I have a feeling like he is being squeezed by the investors. It feels like they want a tiktok/Instagram clone and he is the one that has to tell the Reddit community.
I don’t think this was his vision for the site or he would have done it years ago.
Like it doesn’t make it less shitty but more understandable I guess?
I think that /u/spez has his back against the wall. Reddit loses money - a lot of money - and there’s noone left to foot the bill. He’s tried everything: he’s tried advertising, sponsored content, and he’s tried premium memberships (and don’t forget coins!), but all this is simply a drop in the bucket. At this point, if nothing is done, Reddit will likely have to shut down - it probably has 8-14 months left.
Honestly, I think that /u/spez has given up; he sees that Reddit as it was originally envisioned is dead. So, he’s decided to make some superficial changes to polish it up and make it appealing to investors, make an IPO, and then cash out what he can out of it and leave.
I get that he may be under pressure to make unpopular decisions, but I still can’t believe that he invited the whole of Reddit to an AMA and then just answered 14 questions - as if that wouldn’t turn out to be the PR disaster it was. Trying to think of a rational explanation beyond “just incompetent” is really hard after that - unless he has some hidden agenda that involves sabotaging Reddit. There’s surely no way he couldn’t have known that AMA would be a disaster.
I think the AMA was to slander the Apollo Dev and make him seem unreasonable. The 1$ per user and month line suggests this to me. Christian just pre-empted it with his post but since they had already made the announcement there was no going back now.
Whether he was pressured into it or came up with this shit by him self doesn’t make a huge difference in the end. The result is the same 😐
