Here we go, the AMA with /u/spez is live

From his responses you can see reddit will continue their path. and if you think about it, everything is going well for them.

the probability that a critical mass of users will leave is still quite low. they will get rid of a lot of moderators that don't fall in line. what is left will be a community that won't mind the direction reddit is going.

reddit will turn boring, but the shareholders won't care. as long as they manage to keep enough users after the api change the site will recover.

the only positive thing here is that a lot of dedicated people may join other platforms and start building new communities.

I just find the whole thing really false and shut off.
The answers provided by spez are completely useless and don't really further any discussion. This is all about damage control for the upcoming IPO in my opinion. Without users, active moderators and people willing to engage and discuss... the product is going to burn at IPO.
Here's hoping enough people can get into some simple Lemmy instances and help the 'verse grow. Time for me to find communities for LEGO and watches!
- He was initially let off his leash and posted this. I’m sure his legal and PR teams then reigned him in.
- Oh there’s a Lego community right now!
That's what I expected as well. My guess is that it's mostly somewhat tech savvy people that care about the changes. The more casual users will probably keep using reddit. Basically the lifecycle of most social media tbh
- Basically the lifecycle of most social media tbh
  Enshittification!
  https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
- Yeah. I doubt there will be any mass migration. Instead, we'll have a few high quality users, which in my opinion is the best case.
- I would venture a guess the more casual user's window into this is only the handful of posts on Reddit that bubble to the top of r/all of third party apps shutting down. If they are uses of those apps, they probably scroll right on by and are none the wiser about the larger implications of all of this. And why should they care? If it doesn't directly affect the way they use the platform, they will never even feel the impact of this.
Yeah. It’s like a toxic workplace. The old dogs might leave but those who hate change or new guys who don’t know how it used to be will stay
Hilariously, it appears he's copying from a list of precanned responses. It's been fun reddit.
Yeah, looking at the responses this is exactly what they want.

Lmao

Probably the thing that disgusts me the most in all this is how spez has been constantly trying to drag Christian Selig’s name through the mud when it’s crystal clear that he (spez) is the problem.
Love to see the downvotes; wonder if he’ll beat out EA’s legendary disaster.
- It seems so bizarrely personal at this point. It's strange.
- Feel like this would be the one to do it if any of them beat it. So out of touch and slimy
1 sin to corporate America is recording ur conversations lol, dude is pissed there's audio
- Anything that ensures accountability, especially personal accountability is looked at negatively. Its not an american thing uniquely. But it is embraced, especially in the last 20 years by companies. Its why general support is so poor, especially technical support.
- Yeah how DARE he look out for his rights and protect himself by knowing what he's legally allowed to do! Don't you know, this is America where corporate interests trump individual rights?
  Oh wait, you're from Canada? Shit.
  (Just kidding, in Canada, corps fuck us just as hard, if not harder)
I am actually amazed he answered it. Massive ego and a fucking idiot.
On top of it all... What joke? He "misinterpreted" a serious statement...
This really makes me want Reddit to sink fast. Disgusting behavior.
lol, lmao even

Tbh

HOW THE FUCK DID I OVERESTIMATE SPEZ

The fucking bar was on the ground and he didn't pass it what the hell

You didn't expect him to have a shovel.
The bar was on the ground but you didn't suspect he had descended into the underworld. For all the questions he dodged, one of the only ones he actually answered was trying to commit to the lies he's been telling about the appollo dev, even after the leaked phone call audio proves it is a lie
- what lies were he trying to tell? Sorry, I'm out of the loop

https://archive.ph/Pn2fW

https://archive.ph/MFuCK

https://archive.ph/qiC26

https://archive.ph/MDI9E

Archives to some of his "answers"

This is going as well as expected lol

Really appreciate these links! I've been curious to see what he's been saying but didn't want to give them any traffic.
- https://archive.ph/98cBq
  Here's another. It's hard to get them all because the archiver is really backed up right now lol
- Giving traffic to this trainwreck of an AMA should have the opposite effect if it mattered. It shows that you care.

so far the AMA has been up for about 20 minutes, and he's answered 3 questions. heavily downvoted as expected.

- spez has never struck me as particularly capable of reading the moment, so i'm hardly surprised by that.
I can't even find the questions that he's answered
- you're almost certainly going to have to browse by his profile just to see, given how nuclear the reaction against him is.

I understand that Reddit needs to monetise. It's not a link aggregate site anymore, hosting video/image files is expensive, Reddit operates at a loss and the 3p users cost them even more. They have reason to be dismayed that they operate at a loss while 3p apps using their API do not.

And I understand their concern with adult content. They can't control if 3p apps will display it with or without checks, but Reddit hosts it; limiting it on 3p apps is probably the better choice to them than removing it from their site entirely. After all, they're operating at a loss; they can't afford the fines and fees. Sexual content is heavily legislated.

But goddamn. Limited negotiation with devs, adversarial communication (to the point of outright animosity), frankly absurd timeframe, the use of accessibility as negotiation for the blackout... there's no good faith anymore.

Reddit is user-generated. The users are the content, their engagement is Reddit's product. Users that don't want to engage with their platform give them less sellable product. The users that engage the most (commenting, contributing, moderating) are the minority, and also the ones most likely to use 3p tools.

Reddit has good grounds for wanting to monetise. There are good reasons for bringing devs to the plate about how to do that. Devs were readily agreeing to covering their costs in calls, and expecting to negotiate what the revenue margin should be. Mutually equitable arrangement.

But this was handled so fucking badly, communicated so fucking badly (by one of the devs too tbh), that an equitable arrangement cannot possibly be reached anymore. Nobody wants to bargain in good faith anymore.

Now all the users want Reddit to cancel all the changes, publicly apologise, and remain operating a loss. Now Reddit wants devs to shut up and pay up, and blame them for the situation they're in.

Now everybody loses, because devs close apps, high-activity users contribute less or outright leave, and Reddit decays down into a pit of low-interaction lurkers picking over ad-bleached bones, until it's considered so unprofitable and unrecoverable that it is shut down entirely.

To me it sounds like this AMA is more to appease the mod community. The relationship with 3rd party app developers is already in the mud and they are fine with that but they can’t lose their mods if they want Reddit to continue to function.

In saying that, he’s doing an awful job and is making things worse. :popcorn:

They definitely know that if enough Mod's jump ship then their communities will suffer heavily. I'm going to guess that we'll see quite a few quit. There will be some that stick around holding on by their fingertips to for communities based around helping others.
But most mods aren't going to be willing to put in extra free labor especially for a company that keep signalling with actions that helping them isn't a priority.
- Especially when losing 3rd party apps loses them a lot of mod and bot tools/support. The power hungry mods will stay but those that were just doing it to be helpful are gonna feel burned.

I only saw one sarcastic answer. Did he actually say anything of substance?
- Few political not answers, some f-you answers, personal attack to Christian.
  I would say that PR was disastrous, people rage that he wasn't prepared for obvious questions and 0 informational value of this AMA.
that's a moment

So the Now for Reddit creator says he's been flat-out ignored for 3 months and he's panicking, he doesn't want to lose 10 years of work. Spez replies "Apologies for the delay. We are responding now.

If others have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API tier, please reach out here and select “This is a partnership request.”

The sheer incompetence of this man, holy shit.

That one rubbed me the wrong way too. On one hand they're trying to convince everyone that their announcements gave devs plenty of time to adapt, but on the other they're ignoring the devs that want to cooperate. There's no way that response backlog is 3 months long.

My only thought about this is that I wish people would stop using awards on comments lol. You're giving the site money! Feel like I gotta spray users with a water bottle like no, no, stop that

I mean, I have a stockpile of 8000 "free" coins to get rid of before I nuke my account. Might as well go towards depriving reddit of ad revenue.
Could be that people already have these awards and since they might want to leave reddit, they just give those awards to random comments from the CEO. Probably unlikely, but who knows?
- I do know that part of it is that giving awards helps surface comments getting heavily downvoted in the algo, but no amount of awards is going to help you see spez - the downvote avalanche is gonna be nonstop lol
Using up free coins doesn't give them any more money though, right? I just checked and I apparently have 550 coins to "spend".
- It doesn't but it gives the illusion that people are spending money on these things, and gives credibility to marketing teams raining awards on comments that they want to promote.
  When more than gold first came out the primary response to awards was disgust and disdain, giving out a butt load of free coins normalizes the awards and makes them more palatable.
Don't mind me, I'm just using up my stockpile of randomly earned coins. I won't be paying Reddit anything.
I hope spez isn't a cat. Mine flees when she sees me pick up the water bottle and is back up to no good as soon as I turn around.
- like spez, cats are little assholes, but unlike spez, we still love them

He's said four things in response to questions - every one of which is a deflecting non-answer and one of which is a personal attack. Lol. What a surprise

Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app).

Effectively forcing app devs to become middle-men collecting on reddit's behalf. Mob boss behavior. '

I guess it "looks better", to cut someone off at the knees before murdering them outright.

It's not murder if food is suddenly eleventy bazillion dollars and you starve to death, unless you're irish.
- They really love pulling the "stop hitting yourself!" thing that bullies do don't they.

Lmao from spez's comments it would seem that iamthatis is well and truly off the christmas card list

Spez is absolutely malding over him having the receipts. There's no other explanation, he's just pissed he can't get away with plausible deniability.
He ought to take himself off his own christmas list at this rate

Based on the answers I'm seeing, I'm positive that this change is a result of changing for their IPO. Lots of none answers, but they also aren't backing down on the absurd pricing.

Having been a manager at a Fortune 500 and getting announcements from Executive level leadership / giving announcements to my reports, this is surprisingly the level of competence I would expect.

Unfortunate, but also a symptom of Reddit being too big for the team to handle. The outflux of users caused by this might actually -help- Reddit in terms of figuring out their revenue stream and getting better leadership.

Sad to see this happening in real time though.

Just what was expected. "Fuck you we are not backing down because we did nothing wrong. I dont understand why all the backlash"

Really funny how searching for "Lemmy" in the thread just turns up... Nothing. I wonder why.

Someone in another thread here said mentioning Lemmy got them a shadowban
- Almost as though they're scared that Lemmy could actually be a threat.. I kinda love it..

And nothing of value to the Reddit community was gained.

I'm liking it here

Same. This reminds me of old school (10+ years ago reddit). Where you could just find something cool and jump in the comments and talk about it. It wasn't an argument fest or people plugging their shit or an army of bots it was just people talking about something they all happened to see and like.

spez confirmed Reddit isn't profitable

We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.

Unlike some 3P apps, we have been extremely wasteful with the excessive amount of funding we've raised. 🙄
I call bs tbh, but I guess we'll see when the IPO happens
- They've been trying to IPO since 2021 lol, it's not gonna happen

I wonder what he was expecting. Honestly surprised it wasn't heavily curated. Deleted my account but wish I saved it to ask him when he was going to resign.

Edit: Haha wow. He expectantly is getting hammered. I like to think he was living in some bubble and now his ego is getting a reality check.

This is what I’ve been thinking too cause why else would be think this ama is a good idea? He’s living in a fantasy.
- When you accidentally post in /r/ama instead of /r/AmItheAsshole ...

Went about how I expected it. Awful attempt at PR.

What a shit show

From what I read here, I am already fed up with it. I prefer reading a book than getting angry at this greedy unfriendly person.

Seems to be going just about as we thought. [popcorn.gif]

edit: This reminds me of EA's "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment" ama. Lol.

Someone should ask him which reddit alternative will he jump ship to when reddit starts dying. Lol.

You mean so that we all can avoid it :)

His op said he was working with redreader. I hope not as i would like to see redreader port to lemmy

nothing would stop people from forkinh though
- Thats true
Don't worry, the dev of redreader said that he has been in touch with lemmy devs and plans to make the app more general, such as able to interact with diferent sites: Link to his last update on the app
- Well, at least we can expect a good app in future

Practically every answer is him not actually answering the question

He's answering as a CEO, not as a community member. What did you expect lol
So business as usual for reddit

sets up popcorn stand*

You got any butter and salt? Mmm, salt.

I wonder if we can get his karma to 0

Probably not. Downvotes below -100 don't count towards a user's total karma.
- That explains why his karma is somehow going up instead of down >____>

We'll be telling our grandchildren that we remember the time /u/spez did an AMA...

Back in 2022 and 2023 i remember people finally getting fed up and abandoning corporate social media platforms in droves after realizing that 20 years of centralized platforms didnt work.
- Please, please I can only get so excited for such a glorious future.

What a complete clown. Does he really not grok that no one on Reddit trusts him?

I made a funny comment about not hearing feedback with the top down on your lambo and it got downvoted into oblivion, full damage and narrative control

I’m sure the most popular questions will go unanswered.

He will likely only answer cherry picked questions, vaguely at that.

(⁠╯⁠°⁠□⁠°⁠）⁠╯⁠︵⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

I feel like the “real reason” behind this stems from the pricing for AI training. Reddit wants to capitalize on its user-generated content for AI training. the safest way to do this, and ensure that no AI company can do this, and those large AI companies can’t argue that they’re getting unfair pricing compared to app developers.

That’s reddit’s big plan: sell user-generated content to large AI companies. That’s how you make a platform like reddit profitable. You resell content you got for free to massive companies willing to pay high prices for that content.