Steve Huffman, the Reddit CEO, told NBC News in an interview that a user protest on the site this week is led by a minority of moderators and doesn’t have wide support.
He’s repurposing leftist talking points into a pro-corporatist clusterfuck as an attempt at populism. He knows that there are a fair number of people and communities on Reddit that will be overall supportive of these politics.
The idea is to get people thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that term before, it’s bad! And yeah, I’ve dealt with power-tripping mods before, so it must be true!” If they haven’t been paying attention to the finer points of the news around this (blackmail claims on C. Selig, gaslighting about 3rd party apps not wanting to work w/ Reddit, etc.), then this may be enough to get some people on Reddit, Inc.’s side. It worked for some people with Trump, for others with Musk, and with Huffman’s recent praise of Musk’s managerial style…
I don’t know if using metaphors where the logical extension of mods being landed gentry is your product being a feudal kingdom, you the king, and the users the peasants is necessarily all that clever of a quote to start spreading around.
Agreed. The only problem is that I think most people will stop at landed gentry and say, “BAD!” without thinking through the full context like you just did.
The fact that he keeps making comments at all is so weird to me. Like he is truly terrible at PR. Every time he opens his mouth the situation gets worse for him.
Reminds me of SBF’s bizarre interview spree right before he got arrested. Or Alex Murdaugh that southern lawyer that killed a bunch of people and stole a bunch of money and thought it would be a good idea to testify in his own trial and got destroyed by cross-examination smh
He’s doing this on purpose.
He’s repurposing leftist talking points into a pro-corporatist clusterfuck as an attempt at populism. He knows that there are a fair number of people and communities on Reddit that will be overall supportive of these politics.
The idea is to get people thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that term before, it’s bad! And yeah, I’ve dealt with power-tripping mods before, so it must be true!” If they haven’t been paying attention to the finer points of the news around this (blackmail claims on C. Selig, gaslighting about 3rd party apps not wanting to work w/ Reddit, etc.), then this may be enough to get some people on Reddit, Inc.’s side. It worked for some people with Trump, for others with Musk, and with Huffman’s recent praise of Musk’s managerial style…
I don’t know if using metaphors where the logical extension of mods being landed gentry is your product being a feudal kingdom, you the king, and the users the peasants is necessarily all that clever of a quote to start spreading around.
Agreed. The only problem is that I think most people will stop at landed gentry and say, “BAD!” without thinking through the full context like you just did.
Thats exactly what I expect out of a large swath of redditors. All this just to avoid the work of making the official app not suck.
The fact that he keeps making comments at all is so weird to me. Like he is truly terrible at PR. Every time he opens his mouth the situation gets worse for him.
When a man becomes so rich and his “thing” so popular, he thinks he is smart enough to be an expert in anything all at once
Reminds me of SBF’s bizarre interview spree right before he got arrested. Or Alex Murdaugh that southern lawyer that killed a bunch of people and stole a bunch of money and thought it would be a good idea to testify in his own trial and got destroyed by cross-examination smh