the irony of a goddamned CEO calling unpaid volunteers "landed gentry"
He's going full Elon.
In the interview, Huffman also praised the cost-cutting by Twitter owner Elon Musk, calling the reduced headcount there an example of how a social media site can be without the massive revenue of a company like Google.
I mean, wtf
calling the reduced headcount there an example of how a social media site can be without the massive revenue of a company like Google.
My brother in Christ, you raised the head count
Right? It's like wikipedia tripling their paid staff, then complaining that they aren't getting enough donations to break even.
He wishes he were elon musk, or that his company was as influential as twitter, but in the end it's just a tool for open access forums and most users seem to dislike the site-wide policy and the disrespect for the free contribution to the site. Most social media companies would appreciate the loyalty towards those subreddits that both users and mods use to show, and in that regard those are the real value of the platform.
The arrogance behind those messages seems to imply that he sees users as a product, and it is what he misunderstood: this is the true value behind the social media, the human users, the network effect and so on. So reddit is largely wasting this underutilised potential.
Spelling correction
The striking workers are pompous, gilded aristocrats, we must break the strike and crush the unions so us poor common CEO's can have a chance at a little fairness. Woe is me!
He’s doing this on purpose.
He’s repurposing leftist talking points into a pro-corporatist clusterfuck as an attempt at populism. He knows that there are a fair number of people and communities on Reddit that will be overall supportive of these politics.
The idea is to get people thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that term before, it’s bad! And yeah, I’ve dealt with power-tripping mods before, so it must be true!” If they haven’t been paying attention to the finer points of the news around this (blackmail claims on C. Selig, gaslighting about 3rd party apps not wanting to work w/ Reddit, etc.), then this may be enough to get some people on Reddit, Inc.’s side. It worked for some people with Trump, for others with Musk, and with Huffman’s recent praise of Musk’s managerial style…
The fact that he keeps making comments at all is so weird to me. Like he is truly terrible at PR. Every time he opens his mouth the situation gets worse for him.
I don't know if using metaphors where the logical extension of mods being landed gentry is your product being a feudal kingdom, you the king, and the users the peasants is necessarily all that clever of a quote to start spreading around.
Agreed. The only problem is that I think most people will stop at landed gentry and say, "BAD!" without thinking through the full context like you just did.
Talk about out of touch.
ya my immediate reaction was "wow, how tone deaf." It's pretty clear to me that this clown is just repackaging the same talking points the VCs are using to influence his weak-minded ass.
One of these reporters should ask him why he was a moderator of /r/jailbait
💀
I think that goes for all authoritarians really, I mean, post WW2 east Germany was the German Democratic Republic, which was anything but democratic under Soviet occupation. Fascists for sure, but don't think authoritarian communists don't use the same playbook.
Did you see that they removed the top level mod of /r/Piracy and was looking for a new one? Soooo they support piracy now? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35555
So, by his reasoning isn't he the ultimate "landed gentry"? He's CEO simply because he's been there since the beginning not because of any particular business acumen. Should we put it to a reddit wide vote to see if he should retain that title or be kicked to the curb? He likes votes, right? He likes democracy, right? Right?
He's a privileged white boy complaining about slavery while operating scheme to not pay his employees.
I love the irony of him calling Reddit a democracy while also refusing to budge on the API issue. You can’t have it both ways.
When a tree dies, it dies slowly. The heart of it rots, and then the roots stop growing, and only much later do the branches stop growing new green leaves. By the time the whole trunk falls over, there've been raccoons burrowing into the rotten heartwood for years.
With this analogy Lemmy could be the sapling that one day will grow into a large tree!
Lemmy is a field of saplings
This week’s rebellion is a response to part of Reddit’s plan to succeed as a business
Not a hint of bias in this article, is there?
Hahha right “the rebellion!”
So part of the issue with this "democracy" idea and making it easier to vote out mods is that Huffman has literally been found guilty of changing comments.
That, along with the fact that we can't trust reddit to not chime in with false accounts to swing the vote make me dubious that it would work.
I'll start believing in Reddit's commitment to direct democracy when users will be able to also vote out admins and u/spez if they don't like their decisions.
Until then, it's just corporatism under the guise of some fluffy words.
If I can't win I'll make my own rules...Jesus guy just admit you were wrong.
Side note, did anyone see how /r/Pics handled this after they opened back up because it was beautiful. Around 2300 users voted to open /r/Pics again and 37k users voted to keep protesting in their own special way.
Read the poll again, reopen had negative 2300 votes
Oof, missed that little hypen...that makes it worse.
Gee, I feel so slammed right now, you don't even know.
I don't. I'm not a Reddit user (anymore).
I just visited reddit for the first time in a week and it feels gross 😝
Lol, more than half of my frontpage doesn't even show up, it's just the same subs over and over again. Made me check Lemmy more often
After seeing what r/pics and r/gifs are doing I doubt voting would work out in his favor anyway. A surprising about of the user base is behind the protest.
It’s just a matter of migrating them to a new platform. Lemmy has a small learning curve, but unfortunately it’s enough to turn off a lot of users. Hopefully with the influx of users, someone smarter than me can figure out how to streamline the user experience here.
I don’t get the learning curve. I’ve been on it for 15 minutes. So far it looks exactly like Reddit. And seems more user friendly.
Will just lead to even more leaving.
Like I give a fuck anyway, reddit is dead to me now. Died a long time ago when my front page, even advice animals, got clogged with political and mediocre posts.
Reddit went mediocre a long time ago
“I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”
How ominous. This was an interview excerpt, so I have no way of verifiably knowing what Huffman looked like as he said this... but I'm fairly confident that he must have been rubbing his hands together and salivating as his pupils slowly morphed into dollar signs.
Is anyone else really entertained at this point by watching this pompus asshat's arrogance single-handledly dismantling the pretty solid reputation Reddit has as a social media platform? It's like I blink and he thinks "hmm, how can I say something worse to show everyone how strong and powerful I am?"
I mean if Reddit's going to go down, may as well go down in the most spectacular self-emulation possible. Solid alternatives are already formed and off to the races. Go off my guy.
Hilarious that he wants democracy to get rid of mods, but he wants absolute power for himself.
And tell me more how this will attract unpaid mods.
F U/Spez.
As I go back there now after the protest, I find reddits' content less and less interesting. I used to be able to lose hours on there, now I get bored after 5 minutes and get back to lemmy. It'll keep on existing, but here's hoping many more mainstream and non-techy users like me found the fediverse and know there's valid alternatives now.
Some part of our brains knew we were losing the real people. It hasn't felt right there in awhile. I wonder how many bots we were talking to thinking they weren't.
I've commented more this week than the past year on there.
"minority"
He could be saying this to appease investors. Meh he can go right ahead. Done with Reddit and the ad spam.
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