Reddit invites mods to “feedback” conversations with the admins

Two IMO on-point excerpts of the article:

The highest-ranked replies are very critical of the post. “What good is our feedback when reddit seems perfectly happy to ignore all of it?” wrote one user. “What’s the point?” Another pointed out that Huffman called mods “landed gentry.” “Show, don’t tell,” wrote another user — to which the admin replied, “Agreed.”

“A beginning of what?” replied one user. “This solves nothing, and just wastes everybody’s time.”

Reddit’s administration is sounding more and more like an abusive SO trying to gaslight you into staying in the relationship. “Baby I’ll listen to you, I swear.”

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

Fire Steve Huffman and install a CEO who is capable of even pretending to care about balancing the needs of users and (potential) shareholders. It’s too late to ask for feedback.

HughJanus,

Fire Steve Huffman

This will happen eventually. Just like Ellen Pao. Reddit will fire him but change nothing.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

I feel like they might actually do this. It wouldn’t be the first time that they use a CEO to implement unpopular stuff, then fire him to say “everything is fine now” - cue to Ellen Pao.

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

They should. At least half of this debacle was created by the mind-numbingly horrible communication straight from his mouth (or fingers). Even if they just said look guys our CEO is dick, he shouldn’t have insulted the moderators and passionate users who loved apps…it isn’t ok snd we’re sorry. Even just that would be something.

They intended on crushing third party apps, they don’t care about users or moderators…that will never be different. The lying, insults and douchbagery was the cherry on top.

I used to browse Reddit with my Adblock turned off, man, so they would make money. The people that are the most pissed cared the most…

PM_Your_Nudes_Please,

The irony is that Pao was brought in to implement changes that Spez wanted. Remember he used to own it, then sold it and “stepped down” as CEO to bring Pao in. Then he took the seat back again after she left. But this time they just skipped that step entirely, because Spez has just been making the unpopular changes himself.

So I don’t actually think it’s the case this time. If it were, Spez wouldn’t be CEO during all of these changes. I think Spez is simply trying to cash out when the company goes public later this year. He doesn’t care what the users think of the changes, because he’s entirely focused on the investor valuation. He’s doing everything he can think of to claw profit out of a site that has never been profitable, simply so he can point to this quarter during the IPO and go “Look! Reddit makes a lot of money! It’s worth a lot, and the stocks I’m offering should sell for a lot too!”

OberonSwanson,

They won’t, Spez is the ass clown they need to toe the line and take the bad press for all this. Once they get what they need, they’ll reward him but make it look like he was fired and hope you’ll be to happy to realize.

fist_of_fartitude,
@fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

Nobody with the power to fire spez has a problem with what he’s doing. This is likely driven by VCs and other investors wanting their money now that the Fed has turned off the cash hose.

MidwestMayonaiseSalad,

Their valuation has dropped by at least 20% this year based on what’s been reported.

They care.

fist_of_fartitude,
@fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

Perhaps I wasn’t clear - they care, but think he’s doing what’s necessary to drive value for investors by eliminating places where revenue or potential is being lost - 3d party apps that don’t show Reddit ads/collect user data and the new found value of posts and messages as training data for LLMs.

You’re replaceable to them, and frankly the fact that you care makes you less valuable than a random person who’ll just click on memes and post answers to questions. The communities that they can effective extract value from are more trouble than they’re worth. You and your ilk are the problem, not spez.

MidwestMayonaiseSalad,

And they think he’s doing it so well that the company is less valuable. Got it

fist_of_fartitude,
@fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

First of all, most of the devaluation happened before any of this went down. Second, stopping the chaos on the platform plays well with investors.

MidwestMayonaiseSalad,

A) Spez was still CEO then, and it’s not like the API chaos is the only chaos that happened on Reddit recently.

B) It got marked down further in late June

I don’t really understand how you got to your position, but it isn’t fact based.

fist_of_fartitude,
@fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

From the very article you linked:

Fidelity now estimates that Reddit’s holdings could be around $15.4 million as of May 31, which is down over 7% from the fund’s estimates of $16.6 million from this past April. This new figure is is also a reported 45.4% slide since Reddit secured Series F funding in August 2021, when an asset manager acquired the platform’s shares for $28.2 million.

The numbers are from May of this year, not since June.

Read your sources.

db2,

deleted_by_author

    •
    MidwestMayonaiseSalad,

    The “they” you are talking about are the ones who say it is worth 20% less. article

    I think “they” know

    fist_of_fartitude,
    @fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

    From the article you linked:

    Fidelity now estimates that Reddit’s holdings could be around $15.4 million as of May 31, which is down over 7% from the fund’s estimates of $16.6 million from this past April.

    This was from before the whole shit fiesta actually happened.

    1chemistdown,
    1chemistdown avatar

    Further in the article

    This new figure is is also a reported 45.4% slide since Reddit secured Series F funding in August 2021, when an asset manager acquired the platform’s shares for $28.2 million.

    That asset manager was also from Fidelity, who are the investors who keep writing off Reddit value.

    fist_of_fartitude,
    @fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Yes, and? That doesn’t change the fact the article talks about numbers that came from before any of the protests happened.

    Fidelity’s devaluation (along with the increased overall desperation in SV venture capital) is a cause of the API changes and heavy handed suppression of the protests, not a result of them. It’s an attempt to halt/reverse that slide by asserting control and taking concrete measures to better extract value from Reddit.

    1chemistdown,
    1chemistdown avatar

    Yes, we will not see affects from that until their next reporting quarter. But they haven’t just devalued by 7% overall. It’s quarterly reporting. Stay tuned to q3 to see if they think Reddit really screwed up.

    PrinceWith999Enemies,

    I couldn’t think of a worse time to try an IPO, though. They’re selling into an already less than enthusiastic market. Although there’s been recoveries on parts of the tech sector, if the VCs are hurting for funds and the institutions are being conservative, it’s going to be a disaster.

    I am not sure that the bad press over the APIpocalypse is going to have a lasting effect in and of itself, but if they’ve lost users or have slowed growth in the US market as a result, that definitely might. Elon destroying all remaining value at Twitter and spurring an exodus to Threads and other sites is also going to make people question hopping onto a big social media investment because the market has become less predictable than it was a year or two ago.

    The late 90s were where you could use an IPO as a take the money and run exit strategy. I think they should have avoided Musking the site and instead pushed all out for growth and look to get acquired, maybe by a Chinese company looking to own a large US-based social media company.

    It really looks like the financial decisions at reddit are being handled with the same level of competence as the site policy decisions.

    ryathal,

    Reddit likely doesn’t IPO until Q4 or Q1 2024, by then most of the 3rd party drama will be forgotten. IPO is their only choice, there isn’t tons of VC money looking to get spent, and they’ve already burned several rounds of funds to limited effect. I agree it’s not a great time to IPO for Reddit, but they really don’t have a choice.

    PrinceWith999Enemies,

    I also think the drama will have died down, and even of it didn’t, it would have a limited effect on the IPO by itself. Twitter losing about 2/3 of its value isn’t because people think Elon is a jerk. It’s because he’s killing growth and revenue. If a company can’t trade on its profitability, it has to do so on its KPIs. What I’m saying is that if reddit’s growth was negatively affected by the ham fisted decisions, it’s going to pile negatives on top of already existing negatives.

    Basically, I think it was a desperate move but also a terrible idea, not unlike Elon forcing $13B in debt on Twitter and then making up for it via the destruction of verification.

    For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the $8, and lose his own advertisers?

    Mark 8:36, approximately

    I don’t think reddit was positively affected (as of yet) by the decision - otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the outreach stuff. If only 20% of reddit users are creating 80% of the content (a wild ass guess that’s not unreasonable as a starting point), and if those engaged users are more likely to be protesting/leaving, then the aftereffects are going to be showing up over the next two quarters. If spez needed to show a turnaround for the money folks, it needs to be a turnaround and not a “we tried.”

    I just think they’re selling into a down market - down for them in particular but also for the industry - and if they IPO under those conditions I don’t think they’ll hold their initial pricing. “Here’s a turd. Do you want to pay a premium for it in case we can polish it?”

    ryathal,

    It’s absolutely desperate, but they don’t have a choice. The company isn’t profitable, their revenue per user is awful, they are running out of VC money, they hired a ton of people to growth hack their metrics and it appears to have largely failed, they have no plans for effective monetization of the site or how to be profitable at an acceptable level for the amount of investors they have.

    fist_of_fartitude,
    @fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I completely agree, it’s a pretty bad time for an IPO - in general. But, they also raised 10 rounds ($1.3 billion total) in funding over the years, a lot of that in the last 3-4 years; their E and F rounds were in 2021, for $250 million and (iirc) $700 million respectively. That’s a lot of pressure to produce results, especially after the pandemic-inspired craziness has worn off and the Fed changed the zero percent interest rates that drove a lot of poor business decisions.

    To quote a sadly departed poet on the subject - mo money, mo problems.

    PrinceWith999Enemies,

    I agree and I’m even a bit sympathetic - not to their leadership, who can sleep in the bed they made, but to the idea of the site. I just think they could have taken a few of those millions and used it to figure out something other than “We can increase revenue by eliminating access and making the experience worse for users that remain unless they pay us monthly.”

    The heavy-handedness of the policy combined with the short timeline and non-negotiable, let-them-eat-cake stance makes me feel like this was a shoot from the hip thing rather than something fully investigated via models with decision points and predictions. In short, very Elon/Trump.

    fist_of_fartitude,
    @fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I think the core problem is that Reddit’s leadership wanted it to be an SV unicorn, and they tried lots of ways to make money off the site (cryptocurrency, Reddit gold, an official app that I swear was designed to make you click on ads by mistake, etc.). But it as never going to be the kind of cash making machine, actual or potential, that they were looking for. Well, that and, once you start taking outside investments (especially from VCs), the goals of the organization necessarily change towards making an exit (IPO or acquisition).

    I think this essay gets at a lot of the things about how the place worked and why the value was hard to convert into money. The feudalism frame is a little gimmicky, maybe, but does provide some perspective and a useful analogy.

    Auzy,

    Maybe they should actually pay the mods. That’s the only way they will be able to get them back on their side after the way they were treated

    Ryantific_theory,

    gasp

    But that would cost money! Think of the investors!

    GoodEye8,

    “but what if AI could be the moderator” - some MBA probably.

    eleitl,

    Go die in a fire is the only feedback I have.

    ikidd,
    @ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

    What a tone-deaf fuckwit.

    fujiwood, (edited )

    A community garden(Reddit) with bad, broken or non existent tools.

    Volunteer workers(Mods) bring their own tools(3rd party apps) to maintain the garden. Other volunteers(Reddit OC contributing users) plant seeds, water and harvest the garden. Other non-volunteers (Non-OC contributing users who only consume media) benefit, leech and take home food.

    Garden owners(Reddit) decide to charge tool companies to allow their tools into the garden(3rd party app makers being charged for API access). Tool companies(3rd party app makers) can’t pay exorbitant amounts. Volunteer maintenance workers(Mods) can no longer use outside tools(3rd party apps) to upkeep the garden.

    The workers(Mods) become angry and disruptive by limiting access to the garden(Mods privatize and demonetize subreddits).

    Non-Contributing leechers become upset. “We don’t care about you workers! Give us food!”(“No one cares about you Mods! We want to mindlessly consume! Give us media!”)

    Workers and real gardeners leave to find a better garden (Mods and OC contributors leave to find a better social media platform).

    Old garden fills with weeds and dog shit(Reddit fills with reposts and bots).

    The End.

    ohlaph,

    Sadly, it is working.

    Peruvia,
    @Peruvia@lemmy.ml avatar

    The same mfs who blame mods for spez’s decisions will be the one who blame them for that platform’s lack of content that they want to consume. Or “moderating too hard and I can’t get more content”. Once again, I’m glad we’re all here and not there anymore.

    HughJanus, (edited )

    So, we’ve all had a… time on Reddit lately,” said the admin. “And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the ‘now what?’ conversation.”

    I love how they’re just acting like they’ve just had an argument and now it’s over and they’re ready to move on after changing absolutely nothing.

    It’s like being verbally abused at home and you walk out, come back the next day and your partner is like “glad you got that out of your system” and expecting you to go back to “normal” without any sort of apology.

    yata,

    Because admins can see that that is exactly how it works. The mods who are angry in that thread (as well as the majority mods who weren’t even participating in it) all still continue to let themselves be abused by continuing their mod services on reddit.

    At this point there really isn’t any excuse for continuing being a mod on reddit, no matter how angry their posts in that particular thread are.

    TonyTonyChopper,
    @TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz avatar

    gives me conniptions

    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    Argument with who even? We all are over here, having already left!? :-P

    There comes a point where those that choose to remain are just asking for it, maybe?

    HughJanus,

    The 95% of people who didn’t have the good sense to leave

    doom_and_gloom, (edited )
    @doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    Judging from posts, the main difficulty of Lemmy is that you have to actually read something to make full use of it. How to pick an instance, how to subscribe, unsubscribe, curate your feed, etc. Then Kbin throws in the curveball that upvotes = boosts while real upvotes = nothing much really, and so on. Granted, it does lack polish.

    People looking for daddy spez to take care of them really are hoping for whatever handouts he is willing to offer - they'll take it, suck it up, and LIKE it, b/c they do not choose to stand on their own two feet.

    doom_and_gloom, (edited )
    @doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    What was there to learn about Reddit though? Yeah how to use markup but even then you could use the GUI way and then learn from what it did and type it up on your own, but anyway that is optional. Mainly in Reddit you see that there are "subs" and you "subscribe" to them, but if you have ever used a discussion forum before the barrier to entry is extremely small.

    While on Kbin/Lemmy I find that ~75% of the time when I want to upvote/boost/comment to something it takes me to a new page saying just "Error" (no explanation as to what that is, just that). I am pretty sure that it due to me taking time to read something, then minutes later wanting to interact while still on the same page, but the server now does not recognize me, and if I refresh the page then it works (except when it does not, and sometimes even forgets my login entirely, but to notice that even occurred, on a mobile at least I have to scroll over on the top bar, but no don't click there b/c that scrolls something else entirely! yes, you have to click right there in the sweet spot, to even notice that that happened). The server instability on Lemmy/Kbin, the overall lack of polish, and let us not forget that to even create an account one has to get through the hurdle of understanding the entire Fediverse system, part of which is a lie b/c while it says that you can eventually migrate your account (with all of its threads/etc.), that does not actually exist yet -> all of this will drive casual users away, who do not have the "early adopter" mindset. Non-technical people especially. Like when they search, but cannot find what they want, they are out, immediately.

    Oh, and subs that in Reddit have multiple posts per day or even each hour, here have ~1-2 per week, e.g. https://lemmy.world/c/dataisbeautiful vs. the original r/dataisbeautiful (view on Tedd.it while it lasts).

    Notably, I do not blame them - this place does not offer as good of a service to meet their end goals right now, and they are aiming for what works best for them, as should be expected? Maybe one day we will catch up. In some ways I actually hope that we never do - b/c when toddlers/children/teens (I mean emotional, regardless of physical age) start coming here and filling up every comment section on every post (thread) with their emotional vomit ("I LIKE that!" "^This", "Yup"), it will destroy the functionality of this place the same as it did to Reddit, entirely regardless of spez and his actions. Ironically I do not mind it so much and while I was there I started doing the same, to fit in - it is what it is, and like if this were a Discord server with moment-by-moment chatter, it would be appropriate even; but then where will there exist a place that is not like that, where people can have higher-level discussions, even if they take place more slowly over months rather than seconds to minutes? And involve PARAGRAPHS rather than short sub-word snippets?

    So, it is what it is, good and bad at the same time:-).

    Millie,

    Why in the world would anyone want to go back to relying on a company that can’t be trusted when they can be as independent as they could possibly want to be?

    qwet,
    @qwet@lemmy.world avatar

    there’s no upside to reengaging a narcissist, that’s how i see the reddit exec team fot the last 10 yrs. they don’t exist anymore to my mind.

    qwet,
    @qwet@lemmy.world avatar

    there’s no upside to reengaging a narcissist, that’s how i see the reddit exec team fot the last 10 yrs. they don’t exist anymore to my mind.

    net00,

    Are they expecting to fool anyone?

    The CEO called them landed gentry, even while mods run reddit day to day for free, and the admins told them to fuck off and eat all the shit changes.

    I’d like to peek into the brain of whoever made that post and look at all the mental gymnastics going on in there.

    At this point probably not saying anything would be better?

    Fantomas,

    How does one monetise when the customer is also the content? They’re in a pickle here.

    ohlaph,

    term

    They have a 5 bil valuation. They vould lose 50% value and still be worth a lot. They are trying to trim the fat to make their conversation rates and ratios increase as to pump up their valuation for their IPO, then probably dip.

    MDKAOD,

    Personally, I don’t see it as all that difficult. The platform is an aggregator. They have falsely (naively?) overvalued their product. It’s easy to make money by taking care of the community who creates their content, but the key is ‘don’t be greedy’ and they can’t help themselves.

    The core issue of most US corporations is thst they’re chasing impossible long term growth strategies to extract quick money. If they aimed for reasonable growth, people could join the company and plan to retire off their pension. Tech doesn’t do that kind of ‘old business bullshirt’

    BaldProphet,
    BaldProphet avatar

    It's a trap.

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

    …are we still reviving old maymays?

    https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/itsatrap-2.jpg

    BaldProphet,
    BaldProphet avatar

    That one is timeless.

    db2, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Enigma,

    The only reason why they decided to pull this stunt is because more mods left than they expected and they’re realizing there aren’t enough qualified people out there to replace them.

    db2,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Enigma,

    Por que no los dos? They only care because it’s going to hurt their IPO.

    db2,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Enigma,

    Spez is the face, but he isn’t the board. From the start everyone has given him too much credit when it isn’t due.

    athos77,

    pad the numbers

    Which is exactly why they're running /r/place again tomorrow: they've lost traffic and the need to pad the numbers so they expect (probably rightfully) that /r/place will give them numbers to offset their losses.

    Of course, they're going to totally ignore the image that comes out of /r/place, which is probably going to be "API - fuck /u/spez". Or maybe they'll invite xQc and his cult to grief the instance again. Or do the thing where admins can ignore the rate limits again.

    athos77,

    I hardly think that's fair. They also completely underestimated the quality impact there would be on reddit from losing mod tools, and they've also had just about enough time to start to realize how very very much they don't know about accessibility needs for the disabled.

    Enigma,

    The fact they completely forgot about disabled users. I really don’t understand how that got past the lawyers.

    themoonisacheese,
    @themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I mean personally I hadn’t though about blind users (which maybe says a lot about me) but I’m not a corporation it’s honestly baffling that reddit would forget too, and that nobody pointed out (or if they did they got shut down).

    It’s straight up insulting that once pointed out publicly, reddit didn’t immediately walk back its behaviour.

    sim_,

    And don’t forget outright libel against the Apollo dev before he came back with recordings.

    Seditious_Delicious,
    @Seditious_Delicious@lemmy.world avatar

    The irony is that while Reddit tried to commercialise what it’s users perceive (whether accurately or not) as a community. It’s like your local picnic spot or doggy park that you’ve been going to for years all of a sudden started charging an entry fee. That alienates consumers.

    The unfortunate truth is that Reddit could have ended up being a very profitable respected business had the leadership decided to monetise it’s venture in a different model.

    Ultimately consumers have had their fill with the perceived corporate greed culture and in this author’s view is the main drive away from Reddit by early adopters to other platforms such as this one.

    Time will tell if the middle majority will follow in time.

    ryathal,

    A better analogy would be the park banned outside food and set up a mediocre food court instead.

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

    It’s like your local picnic spot or doggy park that you’ve been going to for years all of a sudden started charging an entry fee. That alienates consumers.

    That’s a great analogy, specially if the hypothetical doggy park (or picnic spot) had multiple kiosks selling stuff - so the park owners already had some profit. As soon as the fee pops up, the owners do get a bit more short-term profit… but then people stop visiting the park, and that reduces the associated profit from both the fee and the kiosks, making the park even less profitable in the long run. And the alienated customers might not come back, even if the park owners realise the mistake and get rid of the fee.

    Time will tell if the middle majority will follow in time.

    My bet is that they’ll leave. Not due to the alienation, but because the content there will become trash. They’ll simply disengage, and their disengagement will snowball into more disengagement.

    Cybersteel,

    Like it wasn’t alr bad years prior.

    athos77,

    And the alienated customers might not come back, even if the park owners realise the mistake and get rid of the fee.

    This is exactly what happens most of the time. Check out the short Twitter thread on the thermocline of trust.

    Iunnrais,

    This is a better link to explain that concept: every.to/…/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the…

    themoonisacheese,
    @themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

    On the surface I agree with you but please remember that content quality need not be high. 9gag is apparently still going despite, well… Points vaguely at 9gag

    the_post_of_tom_joad,

    Ah, but if reddit loses 2/3 of its traffic after churning out 9gag quality content (9gag has 150m to reddit’s 430m) i don’t think their shareholders would call that a win

    Bozicus,

    Yes, the quality can be garbage, but I think a lot of the automatic scrollers require both quantity and low repost rate so they don’t run into stale content while they’re having their daily scroll. I think quality will go first, then the repost level will rise (and I know, it’s already high, lol, but it’ll get worse), and eventually either the quantity overall will go, or all the content will be created by bots, which will eventually drive off even the casual users. And when enough users go, the advertisers will go, and that is what will actually put Reddit on the rocks. It might take several years to happen, based on the changes they have already made, but they have the power to accelerate it if they fail hard enough.

    What really creates train wreck appeal for me is how hard they are deliberately failing. I agree with the general sentiment that it’s profit-motivated, and they have to do something to get profits, but they are missing a lot of sane, likely-to-work options in favor of pipe dreams and emotional abuse.

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