this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
locking this since the AMA is now live. go over here to discuss it so your comments aren't lost!
[–] oishiiburger@lemmy.ml 76 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

[–] CheshireSnake@lemmy.one 30 points 1 year ago

Why delete when he can just edit the comments? Lol.

[–] sup@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 16 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] Countsenju@beehaw.org 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)

He will only answer planted questions. Mark my words.

[–] tangentism@beehaw.org 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

He will edit the questions he doesn't like

[–] ApathyMoose@beehaw.org 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[–] menos08642@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

[–] setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?”

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] lemillionsocks@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Swintoodles@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't Spez the guy that stealth edited some user's negative comments about him?

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[–] StarkillerX42@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] overlordror@beehaw.org 35 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] Clbull@beehaw.org 40 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

[–] wslagoon@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] anormalusername@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] ezri@beehaw.org 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh that's gonna go well for him /s

[–] mustyOrange@beehaw.org 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Clbull@beehaw.org 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] mustyOrange@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree completely. We were just coming off of gamergate, and people were just looking for women to yell at

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[–] vanderbilt@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

I hope he gets absolutely obliterated in the comments.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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)

[–] tojikomori@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Goronmon@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] Wilshire@beehaw.org 32 points 1 year ago

spez is a clown

[–] arcticpiecitylights@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] Herb@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] sailsperson@beehaw.org 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Hexorg@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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!

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[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Llama_Sandwich@beehaw.org 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] Foon@beehaw.org 24 points 1 year ago

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

[–] backseat@beehaw.org 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] delmain@beehaw.org 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] handtasche@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Austin-Philp@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] wslagoon@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] wslagoon@beehaw.org 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Someone had to beat Electronic Arts' Battlefield II comment eventually

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[–] Gork@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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 🍿

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[–] Kuroneko@beehaw.org 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Slartibartfast@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago

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

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 year ago
[–] grizzzlay@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago

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

[–] VindianaJones@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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