On Reddit, thousands of subreddits have been dark since Monday, June 12, 2023. The head of Reddit is very casual in a message to the employees, apparently he wants to suspend the situation. However, he does issue a warning to his employees.
Where does the information come from? The information comes from an internal message that Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, is said to have sent to employees on Monday afternoon. In it, he addresses Reddit users’ protests against restrictions on third-party apps. (via The Verge).
More than 8,000 subreddits have been dark since Monday June 12, 2023, with most of them planning to reopen their doors on Wednesday. However, some communities plan to remain closed indefinitely until Reddit rolls back the unpopular changes.
However, Huffman is calm in his letter: The blackout has had no impact on revenue and everything is fine. Nevertheless, he gives the employees a warning to take with them.
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“Like all reddit rows, this one will pass”
What does Huffman say? In the memo, the Reddit CEO speaks of around 1,000 subreddits that are currently private. That is a challenge, but: The blackout does not affect the income, so everything is fine.
The boss thanks his team and encourages them to keep improving the product, i.e. Reddit. He also explains that they are still in talks with a few operators of third-party apps and want to exempt apps that make Reddit more accessible from the cost increases.
But some people are really angry, says Huffman. He therefore advises his employees to be careful when choosing their clothes: For the time being, they should probably not wear Reddit clothing in public so as not to become a target for user frustration.
A translation of the full letter can be found here:
Internal memo by Steve Huffman
Hello Snoos,
As of last night, about a thousand subreddits are private. We expect many of them to return by Wednesday, as many have already announced it. While we knew this was coming, it is still a challenge and we have a lot of work ahead of us. A number of snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure stresses, engaging with communities and responding to the myriad issues surrounding this blackout. Thank you team We have not seen any significant revenue impact to date and will continue to monitor it. There’s a lot of noise in this case. One of the loudest we’ve ever experienced. Please know that our teams are working on this, and like every row on Reddit, this one will pass. The most important thing we can do now is to stay focused, adapt to challenges and keep moving forward. It is imperative that we deliver what we promised. The only long term solution is to improve our product and we have some upcoming important mod tools that need to sit. While the two largest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a few others, have announced that they will be discontinued by the end of the month, we are still in talks with a few others. And as I mentioned in my post from last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia so far. I’m sorry to say this, but please be careful when wearing Reddit clothing in public. Some people are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustration. Again, we’ll get through this. Thank you all for helping us with this.
Reddit is a so-called social news aggregator, i.e. a kind of discussion platform through which users can share content and links. Some affectionately call it the “Home Page of the Internet.” For many users, the platform is important for finding out about their interests and exchanging ideas or simply sharing anecdotes.
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