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.
  • BigFig@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    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.

    Both pretending to give a shit about his employees and painting protesters as potentially violent people.

    Fuck you spez, the only person deserving of a gut punch is you not your employees.

  • 2Xtreme21@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    The right thing to do would be for the subreddits that went dark to go permanently private on June 30th. The two day protest can be framed as a warning.

    If this doesn’t happen there will not be any changes. The Reddit leadership treated the protest as simply something they would need to “get through” before things return to normal.

    • artaxadepressedhorse@lemmyngs.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      That’s basically every major corporate strategy this day and age – wait 6 months everyone will forget. They keep seeing it happen again and again, so of course they’re getting bolder and bolder. We the public need to quit being pushovers. Where we spend our time energy and money is a far more valuable vote than the one at the ballot box. We will die from our own conveniences.

      I don’t know if Lemmy is the solution, but it certainly feels like the right direction to me.

    • towerful@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      The modcoord sub that organised the initial blackout are encouraging subs to remain dark in response to this. It seems like a lot of subs are going to remain dark.

      If a sub doesn’t want to go dark (stopdrinking was given as a community support example), then a touch-grass-tuesday is recommended to close the sub every Tuesday as an ongoing reminder.

      Seems like Reddit has taken the protest as “a bit of noise, but business as usual soon”. So, time to kick it up a notch

  • surfrock66@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    It feels manipulative to paint this whole thing as if there is a violence risk to reddit employees. Spez is seeing hate because of his direct actions and he is, IMHO, deserving of a lot of the vitriol. Also, this is clearly a management move, not a decision by employees. Lastly, reddit gear exists for non reddit employees, I’ve seen meetups with users in reddit shirts. I think that comment was a dog whistle to playing the victim under the guise of being a nice guy to his employees, when his direct action is causing the problem.

  • J_Ditz100@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    The only long term solution is improving our product

    Then why do you only do the opposite?

    • Aaron@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      That’s only true when you use a generally accepted definition of the word “improving.”

      When you use the capitalist robber baron definition, he’s spot on!

  • confusedbonobo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    This guy is an asshole, but unfortunately he is right. A 48 hour “protest” isn’t going to solve anything, either go indefinite or don’t bother. If almost everyone comes back it just means they won. This could the time for change, but it probably won’t be.

    • Deestan@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      It did have an effect. Remember the context: Reddit is trying to look 📈 big and growing now, because they will start selling Reddit shares. If no visible protest, buyers would just see the reality that Spez is showing them like “ad revenue remains stable” and “app adoption is skyrocketing!”

      Even if temporary, that amount of outage made the news, which means potential buyers get to see a bit of dirty underwear sticking out of Spez’s drawer. Business Insider reports on “Reddit’s falling IPO valuation” already.

      It is costing them, which may cause change. Clearly too little too late for too many people, but hey at least the assholes lost money.

      • confusedbonobo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        The good part here is that they’re losing money, but I doubt it’ll be enough for anything more than a sop. Spez the asshole seems pretty firm on his decisions, and people are eventually going to come back. Like Louis Rossman said, this is just showing them is that no matter how bad they treat their users, they’ll always be back in 2 days max, and that’s what counts in the end

  • artaxadepressedhorse@lemmyngs.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset I’ve unabashedly put you in direct danger, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations pesky lawsuits

    ftfy spez

        • madkarlsson@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          It’s not, it’s a format called markdown. Several apps have support for it already, but it’s not foundational to Lemmy. The UI services just have to render it (it’s just text with characters denoting format)

          • areyouevenreal@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            I know what markdown is my guy. Are you sure it’s standard markdown? I was under the impression that reddit had their own dialect but I could be wrong.

            • madkarlsson@beehaw.orgEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              Most of it is pretty standard. Spoiler tags and a few other addendums is there but all within the flavoured markdown spectrum.

  • annenas@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    A little off-topic, but who calls their employees ‘snoos’? Am I missing some context here?