Technology

Why delete when he can just edit the comments? Lol.

Unless they're going to come out and say "Belated April Fools! Ha ha!", I don't see how this is not going to be a dumpster fire

He will edit the questions he doesn't like

Abso-Freking-Lutely is not going to answer random questions like an AMA. He will anser some planted questions and then will dissapear, and tell some news organization or make some tweet about how he had to leave early because of all the negativity and the bridaging and the people swearing at him, and how we would have loved to stay otherwise and answer real questions.

I bet it will be massively curated and full of planted questions.

Question: “u/spez, your administration of Reddit is like a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?”

Redditors have no chill when it comes to minor stuff let alone this API debacle. It's going to be a dumpster fire and I cant see this going well.

I wouldn't be shocked if there is only comments from suspiciously young accounts that get addressed, posts like "How are you so brave to get up lead us to the promised land every day sir?" and "I don't have a question, I just want to thank you for saving me from the scourges of NSFW posts", while all the real questions are silently absent.

I partially agree with you that he's got guts, but I think more so that you hit the nail here:

Spez should honestly learn to read the room.

I think there may be something genuinely not right with his sense of social awareness. I'm not a doctor, but when I read the post today from iamthatis about Apollo shutting down, the quoted text that came from spez really felt defensive to me.

I dont get why hes doing it at all. There is no universe in which this doesnt end completely poorly, with nuked comment chains and tons of down votes. I expect a ton of users to get banned, and it would be very surprising if spez answers anything other than pre planned questions

I haven't seen Reddit this upset, collectively, since Ellen Pao. Doing an AMA is just going to throw gas on the fire. I dont see the play hes trying to make

I hope he gets absolutely obliterated in the comments.

I agree with your parenthetical strongly enough to rule out a typo.

This announcement lists things that Reddit will humor, for now, and as a way of cheaply outsourcing niche and difficult problems. It clarifies that everyday third party apps were never intended to have a future with the platform. They're simply an obstacle for Reddit's most convincing path to revenue.

I might even have forgiven Reddit if it had said so up front, but the story they've been trying to spin – with prices that just happen to be orders of magnitude in excess of anything devs might afford – is outrageously insulting. I've never had my trust in a brand demolished so thoroughly so quickly.

I assume that's because their goal is to outline why third-party apps won't be needed. The whole point of this drama is that Reddit wants to get rid of the third-party apps, so they are going to do everything to try to convince people why not having them will be fine.

Too bad they fired their dedicated AMA coordinator.

This is the same guy who stealth edited a comment of a user he was angry with and then justified his decision by saying he grew up being a troll on the internet. Leave the troll's playground and watch it crumble. Reddit isn't spez. It's all of us.

I think it's going to be a honeypot intended to draw out the critics. Their accounts will be banned and their comments hidden within minutes of saying anything even remotely critical.

Can't wait to speak my mind and let them ban my 16 year old account.

Funny you mention the resolution because in the 90s we had 640x480 which was way smaller than what cell phones have now and we still managed to have very functional web. Yeah the fonts weren’t as pretty and pictured had jagged edges but it worked and it was great!

I would put money on that not happening at all. The suite of changes this time are exceptionally broad and seem 100% targeted at public investment. They can't back-down on deciding to go public, and they can't really go public with some of these things in place.

My bet is that they'll announce that they're still charging for the API, but at a "drastically" reduced price. As you say, I think it was their plan all along. That way they can still milk third party apps, all the while still being able to say "we listened to the community" by not destroying them outright

I don't think they will, but even if they did I kind of suspect the apps will still shutdown, they all announced their shutdown at once, I am sure they discussed amongst each other and reached a line in the sand with reddit. If I got that sort of treatment, even if they backed down I'd never trust them again, I'd never want to work with them again and I don't see how that sort of situation is tenable. So they could completely abandon the changes and still have achieved the result they want. However, at this point they've already vilified themselves to those who will ever care, so there's no reason to back down at all.

Someone had to beat Electronic Arts' Battlefield II comment eventually