I mean that was really stupid of him, but it seems like the kind of thing someone would do impulsively one time and then never again after getting reprimanded. Meanwhile, this API debacle has made me lose all respect for Reddit and its leadership — if everything the Apollo dev is saying is true, this is completely inexcusable. Reddit lied to the faces of the developers who trusted them and depended on them for their livelihood. I think the API thing is dramatically worse, and it isn’t close.
Yeah, the whole thing really doesn't make a lot of sense at face value which is why the logical conclusion is "Reddit lied to try to justify their API decision by making him look bad."
This was Reddit's statement (proven to be false btw by audio recordings) before "the dev Apollo spat the dummy and turned it into a public mega drama":
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
At this point the Reddit CEO's numerous defamatory lies about the Apollo dev has been thoroughly debunked. If the CEO had the tiniest amount of common sense, he would've made an apology, however insincere it may be. So imagine my astonishment when I saw him doubling down with even more defamatory statements.
partly optics, but mainly loss of confidence, not just by the users, but Reddit's employees.
It may be an OK business decision (though I personally think they didn't think it through), but he handled the aftermath in an extraordinarily bad way.
Either he doesn't have good lieutenants around him to advise and support him, or he is too stubborn to listen to them.
Thats a lot of mental gymnastics and whataboutism to give him a pass. At the end of the day he did what he did. And they lost trust through his actions which is the currency of their platform. As CEO, he made a stupid decision and then joked about it more than he apologized after. If they're doing that type of thing on the front-end, what do you think they're doing on the back-end?
I barely even use Reddit anymore because I simply dont trust it for an accumulation of reasons. Its ~50% astroturf for political and commercial reasons, you can somewhat easily game the votes, and I don't think they care because they make money.
I'm not saying that at all - this API change has to do with business, nothing to do with personal feelings. But I just think it's interesting people criticise the leadership of reddit but look at what the users of reddit have been up to over the years - /r/jailbait, the harassment of Ellen Pao, the fappening, FatPeopleHate, the Boston bombing vigilantes, Pizzagate. Like yeah, sure, Reddit has been a total fuck up of a business proposition, but that really is partly because the site has harbored some really disgusting stuff over the years and it's only extremely recently that the company has even started to try to steer away from that stuff - and when they do large portions of the company react extremely badly.
I think this definitely could have been handled much more tactfully on both sides. Im not sure which large audience you are referring to, but Christian references a call with some moderators that seems to have sparked all of this[1]. Prior to the horrendous AMA, spez hadn't posted on reddit for 11 months. Christian was definitely the one to bring it to the public eye. Either way, both sides should share some of the blame.
I think this was definitely a case of the little guy not knowing how to navigate such a volatile situation. Some people might even find it pretty unprofessional to joke about reddit buying him out for half-priced at $10mil during an important discussion. Which, btw, would have shutdown the app also, except with a large windfall. How much of that was actually a joke vs testing the waters?
There is really no excuse for what he did and most other businesses would have fired him immediately. Reddit simply has a very immature corporate culture. Post-IPO (if they get that far) I would expect a massive clean-out.
It's clear he is blackmailing them and the upset users are his leverage. After posting that "Apollo will close down on June 30th." he now says "Same as always: I love building Apollo, and if Reddit is willing to to talk I'm happy to as well." which of course was not what he always said. He was never joking about asking for 10 million dollars and is still hoping for an offer.
That was childish and unethical, but it did no harm to Reddit or the Reddit brand, and nothing at all to the Reddit bottom line. It hurt Huffman's reputation, but that's it, and the board probably rightly assumed that would more or less blow over.
This is a different beast entirely, he's betting the farm on this API move and keeps doubling down. The damage that's already been done isn't going to go away, and it's damage to Reddit as a whole, not just Huffman personally.
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.
I agree with this take - this seems pretextual rather than a good-faith attempt to charge for API access. Because history rhymes I suspect Reddit's leadership was heavily inspired by Twitter's killing of third-party clients, which actually ended up working out for Twitter.
IMO Huffman's behavior in this entire saga has been extremely wanting, to the degree where one has to wonder about his suitability to lead the company. And to be clear - I'm actually someone who is sympathetic to Reddit's position, where a lot of the platform's value generation isn't being captured by them and the company is unprofitable.
I'm a very long-time Reddit user but I'm generally pretty meh about the various tempests-in-a-teapot psychodramas that emerge from there, and I remain generally cool to the popular uprising rhetoric - but Huffman's behavior is pretty egregious.
And this is why I don't really see this resolving peaceably - Huffman at this point seems personally aggrieved by Selig and one has to wonder if he's behaving in a capacity that maximizes the interests of his company vs. descending into a petty personal feud.
I may be grossly misinterpreting him here - but based on his disastrous AMA and his haughty proclamations it's not an unreasonable perception. More importantly, as a company that is 100% reliant on mass volunteer labor to even exist, the fact that this perception has been projected, reinforced, and not usefully countered in any way suggests disqualifying leadership inability.
The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.
To clarify, I'm not opining personally on reddit's API changes at all in my comment. I'm pointing out that regardless of anyone's opinion of the API changes, Steve's behavior is just egregious, ridiculous, and cruel.
You certainly raise good points about the policy change itself and about the ensuing debate and my own view is certainly closer to yours than to "not care / no position." I'm just not talking about it here, my comment was my stunned reaction to steve huffman's abominable public behavior.
You need to take into consideration the fact that this person had already created a large amount of negative press around this API issue. This means that people at Reddit were already feeling defensive, so when someone said something very similar to a threat then it was more likely to be perceived as a threat.
The reason why this is so alien to so many people is because they refuse to have empathy for a CEO. Reddit is filled to the brim with populist rhetoric about eating the rich. CEOs are profit robots, they don’t have emotional states of mind, duh.
All of this makes complete sense.
I couldn’t care less what happens to Reddit but it sure is interesting to watch everyone get so bent out of shape about a fucking website!
> Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
> Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it.
I would figure that, over those 8+ years, he likely dealt with developer relations and/or reddit's development team directly. The API changes aren't technical as much as they're business, and he's probably dealing with a different group within reddit.
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