Barring all of the arguments for or against why reddit is doing what it is doing, why does spez keep lying? Like he must realize that emails don't disappear and phone calls can be recorded?
Don't forget that Steve Huffman legitimately expects all of society to collapse and makes plans to survive it, including getting as much money and as many resources as possible. (The part where he helps to bring it about doesn't seem to register).
"I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove."
So much of what reddit is going through right now makes much more sense.
When shit hits the fan it's the PT gods that can grab their shit and hump it in the boonies who are going to survive, not some pencil neck weekend warriors with guns and ammo and a motorcycle.
Steve Huffman fantasizes about becoming a dictator after society's collapse. So in a future, Mad Max-style dystopian hellscape, what would be the most suitable role for a blond, blue-eyed, narcissistic plutocrat with a background in competitive ballroom dancing?
This is not his first controversy, he has a history with twisting facts and trying to manipulate people. Including that incident where he edited comments of people criticizing him on Reddit. I would guess there is a lot more of this behaviour that doesn't surface publicly.
The head moderator of that subreddit was violentacrez aka Michael Brutsch, a troll prolific to have articles about him in The Guardian [1], The Atlantic, [2], and The Verge [3] among others. It's well within the realm of possibility that he added spez as a joke.
“In October 2012, Chen exposed the real name and details of Violentacrez (a moderator of several Reddit jailbait communities), a Texas Internet developer, who was subsequently fired from his job.”
Yo, I have lots of opinions and strong feelings about reddit and spez right now, but I don't think that's accurate.
Afaict/afaik that was from a time where anyone could be annoited to a mod position without their consent.
I'm happy to have more pitchforks, but I also don't (1) like lies being spread or (2) want to distract from the "righteous" cause with something that's not true.
I think he's attempting Jobs' reality distortion field, but he missed the part where you're not supposed to be raving buffoon and tell lies that everyone recognizes as lies.
That, and Jobs had incredible design taste and ran a company that solved real, complex problems.
"spez" runs a website that hosts a bunch of content created, moderated, and shared by other people. It's a clone of Digg. The design actually is pretty terrible (old reddit was serviceable; new Reddit is a miserable dark-pattern-ridden ad-infested mess). Their first-party apps suck, and they couldn't even make it themselves; they had to buy one and enshitfy it.
From a talent/vision/charisma/taste/design/hiring/management perspective, the two men aren't really comparable.
spez/reddit also totally screwed up the PR by not getting the first word out about the changes. They privately dumped the news on developers who were the ones who had to break to their users that these changes were coming and will make the apps unable to continue operating.
And it was honestly the only thing they could do. Selig has already been over how much of a mess this is causing for people who paid in advance for the app's subscription, and he no longer can offer that service to them. He couldn't just sit quiet and wait for reddit to do the announcement themselves, he's got subscribers on the line. What a colossal fuck-up from reddit. And spez continues to close his eyes and blocked his ears to the idea he might have made a mistake in any of this.
I might be optimistic but I can’t see Huffman surviving this. If you’re on the board, do you want this clown as your CEO? Sure, maybe they back the API changes killing the apps, but he’s come across as a fall guy at best and grossly incompetent at worst.
Because people in high executive positions usually have no intrinsic aversion to lying, and in this case, from a cold rationality perspective, lying is obviously more effective than admitting guilt.
(Expanding: people who know the details hate him anyway, and it’s better for people who don’t know the details to hear confusing accusations from both sides than an admission of guilt. Admissions of guilt are very rarely unilaterally effective.)
