Reddit CEO (/u/spez) is going to hold a AMA about the API update

locking this since the AMA is now live. go over here to discuss it so your comments aren't lost!

Bracing myself for the [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] everywhere.

Why delete when he can just edit the comments? Lol.
Unless they're going to come out and say "Belated April Fools! Ha ha!", I don't see how this is not going to be a dumpster fire
- Oh, it's far, far too late for that. Apps and subreddits are already shutting down in advance. It won't kill Reddit most likely, but the quality is going to go way down in about a month.
- They're going to IPO. This is the whole reason for Reddit's existence up to this point. Nothing the users do will possibly stop this; the users are what is up for sale. Of course they are going to be unhappy, they're about to get exploited. That's been built in already.
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He will only answer planted questions. Mark my words.

He will edit the questions he doesn't like
Abso-Freking-Lutely is not going to answer random questions like an AMA. He will anser some planted questions and then will dissapear, and tell some news organization or make some tweet about how he had to leave early because of all the negativity and the bridaging and the people swearing at him, and how we would have loved to stay otherwise and answer real questions.

He has serious guts to be doing an AMA.

Unless he's using this opportunity to repeal the API changes or officially resign as CEO and put somebody more competent in charge, I don't see this going well.

Spez should honestly learn to read the room.

I wouldn't be shocked if there is only comments from suspiciously young accounts that get addressed, posts like "How are you so brave to get up lead us to the promised land every day sir?" and "I don't have a question, I just want to thank you for saving me from the scourges of NSFW posts", while all the real questions are silently absent.
- I was going to say the same. I'm actually curious how it's going to turn out haha
I partially agree with you that he's got guts, but I think more so that you hit the nail here:
Spez should honestly learn to read the room.
I think there may be something genuinely not right with his sense of social awareness. I'm not a ~~doctor~~ psychiatrist, etc., but when I read the post today from iamthatis about Apollo shutting down, the quoted text that came from spez really felt defensive to me.
- I think there may be something genuinely not right with his sense of social awareness
  I agree with you and if Roman Roy thinks that, there is something seriously wrong.
There are going to be a ton of deleted comments in that thread for sure
There is no way they see this going well. No way. 🤦
- They don't need it to. They just need to have enough clueless investors for the IPO and snazzy graphics to mislead them enough so they aren't looking at what is actually happening that Reddit is actually imploding.

That's gonna be a disaster. I'm waiting to see how he spins the "why did you lie about your interactions with the Apollo dev?" questions.

I bet it will be massively curated and full of planted questions.
Question: “u/spez, your administration of Reddit is like a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?”
- Goodness, I didn't realize this casual AMA was going to turn into a charged debate.
  Yes I know it's out of order, I don't care
Redditors have no chill when it comes to minor stuff let alone this API debacle. It's going to be a dumpster fire and I cant see this going well.
- Isn't Spez the guy that stealth edited some user's negative comments about him?
There's no way he answers that. There's no way he answers anything. He will pose for a verification photo and then a team of lawyers and underpaid publicists will answer the questions they plant. This is all a stunt.
I wonder how many downvotes his comments will get.
- It will set records
As if those questions won't be immediately removed

Oh that's gonna go well for him /s

I dont get why hes doing it at all. There is no universe in which this doesnt end completely poorly, with nuked comment chains and tons of down votes. I expect a ton of users to get banned, and it would be very surprising if spez answers anything other than pre planned questions
I haven't seen Reddit this upset, collectively, since Ellen Pao. Doing an AMA is just going to throw gas on the fire. I dont see the play hes trying to make
- The sad thing is... Ellen Pao did nothing wrong. All she really did was ban /r/FatPeopleHate. Victoria's firing was Kn0thing's doing but everybody threw Ellen under the bus for it. Oh, and she was trying to fight for keeping Reddit as a free-speech platform too.
  It's amazing how sheepish the Reddit community truly is when everybody came back to Reddit the moment Pao was forced out.
  She really didn't deserve the nickname 'Chairman Pao', especially when Spez was the one who pushed far stricter censorship measures, made ban-evasion a site wide offence and gave moderators so much power to abuse.
  On the plus side, it's good to see a Reddit alternative that isn't either dead, a closed-garden like Tildes, or a white supremacist hellhole.
I hope he gets absolutely obliterated in the comments.

Even before the API debacle, Reddit has had some serious issue, and every one of those issues is u/spez. He can't just fight his way through this. The incentive to leave has always been there, and now he's pushing us over the edge, and he's gonna try to win us back with some empty words.

This is the same guy who stealth edited a comment of a user he was angry with and then justified his decision by saying he grew up being a troll on the internet. Leave the troll's playground and watch it crumble. Reddit isn't spez. It's all of us.
- How does this work on Lemmy? Can mods edit users posts?
- How did he get busted?

Reddit CEO, u/spez, will be here tomorrow to host an AMA about the latest API updates, including accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools.

Note how they somehow left out 3rd party apps. Just mod stuff and accessibility.

Probably a typo.

(But really how many corporate meetings and emails were passed around to agree on that copy you think, it's gonna be lawyers all-hands-on-deck tomorrow, probably one of the most expensive AMAs ever with all of those billable hours)

I agree with your parenthetical strongly enough to rule out a typo.
This announcement lists things that Reddit will humor, for now, and as a way of cheaply outsourcing niche and difficult problems. It clarifies that everyday third party apps were never intended to have a future with the platform. They're simply an obstacle for Reddit's most convincing path to revenue.
I might even have forgiven Reddit if it had said so up front, but the story they've been trying to spin – with prices that just happen to be orders of magnitude in excess of anything devs might afford – is outrageously insulting. I've never had my trust in a brand demolished so thoroughly so quickly.
I assume that's because their goal is to outline why third-party apps won't be needed. The whole point of this drama is that Reddit wants to get rid of the third-party apps, so they are going to do everything to try to convince people why not having them will be fine.
- Yeah them bringing up disabilities, I have a feeling we're going to see some half-ass disability fixes come in in the next week. Let's see them get through a full ADA audit (as a software dev who has done that it suuuuuuuucks. It's needed, but we're talking months of work
Too bad they fired their dedicated AMA coordinator.

It’s pretty much guaranteed that AMA is going to go over very, very poorly. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out people aren’t happy about this! I’d think of this as a “why bother” situation usually but I get the feeling spez is looking for attention/validation.

I think it's going to be a honeypot intended to draw out the critics. Their accounts will be banned and their comments hidden within minutes of saying anything even remotely critical.
Can't wait to speak my mind and let them ban my 16 year old account.
- Goodbye my sweet sweet Karma.
- Interesting. I should try that out. If I’m ever going to get banned, this is the way.
What will immediately become ‘The Roast of Spez’ might be the last funny thing ever posted to Reddit at this rate to be fair.
- Going down in flames. I like it.
I really don't see how can this go well. On the other hand, Reddit was never shy of manipulations, so I'm expecting some shady practices...
They will probably do a biased and heavy moderation in the thread.
but I get the feeling spez is looking for attention/validation.
Is he though? His last comment on Reddit as of this time was 10 months ago. I don't think he really cares, if anything he's being pressured to do it (and possibly doing begrudgingly) because he's the more known "face" of reddit.
E: I'm not defending spez, btw. What I mean is just that I think it's likely he's an unwilling participant in all this. Reddit is just a source of income for him, he doesn't care what happens to it. He probably would rather be cruising on his yacht or whatever, than doing this AMA.

spez is a clown

I think we're all getting a little distracted here, let's refocus on Rampart...I mean, API pricing...

This is going to be a SHIT SHOW.

Man, this whole API thing really makes me think of how much of a shithole the web is, still after all those years.

I basically have to buy a keyboardless laptop with an awkward resolution if I have to buy a smartphone, all because the software for it is less than optimized crap that mostly just spies on you for the sake of ad revenue, and then leaves garbage all over the system it barely ever cleans up. A wonderful package for a multi-core, multi-threaded CPU paired with at least 3 GB RAM (if that's even enough today) that you almost certainly can't use with any comfort to browse the web because almost no one who pays big money to their devs cares that these devs build a proper mobile version of the website - which is part of nearly every webdev interview anyway, and for what, just to make me download the app anyway? What a fucking joke, honestly.

Web on desktop is just as much of a disgrace for all the bloat.

Funny you mention the resolution because in the 90s we had 640x480 which was way smaller than what cell phones have now and we still managed to have very functional web. Yeah the fonts weren’t as pretty and pictured had jagged edges but it worked and it was great!
- Exactly! Screens are so big now, they should pack so much real estate, but they just don't most of the time, and it's not even because of human eyesight limitations.
- We waited for our images to load one line at a time and we were grateful, dammit!
keyboardless laptop with an awkward resolution
Are you talking about the pinephone, or are you literally buying keyboardless laptops?
- @doctorzeromd @sailsperson I assume any smartphone - they often have comparable specifications to laptops but few keying options that don't suck.
- I was actually trying to call out basically every smartphone out there because they have to be packing multicore CPUs with at least 3 GB of RAM in order to be functional.
  My current phone has 2 GB, and almost all of it is dedicated to the Android system itself, even without any shells (i.e. not MiUI or anything like that, which is basically Android OS plus something on top, eating up even more resources), and can be really painful to use at times. I seem to have won some performance back by switching to Via browser instead of the native Google Chrome, YMusic instead of the native YouTube app, and RedReader for Reddit (might kiss goodbye to that some time soon, as we all know) - the rest of the applications I use either lack a proper mobile version of the website (viewing some with the desktop option on is horrible), a lightweight alternative, or both. I also don't have the memory to download every single app for the websites I use as they keep suggesting - more importantly, I don't want to.
  When I'm on PC, I use the web applications available for nearly every single thing I use - but oh no, I can't do that on mobile, I need an app, which I'd have to update frequently, wasting even more space with the piss-poor solutions they go for in the name of profits.
  Damn I'm getting worked up talking software and especially the mobile world.

I’m sure it’ll go well, everyone will have a great time, and /u/spez will do everything he can to make Reddit even better!

Hahahahaha no just kidding. He’s going to get absolutely flamed and duck the hard questions, which I have no doubt will be most of them. At this point I’m not sure if it’s a worse look for him to offer his weak justifications to an enraged community or not respond at all.

To me, the recorded calls from Christian are damning evidence that this isn’t a matter of fair compensation from users on 3rd party apps. They literally just set out to kill them and are doing it in the most disingenuous way possible.

Can someone please set up c/fuckspez, and scrape every comment from reddit today that contains the words "fuck /u/spez"?

Comedy gold in the making

Let's not forget the time Spez untracably edited a user's comment, only admitted it after being caught, and then joked about it. If he breathes, he lies.

I wasn't planning on going back to Reddit, but I don't think I'll be able to resist watching the dumpster fire 🔥

What's the betting he'll back down in some way (which was the plan all along)? That way they'll get what they originally wanted but will look as if they've "listened".

I'm not sure I believe that will happen though, tbh.

I would put money on that not happening at all. The suite of changes this time are exceptionally broad and seem 100% targeted at public investment. They can't back-down on deciding to go public, and they can't really go public with some of these things in place.
- Yeah I don't expect anything to happen either. The big "blackout" having a predetermined duration of 48 hours is a joke. Reddit can just sit it out and be done with it. After reading the farewell post of the Apollo dev it also seems like Reddit is doubling down on their pricing model with no leeway.
My bet is that they'll announce that they're still charging for the API, but at a "drastically" reduced price. As you say, I think it was their plan all along. That way they can still milk third party apps, all the while still being able to say "we listened to the community" by not destroying them outright
- I just don't get why they were doing per api call to the app at all, instead of a subscription to reddit for the users. I might have paid a bit to keep using redreader and avoid ads.
I don't think they will, but even if they did I kind of suspect the apps will still shutdown, they all announced their shutdown at once, I am sure they discussed amongst each other and reached a line in the sand with reddit. If I got that sort of treatment, even if they backed down I'd never trust them again, I'd never want to work with them again and I don't see how that sort of situation is tenable. So they could completely abandon the changes and still have achieved the result they want. However, at this point they've already vilified themselves to those who will ever care, so there's no reason to back down at all.
I think his idea of backing down will be lowering the pricing, if he does it.
I think that's probably what's going to happen on June 14 so they can look like the "good guys", but I'm not fully sure to be honest.

Oh man, I'm making popcorn for this, it's going to be a complete trainwreck.

Someone had to beat Electronic Arts' Battlefield II comment eventually
- For those who do not know, it's the most downvoted comment on reddit.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/
- Hey, potential investors, look at this upward trend in user engagement in the last month!
I mentioned this in an adjacent thread, but as much as I hate downvoting in principle, I will gladly downvote that AMA out of principle.
And have popcorn ready 🍿
- Even the AMA announcement is at "0" (so probably in the thousands negative, didnt check). I'll also check in with some popcorn. =)
I'm gonna get popcorn and nachos!

Oh this should be some top tier entertainment. I’ll go back to Reddit for a day to join the fun!

Right? There's no way in which this doesn't end poorly for them. Nevermind that they started this debacle by shooting themselves in the foot, they just keep gleefully shooting it even more, it's insane. Either the investor money is such a huge pressure that they don't care, or they just completely lost touch with reality. Or both.
I'm gonna grab some popcorn tomorrow, this will be a cool friday night tragic comedy to watch.

It's not on Lemmy? Guess I won't see it then.

LMAO

I'm sure it's gonna be an absolute disaster. I can't even fathom why they would think this is a good idea right now. Probably some roundabout bullshit about pleasing investors.

It really goes to show he doesn’t know what he’s going
He's just going to edit everyone's comment so it looks like they're all praising him

I’m guessing he’s going to brute force through it and try to justify their behavior. Should be interesting for popcorn’s sake!

This sort of circus is what happens with communities led by corporate greed. I’m taking a deep breath and I’m letting go.

The thread is here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/

It feels so surreal to watch this train wreck in real time. This is a chief executive officer?

Finding questions he actually answered in this thread is quite difficult, so it's easier to just look at his comments: https://www.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/

Reddit tanking could push people to a more decentralized and neutral use of the internet. I can only hope!

This whole debacle was the final straw for me to finally kick Reddit and move to a decentralized non-corporate platform, and I know I’m not the only one. Really hoping the general migration picks up a ton of speed after July 1st and more people learn that the federated model isn’t too scary or hard to understand🤞
Yeah Lemmy has been great so far. Some kinks, but the seems like a solid alternative to Reddit.

Probably following the Apollo announce. Good luck with that, it's probably too late.

How is hearing the same thing from the most hated person on Reddit meant to do anything but further aggregate users?

Free lemmy marketing I guess.

It will be a dumpster fire. 🗑️🔥

Dammit, I want an official “dumpster fire” emoji now.
- We need to petition the Unicode Consortium to make it so.

I don't think this will end well... People are going to grill him, which he honestly deserves.

Waiting around for the shitshow. Reddit has been dying way before this API change. Moderation has been absolute shit and he has done nothing about it.

Any idea what time this is supposed to begin?

They didn't specify. They literally just said we're gonna do an AMA tomorrow. Chances are it isn't really an AMA so much as a "press release" with pre-answered questions of their choosing.
- In Australia ministers in parliament often ask their own side lame softball questions to give them a prompt to talk about how great they are. We call them "Dorothy dixers".
  "/u/spez why is reddit so great?"
The Verge reports the following:
CEO Steve Huffman is set to host an AMA about the changes on Friday; the company aims to start it at 1:30PM ET / 10:30AM PT.
- https://countingdownto.com/?c=4803275
- I don't see it happening. Reddit's comments have been janky for 12 hours now. The site isn't functioning proper. What a shock!

I can't imagine this going well at all. In fact, I'll be avoiding the whole thing, and y'all probably should too. We wouldn't want to get accused of brigading and give spez an easy out, after all.

Oh that is going to be quality entertainment.

Too late. I just deleted everthing

@thomas It's too late

You know it's just too little too late
- You made my day

Do we know when this is supposed to start?

"We're right, you're wrong, cope and cry about, thanks for coming" type of AMA incoming, along with the fan favorite nothing burger with lame ass excuses on the side

It's gonna be filled with bullshit

BRB, I'm going to grab some popcorn

As comrade Diatlov said, "not bad, not terrible" (in u/spez words).

It's planned for tomorrow. No time was given in the announcement post.

Oh, this is going to be fun to watch. Better get some popcorn ready. My guess is that 99% of the comments will be about the move to kill all 3rd party apps and mod tools. Those comments will of course be upvoted to the top and then ignored by spez.