Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's letter to Reddit employees in response to blackout

Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we'll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

Edit to include source: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/reddit-ceo-blackouts-no-revenue-impact/

sunspider,

Hey! I'm keeping this as it's sharing knowledge with new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.

Furbag,

This whole statement strikes me as tone-deaf. They want to "ship" the product, but the product is just removing accessibility. It literally makes the platform worse.

Not going back to reddit. I'll manage without it.

Ozma_of_Oz,

You know you're doing the right thing when you have to instruct your employees not to wear your brand to avoid confrontation.

zombuey,

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen.

your just noise.

Jaybird,

I've joined Mastodon after the twitter "melt down" and I have not gone back. It's quite good and feels like the BBS days of yore.

And I will stay here as well (lemmy) hoping to get the "reddit feel" back again.

honeybee,

As a fellow Reddit transfer, so far it feels like it has! There’s a couple of subs that where quite important to me so I’m hoping I can track them down on here, or get them up and going!

heimchen,

Same, missing the endless scroll a bit

canitendtherabbits,
@canitendtherabbits@lemmy.world avatar

All I can say is that for every person voicing their opinion and leaving by making a scene, there are many more of us just silently deleting our comments and posts and just disappearing from reddit. Those are the ones reddit should be concerned about.

Ulijin,

Agreed, I've just stopped logging in. I'm not even going to bother deleting posts but I've moved. There's no hope I'm gonna start using the official Reddit app.

I do miss a few subreddits but Lemmy has plenty to keep me busy during my toilet breaks.

two_wheel2,

What are those subreddits? Maybe there should be a "lemmy community wishlist" community for reddfugees to see about getting conversations rolling. I know I have a few

Varyag,
@Varyag@lemm.ee avatar

That's what I did. Deleted all of my 8 years or so of posts and left the account there. Won't delete it yet but not really using it anymore. This fediverse thing is pretty cool.

Trafficone,

"Blank? Blank?! You're not looking at the big picture!"

riodoro1,

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public.

Lol, good ole fearmongering. Also,

The only long term solution is improving our product

Loading shit with ads is hardly improving it. I mean it will make you more money, and thats all that matters under this shitty system of ours, but thats still not improving.

Thorned_Rose,
@Thorned_Rose@lemmy.world avatar

There's reads really passive aggressive. It clearly wasn't intended to actually say anything meaningful to staff but rather something for 1. media that pickup on (won't anyone think of the poor people attacked for wearing Reddit gear in public!), 2. appeasement of potential investors ahead of the IPO (our bottom line is rock solid folks, thousands of subs gone and no impact on profits!) and 3. an unsubtle dig at and gaslighting of people participating in the blackout (fools! This won't last, you'll all come crawling back and this doesn't affect many subs anyway!).

Spez just keeps doubling down on the Streisand Effect. Challenge accepted arsehole.

jzzvid,
@jzzvid@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Reddit is going to be a ghost town in a few months at this rate. If they wanted to push the website and app so hard, why not just make using a client a premium feature and charge for it? Give the users the option. Instead they had to go the worst route possible with this.

soupjester, (edited )

I wish I could share your confidence, but it's surprising how eager the average person is to let garbage be shoved down their throat before they're willing to change their habits. Just look at twitter, a complete dumpster fire that still has a huge amount of traffic. I'm willing to bet the large majority of those who simply browse reddit doesn't really care about the whole API shitshow, hell they were probably already using the official app in the first place.

ShinNoodleBlackCup,

This reminds me of Blackberry

They will slowly fade and become an archive

clonedhuman,

Why is this motherfucker acting like a victim?

peroleu,

I do miss the niche communities and educational ones on Reddit, but Lemmy is great so far.

BraveSentry,

Create the com, tell people about it on !newcommunities and !communitypromo and (hopefully) people will come.

mim,

Am I the only one bothered by him referring to people as "Snoos"? It's so cringy.

indite,

right? it threw me off so much, like who tf says that

gigachad,

As non native speaker - what does it mean?

momentary,

I believe Snoo is what the reddit mascot is called.

TskUghPfftUhh,

No, I found that kind of odd, too. A little offputting.

bubberstarteletscam,

Brought to you by the Fedora adjusting company that tried to push "the bacon narwhals at midnight" as an "in joke" to spot other redditors.

mim,

Was that pushed by Reddit itself? I always thought it was Reddit users being cringy.

bubberstarteletscam,

They sold t shirt and posters.

mim,

I assumed that was riding the wave, not creating it.

hismajesty, (edited )

Assholes, but i guess redditors deserve that much. They are doing the same job as many govs do and ppl are just getting their asses fcked.

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