RIF developer counters Reddit CEO’s claims | Hacker News Reader

RIF developer counters Reddit CEO’s claims

theverge.com

235 pointsfnimick64 comments

> Shu also tells me that RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. Shu says he says initiated the talks with Reddit to create the agreement, which allowed for the licensed use of Reddit’s trademarks. (At the time, the app was called “reddit is fun.”) Shu says Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO.

So, one of the app developers had a pre-existing agreement with reddit, to pay them money, well before this mess (yes, for the trademark, but still), and spez ripped up the agreement? What on earth?

Also, spez, how hard is it to just... you know, not lie? Clearly there was a communication line.

Yeah that part is really wild - there were making money already off a 3rd party app, then decided to NOT take their money in 2016, then not enforce any trademarks (assuming that was what the deal was for) for what, 7 years?! How is that not gross incompetence? Minority shareholder lawsuit territory?

It's really clear that spez wants terminate any 3rd party clients whatsoever, I assume at this point any talk of app devs actually working with them is also a lie, as is the moderator tools and accessibility tools getting free API access.

Finally, the initial email the RIF received is so egregious - IMMEDIATE COMPLIANCE REQUIRED, when they hadn't even changed their actual terms yet.

Who would invest in a Reddit IPO now?! If they had done _nothing_ up to this point, I probably would have bought some, not that I am anyone of note, but I assume any serious fund would steer clear too at this point.

> Who would invest in a Reddit IPO now?!

The same kinds of investors who did no diligence on FTX. I am certain there is dumb money out there.

The Sequoia FTX puff piece will never get old. It’s deleted now but thank God for the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20221109025610/https://www.sequo...

The good thing is the era of cheap money has already ended, and market forces eliminate these investors over time as they lose money.

Any kind that thinks they can 2, 3, 5, 10x their investment. The vehicle in which to do that is of zero consequence.

> then not enforce any trademarks (assuming that was what the deal was for)

I don't think that's true - "Reddit is Fun" rebranded to "rif is fun for reddit".

Doesn't that still use the trademark reddit?

The standard is that 3rd party apps must be in the format: "X for reddit". So, Reddit Sync became Sync for reddit, and Reddit News became Relay for reddit.

Ah I see, that makes sense I guess

It's generally accepted that using trademarks in this sort of descriptive fashion is non-infringing, so long as it's necessary to describe the purpose of the product and doesn't imply that the product is produced or endorsed by the trademark holder.

> Who would invest in a Reddit IPO now?!

Moreover, what will be the short interest should this company go public?

I become more confident with every week that the CEO is holding back the company. And so is the board by allowing executive decisions and objectively false statements based on ego.

That last point is, IMHO, the real problem. It's pretty reasonable to want to charge for the API, but saying "we just want a fair price" and setting a price that's clearly meant just to kill them off is dishonest. Just say you're turning off API access.

And then there's the lying about Christian (the Apollo guy), where Huffman/spez just straight-up lied. We know that because Christian posted a call recording.

Now he's lying about the RIF situation.

He goes in and edits _other users' comments_ when he feels like it seemingly for no reason.

The takeaway for me at least is that the guy is just a liar, and investing a lot of time and energy (either as a contributor, developer, or mod) into a company run by a flagrantly dishonest bad actor is a bad idea.

The last few years are starting to feel like genuine "late stage capitalism", with corporations realising they can just lie, manipulate, and outright work against their customers with impunity if squeezes one more cent on the dollar.

Once you're big enough, without a coordinated media campaign the lashback and outrage rarely reach the critical mass it takes to make harmful decisions unprofitable.

> outright work against their customers with impunity if squeezes one more cent on the dollar.

If you apply this logic to Reddit, have they added value, or lost it? It’s hard to see how this fiasco has been of benefit to them.

Every time I see Huffman quoted it strikes me how much his communication patterns mirror those of Trump

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).

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-...

"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.

Lol.

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.

https://archive.is/2022.07.03-182824/https://www.newyorker.c...

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?

https://shorturl.at/fuxN7

He’s gotta be one of the people who inspired Rushkofd to write Survival of the Richest.

And I think Elmo is his role model not Jobs

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.

Let's not forget him being the head moderator of r/jailbait and several of the other more "problematic" subreddits.

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.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/16/reddit-vi...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/what-...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3523434/violentacrez-mic...

Your link contradicts your comment:

“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.”

Oops! Edited.

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.

The reality distortion field worked for Jobs because he was weirdly charismatic while being a colossal asshole. spez just isn't charismatic.

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.

Right? He seems like a child. Of all people you would think the Reddit CEO would know that once seeming is on the internet it never disappears.

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.

I think he knows but assumes that people will forget about it over time. It's worked for him in the past.

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.)

If 20m is paid, they'll double it next year. Reddit is just a landlord raising rents to unaffordable rates rather than evicting tenants.

And they don't produce or moderate content. Rent-seeking middlemen.

Fediverse socials are very nice once they're up and running, we need better default settings and easier inter-instance interaction for less technical users, but I'm optimistic they're a vast improvement on a centralized model. If you don't like your instance, you can pack up and leave.

> And they don't produce or moderate content. Rent-seeking middlemen.

But they do pay for the physical infrastructure required to run reddit. I would consider that as part of production of the "content", even tho it's indirect.

The prices they're charging for API access are wildly disproportionate to the cost of the physical infrastructure required to run the services.

oh i'm sure they are charging up the wazoo, because they aim to make a profit off it, rather than to just sustain operations.

I'm just refuting the fact that they're merely middlemen and is charging rent for no value delivered.

But that's not accurate. If they wanted to profit off of it, they would have chosen a more reasonable price, which would still keep 3P clients alive, but paying a bit more than they earn through ads. They chose to set the price so high that it's not possible to run a 3P client anymore. It's not a profit motive, it's only about consolidation.

I honestly can't believe the good faith people are willing to afford spez at this point.

I can see it, it's the "temporarily disenfranchised millionaire" effect in front of us. Some here have said as much: "But surely he has a plan/knows what he's doing/it's all calculated". Or you know, he's a narcissistic liar. For fucks sake. (Insert the article about his doomsday prep and how he won't be a slave. You can't make this crap up.)

Idk, I have a nose for bullshit and it went off a long time ago.

Me neither, but at this point I think it's an unavoidable fact of our industry. It's very similar to pick-me behavior ("look, I see that this is a necessary business decision, please pick me!").

The frustrating part is: people like spez or Elon show us time and time again who they are and what they want, and yet people try to gaslight you into believing in that distorted reality.

Reddit is charing the opportunity cost per user, not infrastructure cost.

The lying is so egregious, it’s like he thinks the truth is beneath him.

I’m not an investment genius, but I’m not buying any stock of a company led by a petulant child. I do not think any rational investor is going to be impressed with this CEO come IPO time.

I feel like there should be a revolt not to reinstate the API for 3rd parties, but to put Huffman out on his ass.

Dude has handled this situation so poorly that he’s no longer fit to be CEO of Reddit.

Is anyone else having flashbacks to the freenode takeover?

With freenode to libera you just changed server and registered a new account. All the channels/people were there. There is no alternative like that with Reddit/Twitter.

spez is the crown prince of reddit

I did not think of this, but yes, seems the same. Will have to go looking and see what ended up happening with Freenode.

Well that's easy. After the initial kicking of the old admins a community split was looming because not every project cared that much and some worried about the hassle of changing networks.

But Lee sped things up considerably by deleting all user and channel registrations, leaving his last holdout supporters at the mercy of randos that happened to be the first to join the channel.

That was basically the last drop and libera is now exactly like freenode was before he started stirring trouble. Only one or two projects went somewhere else (like alpine which went to oftc).

But libera is just as well run as freenode was before the incident and after a month or so it was already like it never happened. Nobody even talks about it anymore, it's just over and done. It's the best outcome possible IMO. No dragged out legal battles, no months of toxicity. Just problem solved.

Kudos to the admins who proved they were right all along and have the chops to run a network efficiently and create a great atmosphere without conflicts. And the new organization has a legal framework to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Something tells me Reddit won't go that easily. Not only because there's no exact replacement ready (lemmy isn't really it) and because the management isn't likely to shoot themselves in the foot that badly.

What's freenode?

;)

They must be referring to some old version of Libera.Chat.

> I said we are working with everybody who is willing to work with us, which includes many of the other third party apps

With that kind of pricing?

What reddit should've done. Created their own ad network, given 3rd party apps 50/50 split. Win/Win. Make that add network the only one allowed in mobile apps. At first it could just be an ad server over other ad networks, until the fill spots with their own ads.

I am very confused about the name of this particular app. I haven't used it. I always thought it was "Reddit is Fun" (RIF). Then this week I learned it's actually "RIF is Fun" (RIF). Now in this article it's "RIF is Fun for Reddit" (RIFIFFR?)

It was originally Reddit is Fun, but then Reddit asked a bunch of app developers to change the names of their apps to make it clearer that they aren’t official or affiliated with Reddit directly, which is why most apps are called “X for Reddit”. Reddit is Fun was already usually called RIF, so it became a recursive acronym. Then I assume they added “for Reddit” for search/discover ability reasons

Can RIF and Apollo stand up a clone of reddit in reasonable time and point their clients that way?

Who is going to moderate the clone? If the clone isn't moderated, we've got a clone of voat rather than reddit. If the clone is moderated... part of this was because people are saying that Reddit is profiting off of unpaid moderator work, right?

How is the clone going to be financed? Are you going to sell ads on it? If so, who is handling that? ... and making sure that the advertisements don't show up where the advertisers don't want them to.

Who is going to handle the inevitable legal takedowns for copyrighted works, trademark infringements, or things that may be illegal in some country? Is it going to serve porn in the Apple App Store?

Standing up a clone is easy. Keeping it up with a healthy community there (even if you are able to grab all of the existing users of an app) and being able to afford to keep it running - that's the hard part.

The financial situation is different if you only have to keep the servers humming and pay some technical people, and aren't driven by VC funding that demands constant revenue growth.

If that was the only challenge, then why aren't Discourse deploys, reddit clones, or Lemmy instances dominating the social media world?

Voat would be an example of a social media site that was spun up without VC interest (it started up as a hobby project from a college student as an alternative to reddit in part because of moderators).

And so I return to my question: if it is viable to do without VC funding and the demands of revenue growth - why aren't there more of them out there?

I’ve seen this suggested elsewhere but without content I don’t see this working out.

The clone could use the slurped up reddit content from the various archive efforts prior. Then the clone could encourage, thru these third party apps, users to submit new content to itself, rather than to reddit.

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