Every time spez speaks he literally contradicts himself. I genuinely can't even comprehend the shit that he spews. He literally says multiple contradictory statements in the same sentence. It's like watching someone know they can't win an argument, so instead they just spew random shit hoping something lands.
There is a lot of doublespeak going on, if you pay attention. He keeps referring to 3rd party apps as "competitors" where they really are alternate paths to interact with the platform and provide the content he relies on to sell ads over. He keeps referring to the protesting mods as "not wanting to moderate" when really they are trying to make known how much they rely on third-party tools and how difficult he is making their volunteer job.
It's like he's forgotten why they started the site in the first place. I wonder what Aaron would have thought of all this?
Spez started the site to make money. This was always true - a completely typical reason to start a company. When there was no community in the early days - he made fake accounts, and fake conversations to generate traffic to attract attention. So Spez is someone that’s always used dishonesty to get what he wants.
Aaron joined the site because he saw it’s potential as a tool for civic engagement and political awareness. He left when he saw what Reddit was becoming… or really - what it always had been: a tool to extract wealth from its unknowing volunteers.
Aaron and Spez weren’t friends. They were business partners for a very short period of time. To the best of my knowledge, that’s all there is to it.
I speculate that Aaron would feel unfazed by what Reddit looks like today… because it’s expected. The founders are people that make the Forbes 30 Under 30, marry world famous pro athletes, and are worth tens of millions of dollars. They’re divorced from reality.
I would hope that open and decentralized online spaces like Lemmy reflect the sort of values & ideas Aaron spent his life advocating for.
Additional important details: spez built Reddit and sold it off to Condé Nast because he thought it was a stupid little project that would soon be eclipsed and he wanted his payout.
He spent a few years traveling and then expressed regret at having sold it because it was becoming much bigger than he imagined.
He was rehired after Ellen Pao's very similar attacks on the user base.
Every morning he wakes up, looks in the mirror and thinks "if I'd just stuck with Reddit instead of selling it I'd be Jack Dorsey (of Twitter) right now. A real billionaire instead of a mere multi-millionaire. I invented the front page of the internet! It's a top twenty website! Why can't I buy an island? Like, a good one."
That's where he's coming from. And he currently thinks if he acts like Elon Musk he can be as rich as him.
He's trying to drive a wedge between mods and users, it's disgusting behaviour.
Same. Now that the CEO revealed the mindset that drives reddit behind the curtains, the problem shifted from a matter of convenience (access from APIs) to a matter of principles:
This type of aggressive capitalism is becoming a poison for the web.
It is going too far, destroying what has made the internet a special place to share information: no limits to exploration, to sharing, to expression. Now they want to create isolated bubbles behind login walls where they can be owners of the info and controllers of the space to sell data, product placements and ads.
Perhaps these new technologies like the fediverse are the answer, the solution to put a brake on this ugly phenomenon.
I hope decentralization will be the beginning of a new "Internet Renaissance", bringing back a bit of the spirit of the 90s.
I dropped in today and there was a huge banner at the top of the page claiming to tell me about how much third-party apps were stealing from Reddit.
Which is most outrageous because Reddit made the API that allows that and supported it with third party developers. It's like inviting a bunch of people to a party and then complaining after they've been there for a couple hours, "What are you people doing here?" And it was a potluck party, the guests brought a lot of the food.
I saw the same. I was just about tempted to slide back and browse quickly on my lunch break, then I saw that and just noped out of there. This place is building up quickly and strongly enough that I probably won't bother going back to reddit if he's going to keep up with this nonsense; I don't really need that sort of BS negativity.
I'm probably a lot less negative about Spez than a lot of people here. I mean, end of the day, he spent hundreds of millions of investors' dollars, and he's gotta make a return for them. They weren't donating to him to make a cool forum. They were expecting a return.
And this business model, at a high level, is the norm for dot-coms. Operate in money-losing mode, but have an especially-attractive service to grow the userbase. When you finally get a large userbase, then you have to shift over to monetizing them and being profitable.
I mean, Reddit was inevitably going to reduce user experience to try to generate more money at some point.
But none of that means that what Reddit is doing makes it the most appealing place for me. I mean, I'm over here not because I want Spez or Reddit to burn, but because it's just not really the place I want to be with the changes. I'm not angry, but, for me, kbin is just preferable to Reddit now.
There are fewer users and less content on the Fediverse right now, but that's okay with me. I moved to Reddit back when it was one page with mostly people talking about things of interest to the Reddit staff. It was a lot smaller than the Fediverse is now.
Platforms have to turn to make money. But that can be done ethically. There were many universes where 3rd party apps didn't have to shut down. Or where they were given notice. And I guess this move just was really mask off for spez. Of course reddit needs to make money. But you can do that without shitting on the site you built.
It's the epitome of what capitalism does. It's like 'oh you like this place or hobby or content sharing or socializing? Well now it's worse and costs money!' Because capitalism has ruined everything else and it will sell you and your community of friends to the highest bidder.
What bothers me most about this is how personal it sounds, and how emotional he's getting. He's not thinking rationally