Seeing a lot of hate and schadenfreude over spez and what he’s doing with Reddit.
I feel this is really uncalled for.
What no one seems to understand is that Reddit is unprofitable.
You know what happens to unprofitable tech companies? Think of Geocities shutting down. How many great websites, how many communities were lost?
I can see that spez is trying the best he can to save Reddit. He was one of the original founders. This is his baby. He doesn’t want to see it die.
His plan is clear to me.
Reddit is getting too much traffic. It’s too big and has too many users, moderators, and communities.
So this means Reddit needs a lot of employees. Someone asked why Reddit needs 2000 employees? Well, where do you think the admins come from? I bet most of them are the hardworking admins who form the bridge between Reddit and the communities.
Since Reddit is so big, perhaps too big, it’s hard for them to be profitable. Opportunity cost on users using third party apps means that Reddit has to charge them high prices to make up for lost ads revenue. That’s unavoidable.
Okay, sure, maybe some third party apps will agree to run ads in return for lower rates or something. That can work.
Reddit doesn’t have an existing way to feed ads to third party apps. I’m don’t have experience in that field but I bet developing something like that takes a lot of time. It’s also uncertain as Reddit may spend many long months, if not years, developing a way to serve ads to third party apps only to find no takers. Too big a risk.
Remember, the IPO is supposed to happen later this year. Not enough time to develop it and do it right.
So he has no choice but to go in hard against the third party apps. They pay up and make up the cost. If they can’t, then they die. Sucks to be them. Their users go to the official app, and get the ads from Reddit. Revenue is saved.
Maybe they don’t. Maybe those users quit Reddit altogether. This means less traffic, so fewer expenses for Reddit. Less expenses meas more revenue. Revenue is saved again.
Moderators quit? No problem. Reddit will find new ones or replace them with admins.
Not enough moderators? No problem. Reddit can shutdown the smallest communities that bring in the least revenue. Admins can run the biggest ones.
Section 230? No problem. Reddit adds a new review required mode. Maybe this already exists. Every thread posted is hidden until an admin reviews and approves it. Same for every comment on a thread. This way they can make sure there is no libel or copyright infringement or any other issues before approving.
Need too many admins to review and approve things timely? No problem. Charge users to be able to jump the queue. Those who do not want to pay up then just need to suffer wait times of many months or even years before they can get reviewed and approved.
Less traffic means they need fewer admins. Fewer employees. More layoffs. A more profitable Reddit.
It absolutely sucks that the moderation tools are not ready yet and moderators have to suffer. It sucks worse that those with accessibility needs have fewer options now.
Would it not be worse if Reddit dies altogether? Think about losing those communities. You can’t talk to the folks you used to in your subreddits. You have no way to go back and see your own threads, or the useful advice from fellow members of your community. It’s all gone.
I have already been through this several times. It hurt to lose Geocities. All MySpace content also gone.
Do YOU want to be responsible for this happening again?!!!
Please do not let this happen again. Please help spez save Reddit.
Give Reddit time. Let spez save Reddit and turn it into a money-maker. Once he does this and Reddit is no longer in danger of being shut down for being unprofitable, then Reddit will have breathing room to solve these issues. A profitable Reddit with a successful IPO will have more cash to spend on recreating the lost moderator tools and accessibility features from third party apps.
FIrst Reddit must manage to survive.
Because Reddit is on it’s death throws now.
Because there’s no way spez would destroy the trust he’s built with the Reddit communities. Unless it is the only way to save the soul of Reddit.
This is why Reddit and spez must win.
P.S. Reddit and spez winning does not mean that we have to lose. If Reddit wins and becomes profitable then the communities are saved. There will be no Geocities or MySpace loss. At the same time a lot of moderators and users who are upset at being monetized will come here. Our communities here will be enriched by this and will continue to grow and blossom. Everybody wins! We can all be winners here!
KYS
You seem to be missing two rather important points.
First, users have no obligation whatsoever to ensure Reddit is profitable. That is not our job. We’re the customers (we also arguably create all the value of the service, but let’s set that aside since nobody’s expecting to get paid for commenting on threads on Reddit). If Reddit needs to find a way to be profitable, then it’s up to them to do it in such a way that doesn’t damage their business. They have full control over all of this, and have consistently made the wrong decision every step of the way. Reddit management could easily have done what most other companies do in situations like these and backpedaled, given some kind of pseudo-apology, and found a way to do what they want to do in a less objectionable manner. They didn’t. If Reddit goes the way of MySpace, it’ll be the fault of the /u/spez and the others running the business.
Secondly, the company was founded in 2005. That’s almost 20 years ago. If they haven’t found a way to be profitable in that amount of time then they’re not going to. They have a fundamental business problem they need to fix, and they’re in a tough spot because most solutions to that problem will end up damaging the business they’re trying to save. Sucks to be them, but they really should have thought of that over a decade ago.
Opportunity cost on users using third party apps means that Reddit has to charge them high prices to make up for lost ads revenue. That’s unavoidable.
The problem here is that the price that they’re asking is not realistic. Have you read the original post from the Apollo developer? They could have asked for a reasonable price, and choose not to do so.
Also, this was the original problem, but then they created more problems in how they handle this. You’re menrioning GeoCities and MySpace, but we should be talking about Digg, in the sense of not hearing your community opinion.
Please shut the fuck up OP, you’re a dumbass (please end)
I was really encouraged by the responses from everyone else. A lot disagreed with me but still treated me respectfully and I felt I could at least have a voice here.
Then I see this. How come a post like this is even allowed? @jerry @Shortcake @tchambers
You create an account with the express purpose of posting inflammatory nonsense and then cry to the mods to save you from the consequences of your own actions?
Is this satire? If yes, don’t forget to add /s at the end of your post… thx…
no im serious
Oh woh. Well I agree on Reddit being in need of making a profit. I uderstand he found Reddit and does not want it to die. But the problem is the “fuck you” price. I would be totally fine to pay Reddit Premium to keep using 3rd party apps. I would have been okay with paying 40 bucks a month instead of 20 to the 3rd party app so the dev can pay the API fees.
But what u/spez is constantly doing and showing is driving me away from being nice and respectful to him. He blackmails 3rd party devs, he falsely accuses them of saying things that never happened. If he just said “I do now want 3rd party apps anymore” I’d be frustrated but I’d forgive and forget. At this point u/spez just seems to fight with the mindset of a preschooler against the community.
Oh and he is sympathizing with Musk and his moderation and way to run a company. These two things already made me say FUCK NO to Twitter.
@spez_fangirl wow, lady, read the bloody room :(
I do not agree with her, I think this is overly optimistic. I don’t think Spez is going to try to actually fix the problems after Reddit becomes profitable. I think if Spez’s motivations were more money for more employees he would have actually said so. I think we’re just going down the usual path of enshittification and squeezing users for as much money as possible without anything for us down the line. But I do think that she should be able to at least post disagreement on this topic instead of staying quiet because it doesn’t match the general sentiment on the site. She seems to be posting in good faith.
I’m surprised you’re referencing Geocities and MySpace because your post really smacks of young-person naivete.
You’re severely overlooking overhead costs and multiple revenue streams for reddit in terms of profitability. Yes, it costs money to employ people, but servers and data costs money too. I remember when reddit was NOT its own photo and video hosting site, and everything that was posted as OC was hosted on imgur, flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and other content hosting websites that were prepared to scale. Instead of defending why Spez has to find more money, why is cutting costs for probably reddit’s biggest expense not on the table? Seems to me that reddit took on all the cost and liability of content hosting without there being any asset to the website for doing so.
Additionally, there are multiple revenue streams for reddit. Yes, ad revenue is one thing, but also reddit coins were another stream. I can’t even remember the layout of the reddit webpage right now because it’s been so long since I’ve logged in on a laptop, but does anyone else remember the years in which every day, the front page had a progress bar of how much of the daily cost for reddit had been met through the purchase of reddit coins?? Why didn’t reddit just become a subscription model? I would have gladly paid $3/month to keep the lights on. Multiply $3 by the massively addictive nature of reddit and its multiple million userbase, and reddit could have set the Guinness book world record for social media profitability.
I feel that this answer makes the most sense on why spez is getting so much hate right now. He could have made Reddit profitable in so many other ways. He chose to pick the way that would alienate the maximum number of community members and spez is refusing to right the course even after getting so much backlash when spez has plenty of options and opportunity to do this.
I do wonder if there is still something. Some explanation that is not public but which explains why spez was forced to do things this way. Some reason that suddenly makes everything else forgivable.
I have been around. Early AOL user here.
What do you gain by going to bat so hard for someone who doesn’t even know you exist? To be so loyal that you’re required to go into mental contortions to explain away the facts presented to you so that you can find the most generous rendition of what’s going on?
