World News

I've noticed that a lot of articles have been underselling the protests.

I think that the Pao plot arc always planned on bringing Spez back.

Reddit - especially then - had a sort of reverence for the OG founders and discussion would often model them as the "real" redditors and people who really understood the community, changes since they sold were blamed on corporate interests and people were forever complaining that "shit like this wouldn't happen if ..." various founders or original staff were still around. I think it was always misplaced, but it was the culture at the time.

So Pao was brought in as a scapegoat - she was going to make wildly unpopular changes, take the heat, take a dive, and be replaced. She'd get a fat bag, an absolutely glowing reference on her CV, and a huge jump in her career - then Reddit would bring in the popular original founder that redditors liked and respected, and everyone would feel optimistic again. The changes would remain, the community would feel like they'd got their pound of flesh, that they had been appeased, and the site could get back on track.

Don't get me wrong, he's been a hack all along, he's been willing to sell his values to the highest bidder pretty much all along.

And now Spez is playing the same role. He's taking the face position and eating the heat over a bunch of shitty corporate boardroom decisions - that he definitely was party to - in order to inflate the IPO valuation and his cut of the cash. They're going to try and make it look profitable enough and healthy enough that someone else takes the hot potato and then make for the goddamn hills once they're not bagholding anymore.

A conspiratorial part of me almost wonders if he isnt sabotaging the site before it's sold off to the highest bidder. Cause an outrage that reseeds the smaller message board style sphere of the internet and then as the sale comes about toss the match over his shoulder and watch the whole thing burn down. He's been on reddit long enough it's kind of crazy to think that he's this out of touch with the way redditors are. Like the AMA for example. He could have just put out an announcement clarifying things and it would have been received poorly, but it wouldnt have gotten as much heat as the AMA did.

Of course probably not. He probably is just a screwup, but its a nice little conspiracy theory.