Live data from Hacker News

Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

theverge.com

61–70 of 271 posts

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#61
We saw the same thing play out with Twitter. You had a large quantity but minority percentage of users upset with changes XYZ, they left the platform for mastadon/bluesky/whatever, and Twitter lived on.

What does moving on look like? My guess is reassigning moderators of popular subs to big-corp sympathizers. Or maybe making the private feature a paid one (my personal favorite because it's a little petty). But it could be as organic as users making clones of the popular subreddits.

If you look to Digg vs Reddit-- Digg fundamentally changed the experience of a lot of users in an in your face sort of way. The Reddit changes may make it a fundamentally different platform now, but for the vast majority of users, they won't notice.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#62
post #9

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

> If the blackout is only for two days then they're right

Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation.

How does the CEO + team not just ignore this two day spat? They are in the business of making money. Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?

Now, blackout for a week or two weeks to really hurt their ad revenue traffic, sure

But 2 days?... lol

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#64

I don't understand why reddit didn't respond to the initial criticism by decreasing the pricing/demands and just slowly implementing what they want over time. Doing it all at once seemed like a silly move.

What I don't understand is why they simply don't do what spotify does. Free acounts have to use the official spotify apps but paid accounts can use third party apps and apis as part of their subscription benefits. I would gladly pay for reddit gold monthly if I got to keep using my ad-free 3rd party client of my choice.

hm yeah that seems like an obvious possible win for reddit, they would convert all the 3rd party app users into paid users. Maybe they simply didn't have that idea

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#66
post #9

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

At some point, if they remain closed, Reddit will just take ownership of them, suspend the mods and reopen the reddits. They will however need to do it carefully, probably after most others have folded and reopened, so as not to cause another blackout. But ultimately it's their platform, they can do what they want. Maybe they will just have to start actually employing the mods, which may actually end up a net positiv…

the unmotivated mods will tank the subreddits and Reddit doesn't seem to be in a position to pay the mods

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#67
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ll just replace the mods if the popular subreddits go longer than 2 days.

Good luck finding hundreds of new mods.

They can pay for it with their increased revenue from the new API pricing

/s

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#68
post #9

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

At some point, if they remain closed, Reddit will just take ownership of them, suspend the mods and reopen the reddits. They will however need to do it carefully, probably after most others have folded and reopened, so as not to cause another blackout. But ultimately it's their platform, they can do what they want. Maybe they will just have to start actually employing the mods, which may actually end up a net positiv…

They can just disable the private subreddit feature without changing absolutely anything else.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#70
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ll just replace the mods if the popular subreddits go longer than 2 days.

Good luck finding hundreds of new mods.

I don’t doubt they’ll have people lining up out the door to be mods… whether someone you picked with zero vetting because you’re in dire straits is going to be a good mod though is very doubtful.

I can see things going very sour if they choose to replace long standing mods.

Post reply on HN