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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's letter to Reddit employees in response to blackout (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by gary@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

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. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we'll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

Edit to include source: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/reddit-ceo-blackouts-no-revenue-impact/

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[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago

Thing is, ultimately people do have a choice as to whether they want to continue using Reddit without third-party apps.
I agree that regardless of any blackouts, Reddit will be fine in the end - most people simply don't mind using a Facebook-ified version of Reddit, and that's fine.

My hope isn't that Reddit will fall, it's that alternatives (like Lemmy) will rise, for those of us that do care about these issues.

[-] AyyLMAO@exploding-heads.com 14 points 1 year ago

My hope isn’t that Reddit will fall, it’s that alternatives (like Lemmy) will rise

Why not both?

[-] LurkerCandado@programming.dev 16 points 1 year ago

Well, I'm not OP but there are a few demographics I'd rather remain in Reddit, far away from this place.

[-] Makiterr@iusearchlinux.fyi 9 points 1 year ago

Also not OP: Both would be fine, but I don't care about what happens to Reddit since I don't intend to use it anymore. I do care what happens to Lemmy because I want to continue using it.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

While I certainly wouldn't be against Reddit (or any corporation) failing, I don't see a reason to hope for it.

At the end of the day, all Reddit is doing its changing the terms of the agreement between them and their users. Some will agree to the new terms, some (like me) won't. And despite what people are saying, in the end, that's okay. Things ate allowed to change, and things are allowed to end.

I totally get why people feel hurt and upset about this sudden and major shift, but if I was angry at them for restricting access to their website, it feels paradoxical to react by wanting the website gone. It's just revenge for the sake of revenge.

I dunno, I'm still feeling this all out too, but I guess I just think the best way forward is to offer alternatives so that people don't feel trapped by one company's decisions.