Over the past 11 years, Bucky has devoted his time and energy to managing and mentoring dozens of communities on Reddit, the vast internet message board.
As “moderators” of about 80 different topic-based forums, Bucky (who goes by Reddit as “BuckRowdy” and asked not to use his full name to prevent online harassment) and others like him , is essential to the growth and maintenance of the community. Social media sites are he one of the biggest destinations for online discussion on the internet.
Until Bucky rebelled two weeks ago.
Reddit had just introduced changes that significantly increased fees for independent developers building apps using the company’s data. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has positioned the move in part as a way to shore up the company’s finances ahead of its long-awaited initial public offering.
However, this change has made the cost prohibitive for some third-party developers, and the few developers building tools for Reddit’s moderators have had to shut down or significantly change their apps. . In protest, Bucky and other moderators shut down hundreds of forums on the site, effectively rendering Reddit unusable for many of its 57 million daily visitors. At some point the site went completely offline.
“It’s really demoralizing,” Bucky said. A Reddit moderator, he says that dealing with users is already difficult. “‘I will take all this abuse of yours and keep your website clean, and is this how you will pay us back?'”
Reddit, an 18-year-old site that was part of the early wave of social networking, called “grow up‘” Huffman said in an interview. What’s unclear is whether the Reddit community will allow it.
San Francisco-based Reddit has in recent years sought to transform itself from a humble internet bulletin board into a full-fledged social media business by adding to its board and boosting its advertising power. The 2,000-employee company, which has been repeatedly mentioned as an IPO candidate, has raised more than $1.3 billion and is valued at more than $10 billion, according to Crunchbase and Reddit. public statement.
Other social media companies have made similar changes as they have grown. In 2012, Twitter tweaked its rules on how developers could use data before it was made public, infuriating users and strangling some popular third-party apps. Facebook made a platform change as well, which frustrated developers and sparked a backlash.
But this month’s uprising on Reddit stands out because it shows the immense power of the site’s community. The day after moderators shut down hundreds of his Reddit forums, he said the time users spent on the site dropped by 16%. Estimate From Similarweb, an analytics company.
“Reddit is basically completely community-driven,” said Reddit user Adrian Horning. data scientist The person who built a bot that “scraped” the site’s data in response to rate changes. “The power that ordinary users have is inherent in the platform.”
In an interview Wednesday, Huffman said his goal was to make Reddit better for new and veteran users and build a lasting business. He said he regretted the surprise of the company’s pricing changes and wished it had been more upfront about how the changes would affect them. He added that there is general unease about Reddit changing as part of its natural “maturity process.”
“We are as attached to Reddit as many of our users are and are terrified of losing it,” he said.
Huffman and Alexis Ohanian founded Reddit in 2005 as a site with a countercultural attitude to the Internet and its ad-based economy. Reddit at all costs stood for free speech, zero ads, and the closed culture that laid the groundwork for Web 2.0’s meme culture.
The community has been rowdy for a long time and has confused Reddit many times. In 2013, Internet sleuths searched for and misidentified the Boston marathon bombing suspect. A year later, it became a dumping ground for nude photos hacked from celebrity cell phones.
But as the site grew and venture investment poured in, its leaders saw the potential for Reddit to build a business. The company had multiple chief executives, including former venture capitalist Ellen Pao, until Huffman returned in 2015 after six years away.
Huffman eventually came to terms with the idea that Reddit could make money from advertising, but he used to loathe the model.he accepted Rule change enacted by Mr. Pao To include some of the harmful content that people post on the Site. By 2021, he secretly filed paperwork to go public on Reddit.
But last year, Huffman put a pause on Reddit’s IPO plans after interest rates soared and the stock market shook. Since then, he has worked systematically to improve the site, increase the number of users, and strengthen the company’s bottom line.
In April, Huffman announced plans to restrict access to Reddit’s “application programming interface,” known in industry terms as an API. APIs are the primary gateway for outsiders to use the company’s data for a variety of purposes.
In an interview at the time, Huffman said he would charge big companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook for access to Reddit data, which is used to train the so-called large-scale language models at the heart of artificial intelligence systems. I said I want to charge. .
But Huffman didn’t elaborate on how API access pricing would change or who would be affected. And in May, Reddit began telling developers a much higher price plan for such access. Earlier this month, one of the developers of the popular app “Apollo” close the app That’s because Reddit’s changes would cost it more than $20 million a year in operating expenses.
Many Redditors were deeply offended by Huffman’s apparent attempt to kill a popular app to build a business. Old-timers were upset that the whirlwind days of Reddit’s anti-capitalist roots seemed to be officially over.
Huffman defended the decision, noting that it would cost Reddit millions of dollars to support an app like Apollo. The app will not be refunded to the company and will not display ads from Reddit’s advertising partners.
To express their unhappiness, dozens of “supermods” soon restricted access to hundreds of Reddit’s most popular communities. To eliminate these community-wide ads, known as subreddits, moderators posted pornography and other explicit content, forcing forums to be labeled as “over 18” forums. These forums are generally not advertiser friendly. Other forms of protest included a move to allow a subreddit r/pics to only share photos of John Oliver on its forums. (Oliver Accepted Reddit protest, and eventually share their own photos as well. )
Mr. Huffman said he would not change course. He said Reddit is stepping up its regulation. Moderator Code of ConductThis prohibits moderators from closing subreddits or posting pornography or depictions of violence on forums (unless the forum is designated for such discussion topics). Reddit also said it would replace moderators who were warned and didn’t follow the rules.
Bucky said the protests that boiled over this week have now evolved into more general grievances that have accumulated over time.
“Every time I see an explosion of this kind, the smoldering anger wells up again beneath the surface,” he said.
For now, the subreddit seems to be slowly coming back online, but there are still efforts to resist change. Bucky was active. “Save3rdPartyApps” subreddit, Formed to organize protests on the site as permitted by Reddit’s rules.
Huffman said Reddit is now further from going public than it was last year, but will continue to build its business.He added that community uprisings were part of the reason Reddit was formed. reddit And he said he and his team will continue to engage with top moderators who are upset about the changes.
“For better or worse, this is a unique Reddit moment,” he said. “This can only happen on Reddit.”
