I have a feeling like he is being squeezed by the investors. It feels like they want a tiktok/Instagram clone and he is the one that has to tell the Reddit community.
I don’t think this was his vision for the site or he would have done it years ago.
Like it doesn’t make it less shitty but more understandable I guess?
I think that /u/spez has his back against the wall. Reddit loses money - a lot of money - and there’s noone left to foot the bill. He’s tried everything: he’s tried advertising, sponsored content, and he’s tried premium memberships (and don’t forget coins!), but all this is simply a drop in the bucket. At this point, if nothing is done, Reddit will likely have to shut down - it probably has 8-14 months left.
Honestly, I think that /u/spez has given up; he sees that Reddit as it was originally envisioned is dead. So, he’s decided to make some superficial changes to polish it up and make it appealing to investors, make an IPO, and then cash out what he can out of it and leave.
I get that he may be under pressure to make unpopular decisions, but I still can’t believe that he invited the whole of Reddit to an AMA and then just answered 14 questions - as if that wouldn’t turn out to be the PR disaster it was. Trying to think of a rational explanation beyond “just incompetent” is really hard after that - unless he has some hidden agenda that involves sabotaging Reddit. There’s surely no way he couldn’t have known that AMA would be a disaster.
I think the AMA was to slander the Apollo Dev and make him seem unreasonable. The 1$ per user and month line suggests this to me. Christian just pre-empted it with his post but since they had already made the announcement there was no going back now.
If the Relay for Reddit dev thinks he can do it for $3/month, maybe spez has a point? Please let me know where I’m going wrong with this line of reasoning
There is an interview with him on the verge where he lays his numbers out. One big point was that the people that already bought a yearlong subscription need to be served at great loss. He says it would cost $50,000 for July. Then ofcourse some subscriptions would expire but it would still be a huge chunk of money that had to be paid every month decreasing over the next year.
I don’t know either way but he doesn’t seem like the type to play foul. I’ll edit this comment with the interview if I find it.
Found it on lemmy already lol: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit
My guess is that the investors have been pushing him for years to make a profit but it’s not been enough, and now they’re forcing his hand. Layoffs and aggressive monetisation.
If this doesn’t “blow over” then I wouldn’t be surprised to see Spez unseated and replaced with someone else - he’s garnered enough I’ll-will that he’s pretty much outlived his usefulness, and the board are likely to be happy to throw him to the wolves in the hopes it’ll appease users. New person might make a couple of concessions to the user base (perhaps halve the API cost as Selig suggests and try to keep Apollo), but ultimately will continue to try to squeeze every dollar possible.
