• eta_aquarid
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    18611 months ago

    the irony of a goddamned CEO calling unpaid volunteers “landed gentry”

      • @DarthRedLeader
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        11 months ago

        In the interview, Huffman also praised the cost-cutting by Twitter owner Elon Musk, calling the reduced headcount there an example of how a social media site can be without the massive revenue of a company like Google.

        I mean, wtf

        • @[email protected]
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          2811 months ago

          calling the reduced headcount there an example of how a social media site can be without the massive revenue of a company like Google.

          My brother in Christ, you raised the head count

          • @ElectricCattleman
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            1011 months ago

            Right? It’s like wikipedia tripling their paid staff, then complaining that they aren’t getting enough donations to break even.

          • @samus12345
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            811 months ago

            Users ARE the product - the trick is to make using the site attractive enough that they’ll stick with it regardless.

          • @GrandMoffFartin
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            711 months ago

            Elongated has a rabid fan base built around what were perceived to be real accomplishments towards the betterment of mankind. That’s not true, of course, but he’s also actually wildly, wildly rich.

            By contrast I have yet to find a single person who supports Spez or even likes him at all. His accomplishments, real or imagined, are nothing. He’s rich but so, so, so much less rich that the contrast is like comparing our moon to the sun.

            This is like a kid with a plastic butter knife comparing himself to John Wayne Gacy.

    • @[email protected]
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      5011 months ago

      He’s doing this on purpose.

      He’s repurposing leftist talking points into a pro-corporatist clusterfuck as an attempt at populism. He knows that there are a fair number of people and communities on Reddit that will be overall supportive of these politics.

      The idea is to get people thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that term before, it’s bad! And yeah, I’ve dealt with power-tripping mods before, so it must be true!” If they haven’t been paying attention to the finer points of the news around this (blackmail claims on C. Selig, gaslighting about 3rd party apps not wanting to work w/ Reddit, etc.), then this may be enough to get some people on Reddit, Inc.’s side. It worked for some people with Trump, for others with Musk, and with Huffman’s recent praise of Musk’s managerial style…

      • tal
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        2711 months ago

        I don’t know if using metaphors where the logical extension of mods being landed gentry is your product being a feudal kingdom, you the king, and the users the peasants is necessarily all that clever of a quote to start spreading around.

        • @DarthRedLeader
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          1011 months ago

          Agreed. The only problem is that I think most people will stop at landed gentry and say, “BAD!” without thinking through the full context like you just did.

          • @Aliendelarge
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            611 months ago

            Thats exactly what I expect out of a large swath of redditors. All this just to avoid the work of making the official app not suck.

      • @[email protected]
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        2111 months ago

        The fact that he keeps making comments at all is so weird to me. Like he is truly terrible at PR. Every time he opens his mouth the situation gets worse for him.

        • @escaped_cruzader
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          911 months ago

          When a man becomes so rich and his “thing” so popular, he thinks he is smart enough to be an expert in anything all at once

        • @[email protected]
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          811 months ago

          Reminds me of SBF’s bizarre interview spree right before he got arrested. Or Alex Murdaugh that southern lawyer that killed a bunch of people and stole a bunch of money and thought it would be a good idea to testify in his own trial and got destroyed by cross-examination smh

      • funkyb
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        2311 months ago

        ya my immediate reaction was “wow, how tone deaf.” It’s pretty clear to me that this clown is just repackaging the same talking points the VCs are using to influence his weak-minded ass.

      • @sirboozebum
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        1011 months ago

        One of these reporters should ask him why he was a moderator of /r/jailbait

  • @fubo
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    10711 months ago

    When a tree dies, it dies slowly. The heart of it rots, and then the roots stop growing, and only much later do the branches stop growing new green leaves. By the time the whole trunk falls over, there’ve been raccoons burrowing into the rotten heartwood for years.

    • Gorillan
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      4111 months ago

      With this analogy Lemmy could be the sapling that one day will grow into a large tree!

      • DarohanB
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        2911 months ago

        We are a whole forest - the beauty of federation tbh.

        • @eXoShini
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          1011 months ago

          I wanted to be the capybara.

        • @flint5436
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          411 months ago

          Then be the racoon. Drive up the cost. Upload hour-long videos of white noise or pictures of John Oliver beeing sexy. I think I am going to create a couple of throwaway accounts just to show how unprofitable reddit can be ;)

          • Kogasa
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            311 months ago

            I respect that, but I’m more interested in raccoons personally

            • @flint5436
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              111 months ago

              Oh you meant literal raccoons, sorry my tired ass was still thinking of them metaphorically :D I don’t know, beeing an animal and not having to work is cool and all, but I like my opposable thumbs.

    • @RarePepeCollector
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      5111 months ago

      He’s a privileged white boy complaining about slavery while operating scheme to not pay his employees.

      • Overzeetop
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        911 months ago

        Following the true core of (his alma mater) UVA’s founder’s principles. He’s probably fucking one of the in-house supermods on the side, too.

  • @SlingerOGrady
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    8011 months ago

    If I can’t win I’ll make my own rules…Jesus guy just admit you were wrong.

    Side note, did anyone see how /r/Pics handled this after they opened back up because it was beautiful. Around 2300 users voted to open /r/Pics again and 37k users voted to keep protesting in their own special way.

    • cyn
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      4611 months ago

      Read the poll again, reopen had negative 2300 votes

      • @SlingerOGrady
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        1511 months ago

        Oof, missed that little hypen…that makes it worse.

      • @Tot
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        4111 months ago

        Only images of John Oliver looking sexy are allowed.

        • panoptic
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          1111 months ago

          But are there really any images of John Oliver not looking sexy?

          • @koraro
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            811 months ago

            No. That just gives the sub plenty of content.

          • @samus12345
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            711 months ago

            No. Per the rules, any picture of John Oliver is sexy

        • @[email protected]
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          811 months ago

          Damn I never thought I would want to go back but this temptation might be too great, I gotta see those sexy pictures.

    • @DevilsVice
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      911 months ago

      I think that goes for all authoritarians really, I mean, post WW2 east Germany was the German Democratic Republic, which was anything but democratic under Soviet occupation. Fascists for sure, but don’t think authoritarian communists don’t use the same playbook.

      • @Eldritch
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        311 months ago

        While I definitely think it’s a bad idea to closely equate the two. You are not that wrong. Fascists are far worse. But authoritarians in general are not desirable. When those in control of absolute power feel threatened for their power the well-being of those underneath them goes out the window. It’s how you get waves of genocide under fascists. And dissenters under authoritarian leninist communism shooting themselves in the back of the head three times or falling out of the window backwards onto bullets.

        • @MiddleWeigh
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          311 months ago

          Sounds like a people problem to me. We really gotta take better care of ourselves, don’t we? All of us. How do you ever stop this from happening? Where do we go from here? I guess that’s why the status quo is upheld.

          What a slow rolling machine we are.

          • @Eldritch
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            411 months ago

            It definitely is a problem of human nature to be sure. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most people just want to live their lives and don’t seek power. The few that do seek power generally should never have it. But we do need some minimal power structures.

            Part of the biggest issues is education. In western nations Political literacy and education is purposefully deficient. Because it benefits those in charge of the systems. Not to say it isn’t similar in other style countries. Ignorance is always a useful tool however.

            • @MiddleWeigh
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              111 months ago

              Yep. There is an obvious malice for personal gain. I can feel it.

              I always narrow it down to education. But how. The ideology is so strewn about, by design.

              We’d need to teach stuff like mindfulness in school. Something that should be taught, but would be looked down on as some flavor of other. I wish I was taught to think and live. I was taught how to keep my head down and hate myself. This is just how it is.

              They really dug in deep. All over the world. Kudos to them for holding “power”, whatever that is. I can feel it before I go to bed, telling me what I’m not allowed to say aloud.

              People even pray to the ugly thing. Imagine that. Praying to something other than your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others prayers.

  • Tempiz
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    7011 months ago

    I love the irony of him calling Reddit a democracy while also refusing to budge on the API issue. You can’t have it both ways.

    • @FanciestPants
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      911 months ago

      Democracy for the volunteers while Spez maintains the “landed gentry” only for himself. This shithead’s lack of self awareness would be comically stupid if it were in any way comical.

    • @Ryumast3r
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      311 months ago

      Also I can’t believe he doesn’t see how problematic voting for mod privileges can be. There’s a reason reddit has refused to allow users to vote out moderators in the past. If you allow voting, you allow outsidebrigadier, astroturfing, and also just petty mod squabbling. The solution reddit has always offered in the past was “create your own new subreddit for the idea you want and then get people to come over to it”. In general it’s worked. The existence of r/pics hasn’t disallowed other picture-based subreddits from flourishing, same with r/funny and, well, actually funny subs.

      Allowing votes on moderation just opens reddit up to a lot of shenanigans that I don’t think the admin team is ready for.

  • @scutiger
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    5611 months ago

    This week’s rebellion is a response to part of Reddit’s plan to succeed as a business

    Not a hint of bias in this article, is there?

    • makeitso
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      2511 months ago

      Hahha right “the rebellion!”

  • BarqsHasBite
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    5011 months ago

    Hilarious that he wants democracy to get rid of mods, but he wants absolute power for himself.

    And tell me more how this will attract unpaid mods.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      I think there will be mods either way. There are too many lonely people desperate for any kind of recognition and lust for power.

      What we’ll have to see if how that actually works out

  • @DarthRedLeader
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    4711 months ago

    So part of the issue with this “democracy” idea and making it easier to vote out mods is that Huffman has literally been found guilty of changing comments.

    That, along with the fact that we can’t trust reddit to not chime in with false accounts to swing the vote make me dubious that it would work.

    • @gmmxle
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      3711 months ago

      I’ll start believing in Reddit’s commitment to direct democracy when users will be able to also vote out admins and u/spez if they don’t like their decisions.

      Until then, it’s just corporatism under the guise of some fluffy words.

      • @SterlingVapor
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        1011 months ago

        It’s like when you let kids vote on what to do for the school faire.

        Not only will the teacher and school change the result if they don’t like the winning suggestion, you also can’t vote to do nothing or protest the event

        It’s just a way to give you the illusion of autonomy to boost engagement. It’s only a choice between the decisions they find (more or less) equally acceptable

  • @AcidOctopus
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    3911 months ago

    Gee, I feel so slammed right now, you don’t even know.

    • @Mac
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      1011 months ago

      I don’t. I’m not a Reddit user (anymore).

  • @MiddleWeigh
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    3911 months ago

    I just visited reddit for the first time in a week and it feels gross 😝

    • 𝕭𝖚𝖑𝖚 𝕺𝖓𝖙𝖆
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      1811 months ago

      Lol, more than half of my frontpage doesn’t even show up, it’s just the same subs over and over again. Made me check Lemmy more often

      • @MiddleWeigh
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        1011 months ago

        Ya I’m honestly getting better more thought provoking content here and stuff I’d never scroll past on reddit cause you have to really narrow your interests down cause how much there is. So I’m learning new stuff.

    • @BuckWylde
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      411 months ago

      I’ve gone there a couple of times in the last few days to try to hunt down an invilte to tildes.net and it also feels like i’m doing something bad.

      • @scottywh
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        111 months ago

        Message /u/Doug from an account that isn’t brand new and ask if he has any more invites. That’s who I got mine from.

        • @BuckWylde
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          211 months ago

          Thanks for the tip and I sent a PM!

        • @BuckWylde
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          211 months ago

          Thanks for the tip. I’ll give it a shot!

        • @BuckWylde
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          111 months ago

          From what I know it’s a different entity.

  • @Kaiser
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    3611 months ago

    After seeing what r/pics and r/gifs are doing I doubt voting would work out in his favor anyway. A surprising about of the user base is behind the protest.

    • @MTO
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      1311 months ago

      It’s just a matter of migrating them to a new platform. Lemmy has a small learning curve, but unfortunately it’s enough to turn off a lot of users. Hopefully with the influx of users, someone smarter than me can figure out how to streamline the user experience here.

      • @Fagosaurus
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        1411 months ago

        I don’t get the learning curve. I’ve been on it for 15 minutes. So far it looks exactly like Reddit. And seems more user friendly.

        • @MrGeekman
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          711 months ago

          Yeah, except when you want to do anything with other instances.

          • jerry
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            511 months ago

            We’re on one of the biggest instances, so you can still have a nice feed before you learn how to work with instances.

        • @MiddleWeigh
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          511 months ago

          I was hooked right away too. Feels like home tbh.

      • @MrGeekman
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        611 months ago

        Browser extensions help a bit, but just not on iOS.

  • @[email protected]
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    3211 months ago

    “I would like subreddits to be able to be businesses if they choose,” he said, adding that’s “another conversation, but I think that’s the next frontier of Reddit.”

    How ominous. This was an interview excerpt, so I have no way of verifiably knowing what Huffman looked like as he said this… but I’m fairly confident that he must have been rubbing his hands together and salivating as his pupils slowly morphed into dollar signs.

    • Overzeetop
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      511 months ago

      It definitely involved him putting a pinky to the corner of his mouth.

    • @TechnoBabble
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      511 months ago

      Why on earth would he say that now?

      Does he think the promise of more oppressive monetization is going to calm everyone down?

    • @sirboozebum
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      411 months ago

      He probably had a hand free and was pleasuring himself.

  • Sens
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    3111 months ago

    Will just lead to even more leaving.

    Like I give a fuck anyway, reddit is dead to me now. Died a long time ago when my front page, even advice animals, got clogged with political and mediocre posts.

    Reddit went mediocre a long time ago