The damning part of the interview is that RiF effectively already had a profit sharing agreement with Reddit that was cancelled under the current CEO.
So Reddit was already in the process of getting money from third party apps until Spez cancelled the agreement. Now Spez wants to pretend that he is only trying to get compensated rather than killing the apps.
Yes when all the apps had to change their names (January 2020), it came out that they had previously been working under a Trademark licensing arrangement.
(When "reddit is fun" became "rif" and then "rif is fun for Reddit".)
A lot of people thought it was Reddit suddenly cracking down to protect their trademark, but in reality it was something more petty.
I should mention I'm grateful to the "old" Reddit Inc. and its former employees for being willing to let me use the "reddit is fun" name for the past decade, working with me on mutually beneficial agreements like revenue share, in exchange for licensing the Reddit trademark. Not sure if you would be reading this, but thank you.
Wow, I never knew that Rif had a profit sharing agreement that spez cancelled. And to then attack the devs, this is insane.
Also the way this was worded really made me think of Trump
We have had many conversations — well, not with RIF, he never wanted to talk to us — but with the others, we were having such conversations, and we’ll work with the others. A deadline is important, otherwise these things just linger and linger and linger
Huffman gets called out more as a liar every day. I often wonder what the hell that man is thinking, but obviously it seems he's blinded by the color of green.
And that's the thing...Reddit sits on mountains of user data they can't figure out how to monetize. 1800 employees, and they haven't provided proper mod tools, haven't provided a solid app, haven't monetized their data, and finally can't figure out how to engage with their users and the public. Seems about the only thing they have down is how to communicate promises with investors, and yet I'm more confident that Steve is lying through his teeth to them as well.
So what the fuck are they doing with all that investor money? They aren't developing anything useful (e.g. New Reddit, comprehensive mod tools, etc.). Their heavy lifting done mostly by unpaid moderators....still says they're not profitable.
I'm done with Reddit and I wouldn't mind watching it die, and taking u/spez with it.
This really brings to the forefront - it's not about the finances, the API doesn't have to be that expensive, the deadline doesn't need to be this short. They just wanted to kill 3rd party apps altogether. Otherwise nothing makes sense here.