Christian also built the app out of college and is now thrust into C-level conversations? I would nominate him next CEO of Reddit if he wasn't a bit all over the place.
Christian hasn’t been beaten down by years of corporate ladder climbing. He knows how to protect himself, but does it in ways that others don’t often see in the business world.
Even the whole “$10m extortion” thing feels overblown. Like I can’t believe a CEO would ever take a comment like that anymore seriously than a passing joke/jesting comment in that situation. Christian’s point is true. If Reddit is having such a hard time delivering a quality app, they can buy any third party app.
The fact that Spez seems so stuck on that seems to indicate the success of Apollo is really weighing on him.
He could've just listened to users. Instead, Reddit became what it became. Users derided the various changes and redesigns, even its own app. Yet the entire time, and I've said it elsewhere on HN, Reddit's attitude towards users has essentially been, "Nope, we know what's best, you are wrong. The beatings will continue until morale improves."
It's his own fault.
I read something that only 10% (or less) of people are still using old.reddit.com. There very well could be data indicating that 90% of users are just as happy and engaged on the new site.
A small subset of users provide most of the content and most importantly the moderation.
This feels a lot like Twitter trying to tax their power users when they provided the content the masses came to Twitter to read (and see ads)
That being said, my impression is the “legacy” users are a vocal minority. I suspect legacy users will notice a decline in quality, but “new” users won’t. The new experience is already so muzzled that it’s barely even the same communities.