The CEOh Moment - Reddit CEO Calls Recent Community Protest as "Noise" In An Internal Memo

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And the Reddit Saga continues ...

In an unprecedented CEOh moment, Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, referred to the ongoing protests as "noise", and expressed his belief that the protests would eventually subside, allowing things to return to normal.

Huffman's comments were made in an internal memo - as obtained by TheVerge -  addressing the protest-oriented blackout of over 8,000 subreddits on June 12. This blackout was a direct response to the controversial API pricing policies implemented by Reddit that would force most of the third-paty apps to close shop.

The contentious API policy, designed to monetize Reddit's data for training artificial intelligence tools, dealt a heavy blow to many third-party apps, rendering them unable to function under the new pricing model.

Despite the backlash, Steve Huffman remained optimistic, suggesting that the "noise" would eventually fade away. He expressed confidence that the majority of subreddits would be back online by Wednesday.

Adding insult to injury, Huffman claimed that the blackout had not caused any "significant revenue impact." He reiterated the company's commitment by stating, "We absolutely must stick to what we said we would."

In an attempt to avoid drawing unwelcome attention from angry users, Huffman also advised Reddit staff members against wearing Reddit-branded items in public.

The change in API pricing policy was initially announced by Reddit in April as a means to charge companies utilizing Reddit's vast data for training AI tools. However, it has become evident that the true objective of this change was to eliminate third-party Reddit apps from the platform. In a well coordinated protest, most of the subreddits went dark on June 12th causing a temporary Reddit outage.

ThoughtsUnboxed strongly condemns Reddit's blatant effort to cleanse its app ecosystem. Nevertheless, considering the prevailing short attention span of many users, there is a possibility that Huffman may succeed in his goal of monetizing Reddit communities and secure a golden parachute through a suspected IPO. 

Here is the complete memo:

Hi Snoos,

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.

 

Sources:

TheVerge

 

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