Last week was full of Reddit news as the blackout began and for some major subreddits has continued past the initial 48-hour blackout window. During this time the way that Reddit CEO and Co-Founder Steve Hoffman handled the publicity of this protest was honestly a real-world lesson on what not to do when your company is needing to do damage control. At the heart of the matter is that Reddit, being the public forum it is, has a ton of valuable data, and since it is a company rightfully does want to make money on that data instead of others leveraging it for free. At the end of the day, you cannot stick around as a company if all you do is lose money, and if your data is helping power other companies or AI that are making money from its data they due deserve compensation. 

Instead of working with the major 3rd party developers that have huge followings within the Reddit community Reddit dropped its terms and conditions on the table and walked away. The blowback was swift and several of the award-winning apps are going to shut down at the end of the month since the cost doesn't make it viable for these apps to operate. As of Monday, June 18th, of the eighteen subreddits with 20-30 million followers two are private (shut down) and another two are restricted. Overall there are still over 3,500 subreddits still private and while it has decreased we have seen some that have gone public again end up changing course later on and going dark again. Reddit's CEO has come out bashing Mods for this and calling them an aristocracy promising not to negotiate on the new API policy. 

In particular, there are two things that Reddit has done that you honestly have to scratch your head about what were they thinking here?

Reddit Outright Lied About Developers Refusing to Work with Them

When I first saw the article from The Verge that mentioned that developers were pushing back on the narrative that they didn't or refused to work with Reddit I was a little skeptical given there is no situation that lying would help Reddit. However, the information or should I say emails, voicemails, audio, and transcripts paint a significantly different picture than what Reddit did and with all of this damning evidence makes it extremely hard for them to push back on the idea that this happened. Apollo's developer Christian Selig was the dev who dropped the $20 million a year bomb on the world to keep his app up and after Hoffman said he had threatened the company Selig released the audio and transcripts of the conversations had with Reddit which clearly paint a different picture. 

Previously Hoffman had stated in an interview with the author of The Verge article that Andrew Shu developer of rif is fun for Reddit (RIF), a popular third-party Reddit app for Android, did not want to work with Reddit when offered to do so. Well, I can only assume that when he heard this Andrew Shu was knocked right off his chair when he heard about what Hoffman had said. Hoffman had even gone further as to say on the record to the reporter that they did not talk to Shu because he didn't want to work with him however that is the complete opposite of what happened and Shu has the email receipts backing up his claims that he did talk to them, he did try to work with them, and it was Reddit that turned him down.

If you don't think lying was enough though don't worry because Reddit has tried to pull a quick one on mods as well.

Reddit has Changed the Mod Code of Conduct  

Reddit this last week confirmed the changes that they have made to the Moderator Code of Conduct that has laid down the framework to eject Mods that are in support of the protests and replace them with Mods that will reopen the currently blacked-out subreddits. In the released "Reddit API Fact Sheet" Reddit added a provision to the Moderator Code of Conduct that seems to take aim at the protesting Mods. This is being done by saying that Reddit itself will go in and replace inactive Mods of subreddits to "keep discussion open" since making a subreddit private would be moving it into an effectively inactive mode this change grants Reddit the ability to replace the protestors with those that agree with Reddits choices. 

For all the talk about not getting in the way of the protests and especially for those subreddits that took votes on protesting it is rather amazing to see Reddit try and claim free speech while at the same time doing this. The two things are incompatible and are just the opposite things at the end of the day. I can only imagine the outcry that would occur as well if Reddit even attempted to do this and how bad it will blow up on its image which is already suffering as is. While Reddit has extremely valuable data right now as time goes on this data will lose value and so they need more data or users to maintain the premium they can charge. Driving away your base isn't the way to go and I can only think that Reddit is either going to change course before the end of the month or if they do not once the beginning of July rolls around Hoffman could be forced out if the monthly numbers come back and show that the protest isn't stopping and users are moving to other platforms. Only time will tell though if Hoffman has any sort of sense in him or if he is willing to "drive the car off a cliff" as the saying goes. 

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