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I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

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Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#61

Post by PedroBatista »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33
meepmorp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. You could just make something valuable that people like and want to use, and have that mostly be the end goal. You probably won't get incredibly rich, though.

> You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. Reddit is not profitable, though. They're burning through investment cash just to keep the lights on. That can't last forever, so they have to do something.

Then fire all the management team, the board, the VC's and everybody related to that site. That company is almost 20 years old, they aren't profitable because Silicon Valley reasons, either way if they can't make that god damn site break even they are not just incompetent but a complete waste of space.

On a more "suave" note, they are a Dodo but this is the XXI century.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#62

Post by stOneskull »

midoridensha wrote: post #48
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. Reddit is not profitable, though. They're burning through investment cash just to keep the lights on. That can't last forever, so they have to do something.

They're not profitable because they choose to not be profitable, because they have too many employees and are trying to be the next TikTok. If they operated like archive.org, they could sustain themselves. They don't want to do that, because it doesn't result in big returns for investors.

old reddit was fine

they wasted, and continue to waste, bunches of money, for nothing

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#63

Post by [deleted] »

bittercynic wrote: post #8

I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I…

[deleted]

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#64

Post by kypro »

A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often.

But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience.

But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like just kept dropping and at the same time I was receiving an increasing (and significant) number of hateful messages.

I guess I don't play the Reddit game very well. I generally aim to be controversial since I believe the most productive type of speech is speech that is both highly controversial and well reasoned. Agreeing may earn upvotes and social goodwill, but if all you ever do is agree with those around you using new words you may as well not contribute anything.

I think Reddit's incentivisation of agreeableness, it's clamp down on controversial subreddits and its popularity basically guarantees conversations on Reddit today are maximally unproductive. If someone has a new opinion they are downvoted, and if that opinion is also hard to refute downing is often paired with abuse.

I know this isn't really on topic – I have nothing interesting to say about their childish CEO or narrow-sighted push for monetisation. I guess I'm kinda just sad about what Reddit as become. I like HN because discussion here are rich – there's generally a wide and interesting range of views for any given topic. But HN is fundamentally limited since topics are generally tech / business related. And this is the gap I wish Reddit could have filled.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#66

Post by yoasif_ »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #54
PepperdineG wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact the most successful social media companies do just that. Reddit doesn't seem to be aligning its interests with the interest of power users unlike other social media companies. Reddit is really putting itself in a position of getting what it pays for, which it doesn't pay for moderators while at the same time is taking their tools away and also seems to be insulting them too. Treating major contributors a…

> it doesn't pay for moderators while at the same time is taking their tools away The mods mainly were protesting because they relied on these tools. Reddit responded by making exceptions for these tools, and threw in exceptions for accessibility-focused tools to boot. (Taking the "think of the blind and deaf people" argument off the table.) The only people that are still upset are the people who just want to continu…

>The only people that are still upset are the people who just want to continue to use ad-free readers, without paying money.

I am definitely in the minority, but I am upset that Reddit plans to monetize my writing by selling it to LLM companies (without an opt-out).

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#67

Post by doubled112 »

hajile wrote: post #32
deaddodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. The reddit experience I've had in the last few days is actually the best I've had since I signed up 12-13 years ago. All the smaller niche subreddits I forgot about are back to front and center, all the community interaction is on AskReddit,…

Reddit is so much better if you unsubscribe from all the big subs and turn off recommendations so they aren’t constantly shoved in your face.

I unsubscribed from everything and grouped subreddits I wanted to see into multis.

It helped with the noise.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#68

Post by throw2022110401 »

bittercynic wrote: post #8

I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I…

I am giving it the same treatment that facebook and twitter get. No more contributions, Redirector entry to a libreddit instance in case I land on a link.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#69

Post by callalex »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #54
PepperdineG wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact the most successful social media companies do just that. Reddit doesn't seem to be aligning its interests with the interest of power users unlike other social media companies. Reddit is really putting itself in a position of getting what it pays for, which it doesn't pay for moderators while at the same time is taking their tools away and also seems to be insulting them too. Treating major contributors a…

> it doesn't pay for moderators while at the same time is taking their tools away The mods mainly were protesting because they relied on these tools. Reddit responded by making exceptions for these tools, and threw in exceptions for accessibility-focused tools to boot. (Taking the "think of the blind and deaf people" argument off the table.) The only people that are still upset are the people who just want to continu…

They have given us no reason to believe that their half-assed, last second, poorly defined exceptions will be honored in any meaningful and reasonable way.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#70

Post by wkdneidbwf »

meepmorp wrote: post #10
lobochrome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a private company. What else was it supposed to be about? Distributing VC money to users?

You could run a company that sustains itself and its employees, maybe makes a modest profit. You could just make something valuable that people like and want to use, and have that mostly be the end goal. You probably won't get incredibly rich, though.

what you’re describing isn’t all that compatible with vc funding. reddit is what, 10 rounds and $1.3b deep?

they certainly cannot say, “hey board, we decided we’d like to just be a modest profit company”. spez would be out of a job.

the other option would be not taking funding and building a business organically. would reddit have been able to become reddit if they hadn’t taken all that vc money? i’d say probably not but i don’t know anything about anything.

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