit today and the attitude regarding that blackout has done a complete 180. I don’t know if Reddit managed to push the narrative or what, but all I’ve seen is users complaining about “activists mods” and how they were never in favour of the blackout to begin with
Casual users probably just want shit to work and didn’t know about the black out until it was happening. They won’t notice why they should care until their app of choice goes offline or communities start falling apart due to modding issues. The issues coming from mods being pushed out, leaving, or having fewer tools.
I don’t remember seeing a single person objecting.
Depends on where you look, I suppose.
We did a poll in r/snowboarding (a subreddit that it’s in its off-season, and currently just frequented by our most “loyal” users) about whether to continue the blackout, and after two days of voting, it was literally a 50-50 split, and the majority of the comments were against the blackout. On the week before the blackout, the vast majority of support was there for the 48 hour blackout. If we’d done that same poll in February, I have a feeling that the majority would have voted to not continue the blackout. In that sense, I don’t think spaz is too far off the mark.
What the lying piece of corporate crap is ignoring is the fact that alternatives have grown considerably, traffic has gone down, and entire mod teams are quitting in protest. Reddit is going to be around for many many years, but this is the first time that I see a true push to create something different, not just for a few undesirables (i.e. Voat), but for the larger community in general.
There was a subreddit that I used to frequent that was all about returning to normalcy, and pretty much thought the blackout was an inconvenience. I let them know I wanted nothing to do with them, I unsubbed and haven’t logged into Reddit since that day actually. I was disgusted.
I love the platitudes about democracy and democratic values from Reddit’s dictator. He wants to pretend he just wants to let the users to decide, I’ll believe that when he puts his own job up for a vote among Reddit’s users.
Great idea. He wants to follow that dumbass Musk so badly, he should also poll to see how many people want him out. I guess Musk didn’t step down like he said, but at least he knows how unpopular he is… maybe, ehh probably not now that I think about it.
Seems to me that rich people, especially obnoxious rich people, don’t get to see very many people behaving as they naturally would. If you are not impressed by their money then you probably ignore and avoid. If you are then you are fake nice. I doubt that they get a very realistic take on what people in general really think.
Here are my takeaways. Correct me if I’m wrong.
- Third party apps monetized Reddit better than Reddit did by actually making a profit, and spez seems pretty butthurt about it and wants it to stop.
- Third party apps have better accessibility options, but jeez, guys, they’re working on it and you’ll have better accessibility!
- Third party apps offer a better experience for the mods and users that use them, but jeez, c’mon! They’re working on that, too! Besides, look at all of these casual users who don’t care about that stuff!
This is the richest part of all of it. They’re taking tools away from people with no time frame for replacements. I’ve been using Reddit for 16 years and the only things I’ve ever seen them ship are new Reddit, rewards, premium, and avatars. The fact that it’s 2023 and they have accessibility issues is appalling. If they can’t handle screen readers then mod tools ain’t coming.