Reddit Communities Decide To Extend Boycott After CEO Says It’s Almost Over
from the downvote dept
Oops.
As you likely know, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, desperate to show Wall St. that his company can make money, decided to lock away the information on Reddit behind a paywall by turning Reddit’s free API to paid, creating quite a mess. In response, thousands of subreddits went dark on Monday, with a plan for most (though not all) to come back today.
But, on Tuesday, Huffman’s internal email to Reddit staff leaked to the Verge, in which Huffman continued with the same dismissive attitude towards Reddit’s users that he showed in last week’s AMA.
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.
Elsewhere he notes, again somewhat dismissively, that the subreddits will come back on Wednesday. He also claims only around 1,000 subreddits went dark, but multiple reports show the number was actually closer to 8,000, and that includes many of the most trafficked subreddits like r/funny, r/gaming, r/music, r/science, and r/todayilearned.
One page visualizing the blackouts noted that, of the 500 top subreddits on the site, over 70% either went private or restricted (black is private, brown is restricted).
Perhaps because of Huffman’s dismissive attitude, a bunch of subreddits are saying that they’re no longer planning to reopen today, but will follow r/Music’s lead and stay dark indefinitely:
“Reddit has budged microscopically,” u/SpicyThunder335, a moderator for r/ModCoord, wrote in the post. They say that despite an announcement that access to a popular data-archiving tool for moderators would be restored, “our core concerns still aren’t satisfied, and these concessions came prior to the blackout start date; Reddit has been silent since it began.” SpicyThunder335 also bolded a line from a Monday memo from CEO Steve Huffman obtained by The Verge — “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well” — and said that “more is needed for Reddit to act.”
Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.
Now, plenty of subreddits have decided to come back, and I don’t think anyone is begrudging those who did so. But it’s incredible how every time Huffman opens his mouth, he seems to make the situation worse, rather than better.
That’s not leadership. It’s desperation.
Filed Under: api, boycott, steve huffman, subreddits
Companies: reddit
Comments on “Reddit Communities Decide To Extend Boycott After CEO Says It’s Almost Over”
“We absolutely must ship what we said we would.”
I read that as shit rather than ship.
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Ahh, you think he has a medical problem?
Maybe he should be …. off taking care of that instead of talking to people.
It does seem like the boycott is losing the support of the non-moderator user base at this point, some of the subs that have reopened and either polled or asked to continue to remain dark have found significantly less support than they did last week. The most stark case I’ve seen was the Dark Souls family of subreddits, where they initially planned to continue to remain private, but then made a sudden 180, in their post noting “What we didn’t expect was the vast flip from support for the protest to near-unanimous backlash.”
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The likely plan by Reddit admins at this point is to wait for the blackouts to largely burn themselves out and let public opinion turn against the blackouts, then without public support for the blackouts eventually replace the mod teams of any large subreddit that continues to hold out (and if anything, the admins probably would see getting rid of those mods and “getting rid of liabilities”)
Re: Some user backlash is just smart behaviour.
I understand why the protest happened. Reddit users (including me) don’t want the enshittification to keep happening.
But as a reddit user who does not use any 3rd party apps and so has nothing in this fight, my reaction was to find other communities to replace the ones that went dark during the protest. For one of those “replacements” I may not go back (but haven’t unjoined yet).
It also made me realize that I no longer care enough for 2 of the communities that went dark. So I unjoined them. Not out of malice but because I no longer care to follow.
Of course if the enshitiffication of reddit continues, I’ll just find a different platform.
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If the user backlash is in the form of picking up house and moving the community off reddit, that just makes the moderators’ point. That’s the product walking out and never coming back.
only around 1,000 subreddits went dark, but multiple reports show the number was actually closer to 8,000′
so are you saying the head of a company lied to try to keep investors and bankers, trying to preserve the company rather than lose face? i dont believe it! as if anyone would even think of doing something like that!
(full taking the piss mode!)
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“so are you saying the head of a company lied to try to keep investors and bankers, trying to preserve the company rather than lose face?”
If he did, that’s possibly enough of a material misstatement that the SEC could get involved and shareholder lawsuits are even more likely.
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Huffman has lied repeatedly through this whole thing and been called out on those lies repeatedly. He even got called out for lies in real time during his AMA, after he claimed Reddit was still talking to a couple of third-party app developers. They quickly replied noting that they hadn’t heard anything from Reddit in weeks.
At this point everyone should assume whatever he says is a lie. He claims that this isn’t hurting Reddit’s financials, so it likely is. He claims it’ll pass, so he’s probably terrified it’ll continue. And he even claimed that staff shouldn’t wear anything identifying them as Reddit employees, because angry users might attack them. He damn well knows that isn’t going to happen, but he’s probably terrified they might attack him for being such a lying, sociopathic asshole.
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Or we could wait for the Reddit IPO, and buy and hold all the stocks until it’s time to crash Reddit’s stock price.
Nobody Mentions Why the Mods Are Upset
Almost all of the reporting, including here, has missed the reason why moderators are upset.
Reddit does not provide a viable way for the mods to actually moderate. The official apps are garbage which gave rise to many 3rd-party apps. These 3rd-party apps give the moderators the tools needed to provide free work for reddit. Charging everyone for API access makes the apps too costly to run.
Now, moderators will have to use the official apps slowing down their work. This will result in more spam and hate-speech, especially in the large forums.
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“This will result in more spam and hate-speech, especially in the large forums.”
Sounds eerily similar to what many so called conservatives are attempting to accomplish.
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Exactly. All those people saying they don’t care because they don’t use third-party apps and won’t be impacted don’t understand they will be impacted when the subreddits they visit are overrun by spam and hate speech.
This protest isn’t about accessing Reddit from a third-party app, it’s about the site remaining usable.
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Joke’s on everyone, Reddit is already full of hatespeech and disinfo. Some subreddits specifically let those known assholes keep posting.
Oh, and corporately-run subreddits.
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There is a difference between some and all, and I would bet that the subreddits that remained up are those that are already overrun by spam and hate.
‘So Huffman’s solution to a near total mod revolt is not to techbro leadership this shit. To just make a internal feel good speech and just assume someone will fix the issue at some nebulous point in the future.
That he thinks his “we promise to fix the tools at some point!” Should be a viable solution to the mod complains. When all he really had to do was say “we will pause the API changes until we can develop internal resources and software to meet the most critical of mod needs”
So until they launch their internal tools – bots, spam, and harassment are going to skyrocket across most subs. How is any way is that a good thing for Reddit?
Sadly the inevitable result of this will be a lot of users like myself will stop going as often. Same how I have nearly abandoned twittter because of the bots and harassment that has become 80+ of interactions these days. When Reddit gets like that I see zero value in the site and will leave for elsewhere.
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He could also announce they’ll exempt all the third-party modding tools from the API charges, but that would look too much like compromise for Huffman’s tastes apparently.
At this point I doubt it’d help, because he’s royally pissed most of the mods off, run a decent chunk of users off for good (many of whom are using third-party apps to delete or replace all their comments on the way out¹), and pissed off a sizable chunk of the remaining users.
¹ There’s multiple scripts available for this purpose, developed recently. The idea is to not just leave, but to remove all content the user ever contributed to Reddit in the process. That’s going to make Reddit less valuable.
Discord???
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Forums?????????
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"That’s not leadership. It’s desperation."
No, it’s White Male Privilege. This is what happens when you have straight white men in charge. Get rid of whiteness and patriarchy, and boom; You have democracy and equality!
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If it were only that simple.
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That is not an excuse for not making an honest attempt.
For fuck’s sake, this is Pride Month. If there was a time to tell straight white men to go fuck themselves and their new big black alpha male overlords, this would be it.
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I don’t enjoy magical thinking from either side of the aisle, especially from the one that is supposed to still be grounded in reality. It’d be lovely if reality was that magical but it’s not and human nature doesn’t cease existing if we suddenly Infinity Stones fingersnap and all straight white males vanish from the planet. They definitely have an unearned outsized influence over our reality and that needs to change but magical thinking isn’t going to manifest anything.
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Valis doesn’t speak for anyone, and definitely not for Africans.
And what you said? It’s reality.
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So how’s shilling for China, fascist
Steve Huffman should also let everyone know how Reddit is an unsinkable ship. That will make the investors happy.
Speaking for myself, Huffman’s behavior on this whole thing have made me (a daily user of Reddit) log off for good. Until or unless they reverse the enshittening, I’m done. Reddit can follow Twitter into the oblivion of shitty products, and I’m done caring.
'I keep hitting them why aren't they happy yet?!'
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.
Ah yes, nothing like dismissing concerns serious enough to cause mass-blackouts as ‘noise’ to calm people down and show them that you’re listening to them and will be taking their concerns seriously.
Keeping Digging 4.0 your grave Mr. CEO and you’ll be as relevant as Myspace and Yahoo in a few years. User communities can and will revolt if you become too big of an ass, which seems to be the current plan.
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You’re forgetting Internet Time, as versus real time. Facebook effectively killed MySpace in less than two years, but at today’s speed, I think both Twitter and Reddit will be history by the end of this year – Mastodon and others will see to that.
Unless of course the leadership suddenly grows some brains…..
Today I left the r/formula1 subreddit because of their continued participation in this dubious “protest” (which really just seems like a temper tantrum thrown by dorky volunteers who’ve gotten too big for their britches!).
Reddit mods are some of the most entitled and least accountable people in the world, and I’m glad to see them harming their own communities like this.
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Ah, I see you, too, hate proper moderation and love white supremacy.
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lol. There are definitely no black F1 drivers. Even Lewis Hamilton is actually White British.
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Ah, I see you, too, hate proper moderation and love white supremacy.
It’s got nothing to do with Lewis Hamilton OR F1.
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Ah you mean you want that sub to be an unreadable mess due to Huffman as one of the most entitled and least accountable persons in the world decided to harm Reddit as a whole by removing access to moderator tools that actually work.
But noooo, it is the moderators who want to keep the subs readable and thus valuable to Reddit who are the tantrum throwers.
-site:reddit.com
I fully support the Reddit blackout.
In the meantime, I’ve started appending ‘-site:reddit.com’ to all my searches. It’s the only way I can find anything useful without accidentally running in to a dead end.
Huffman essentially told Reddit: “Calm down. And you should smile more.”
Reddit is the Internet
I for one have been trying to learn Japanese (yes, being a Ukrainian), and as Reddit effectively amounts to the entirety of the Internet at this point (the useful parts, at least), this tempter-tantrum/collapse has been an utter disaster. It’s effectively an Internet outage. All I can do is use Google Cache after googling.
And all for what? For some “API” changes? I.e., for the sake of those forsaken phone users? How the mighty have fallen. First, they absorb every single forum in cyberspace. Then, they shut it down – after uglifying and dumbing down what remains of it, of course. And people cheer on! Utter chaos.
This has prompted me to join a Discord group, and that’s a disaster, because they don’t even read books, and my dumb questions look better as private google queries instead of bothering honest people.
Re: Just like Google, and Facebook, and...
All that effort and you couldn’t be bothered to look up what’s actually happening? The ‘changes’ in question are taking what was free access and turning it into paid, so if mods want to continue to use the same tools they have been(third-party moderation tools being popular apparently since the site-offered ones are terrible) they’re now going to have to pay for the privilege, in what sounds like amounts that can get extremely expensive really quickly.
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“It’s effectively an Internet outage”
Yes, that’s the point.
“For some “API” changes? I.e., for the sake of those forsaken phone users?”
One of the major issues is that a lot of moderators use phones, and one of the biggest complaints is that Reddit’s official app is terrible for that purpose and mods rely on the tools in the 3rd party apps to do their work. So, even if you don’t use a phone yourself, the communities you use might well be affected to the point they are no longer managed.
I mean, you can disagree with the issues but the least you can do is read up on what they are to begin with.
Re: Re: Moral panic revolution hurts everyone
So far, I have not seen any disruptions to the moderation of communities. What I have seen is a drama of immense proportions and harm to the users – stirred up by those moderators. If moderating ever became an issue, I’m sure Reddit would think of something – I doubt they would be content with, I dunno, ISIS propaganda spam in r/awww.
I know full well that it’s part and parcel of the Western Christian culture to support these moral panics and mass movements (see the Blitzchung incident, Epstein, QAnon, BLM, etc.), especially the penchant for fighting against muh’ “big evil corporations”, but the cold harsh truth is that the users destroy their very own communities out of a sense of moral superiority.
I’m surprised the Reddit administration has allowed this to happen. They either planned this outrage (conspiracy, I know), or they are indeed so toothless as to be unable to reopen their own website (and I’m sure they would have no issue taking up millions of janitors as a replacement for the defective, revolutionary ones).
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Not every problem will be immediately visible.
Moderation is one of those issues. And saying it’s just the users and mods being uppity makes me think you’re rather indifferent to their plight, at best.
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You’re obviously not aware of what the actual issues are here.
Reddit is built on free labor. They provide the database and API, volunteers post the content and moderate the posting and the community response to those posts.
Because Reddit only provided bare-bones tools to do this work, but provided an API to streamline things, moderators, power users, and a bunch of us who just like to do things differently wrote tools to use that API to get the job done. The result has been thriving communities that from the average user’s perspective “just work” but in reality have a LOT of both automation and user moderation on the back end that has virtually nothing to do with Reddit the company.
Reddit has now realized that the API they published is really expensive on AWS, due to overlapping request types and the general structure of that API.
Instead of setting a group to analyze the inefficiencies of the API and release a V2 that uses less data, they opted to just pass the fees on to the API users.
The result of this is that the maintainers of those tools have a choice: either pay Reddit for the API costs, or close down.
Most of the maintainers can’t afford to pay Reddit, so they’re closing down. This hasn’t happened yet. It happens June 30.
So the “going dark” protest is a way of getting out in front of that, so that regular users can become aware of the issue BEFORE it becomes permanent, when there’s still room for Reddit to change their mind on a) not fixing the API, b) setting July 1 as their line in the sand for passing the costs on to third parties producing tools for their volunteer labor force.
What will happen on July 1 if nothing changes from where it is now, is that all the third party tools will go away. This means the moderation of the subreddits will also change, as those moderators will be unable to perform the tasks they previously did (for free).
Reddit will try to replace the moderation teams for the most popular subreddits. This might work, or it might not. They’ll have driven away the people most passionate about those topics, so whoever they select to do moderation will produce results that aren’t as good. This will drive away users, lowering their ad revenue.
Interestingly, something I’ve seen over the past few days is a LOT of the dark subreddits showing up on Lemmy as Lemmy communities, complete with moderators. I suspect that a number of these people, having moved to a system where all the tools and APIs are free and open and the moderation issues are smaller (due to a smaller user base), aren’t going to be going back to Reddit. This means that even when all the subreddits are public again, they will be less moderated than they were before.
This decrease in moderation quality and quantity won’t show an immediate result, just like if you garden and take down the fence, the garden doesn’t immediately become a wilderness. But over time, griefers, trolls, bots, and the like will realize there’s nothing stopping them in those subreddits anymore. And things will start to decay and go chaotic.
At that point, the only way Reddit can turn things around is to hire people to do the work that was once done for free via the API. And that’s going to cost Reddit significantly more than they were paying for the API use. Possibly enough that they’ll choose to just shut down all but the most popular subreddits, and possibly allow private subreddits for a paid tier of subscriber.
Nothing in all this is about histrionics; it’s all about communication and the costs of doing business. The way Reddit is run right now, it can’t turn a profit. They need to fix this, and have chosen a path to do so, and that path is unlikely to work in the long run.