1y ago

Remember when Spez said it was "It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company"? Apparently, that means paying himself $193 million and single-handedly tanking Reddit's profitability right b...

www.npr.org /2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-its-time-we-grow-up-and-behave-like-an-adult-company

Remember when Spez said it was "It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company"? Apparently, that means paying himself $193 million and single-handedly tanking Reddit's profitability right b...::undefined

Technology @lemmy.world

Illogicalbit @lemmy.world

2y ago

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company'

www.npr.org /2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-its-time-we-grow-up-and-behave-like-an-adult-company

Technology @lemmy.ml

chemical_cutthroat @lemmy.world

2y ago

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on blackout: It's expensive to run a company.

www.npr.org /2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-its-time-we-grow-up-and-behave-like-an-adult-company

123 comments

The truth is he's a jealous little turd of a person. The other reddit founders, the ones with brains and skills, got out early and got paid. Even the dead one was more successful. He wants to drain reddit of money while tanking it. He thinks he's entitled. It's a real shame he reproduced too, the poor kid is doomed with a godawful role model like that.
- Ohanion was also a fucking prick, shitting up the company while he was there. All the Ellen Pao stuff and the r/IAMA clusterfuck that led to the first big Reddit shutdown? Yeah that was all Ohanion's doing. Then he let Pao take all the heat for his decisions and get ousted.
  
  There was only one worth a damn.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
- What more can you say about a man who lets cats with silicone implants have sex with him?
  
  I've never seen that combination of words before and I never want to see it again.
  
  Uhh what
  
  Give us the source for the implants cats, pilgrim
  
  Well, that's enough Internet for today!
  
  [citation needed]
  On second thought, no, please don't.
- Didn’t he make that decision after fanboying with Elon Musk?
  The reason these people are so rich is they’re sociopaths willing to grind their users to dust and sift their cremains through a sieve for their elemental nutrients. As a user experience designer, it’s abhorrent to watch, especially since I cared so much and had to give up my career. People like Musk and Hoffman making so much by exploiting people makes me incredibly angry.
  The wrong people have money.
  
  SBF did good things with his money.
  And all HE had to do to get that money was run the world's biggest ponzi scheme.
- i don't get why people take this shit so personally
  
  Rather than try to explain it, I think it's easier to say this. Imagine something you cherish dearly. Now imagine it slowly eroding away into nothing. Would you not be angry and want to prevent that at all costs?
  Seeing something so useful go the way of the dodo just because the people in charge of the company want to be rich is infuriating. This could really be said about far too many companies. But IMO, Reddit's situation is more sad because the users are what made the site. The owners/creators just made the platform.
  
  For a lot of people, including me, reddit was the place they found community on the internet. After 10 years, it was familiar, it was comfortable... it was home.
  The money-grubbing, user-exploiting shifts in policy destroyed that sense of community, and that can't not be personal.
When I saw this news yesterday, it made me realize I hadn't used Reddit almost at all since the purge last summer. I ran the PowerDelete tool last night to nuke my profile and then deleted my account this morning. 10 years of posts and comments gone but ill be damned if im going to let those posts stay and train AI to make this douche canoe any more money.
- It's sad, really. So much humanity just bought for a sum. So much offered with nothing expected in return. There's always someone who will try to profit from stuff like that, and they're always horrible, horrible people.
  
  Such a succinct and well written comment, thanks.
- Do you have any way of verifying that it is actually gone? I bet it's just gone from view but the data is still there.
  
  I'll be filing a GDPR claim per account to get my data and have them permanently delete my content and information
  
  Your probably right, but short of going through and editing everything with nonsense (which could just be rolled back anyways) this at least provides me with some copium.
  
  I ran the tool and it cleared the sort by new list, but the sort by top list was still full of stuff.
- I ran the PowerDelete tool last night to nuke my profile
  Note that the profile only shows the last 1k comments - I did a GDPR request to get my data (took em a few weeks - they have a month the time to do so) and then used that data to find all my comments and replace a whole bunch of comments with GPT-generated bullshit about spez being a poopyhead.
  I won't pick up my shit and move, I'll kill the plants, salt the earth and poison the well. Fuck 'em. It's all for shittificating the site for YEARS.
  
  Using power of EU. EU, I belive in you!
- I'm leaving my comments, I will only train AI on being sarcastic so I'm OK with that
  
  Sure you are.
- Sorry, I'm out of the loop—what's the new news? The article linked is from 2023. What happened recently?
So, with all these negative opinions of reddit and spez, I'm both curious what the business world generally thinks of him, and their plan for the business.
Ultimately, the interesting thing will be if investors will give any money when they IPO.
I personally wouldn't, but because I don't like the leaders. Some people don't care, they just want returns where ever they come.
I'm a bit of a hater for this company, and hope their IPO is a flop. We'll see.
- The people with all the money don't care about anything like this. They don't even care about stewardship/long term value building except maybe the Dupont's and old moneyers. Why wait around trying to make or build something when I can just ride the hype train and make sure I get off and onto the next one before the house of cards falls down?
  TSLA's market cap is 618 billion dollars
  GM's is 45 billion dollars
  Shell Oil's market cap is 200 billion dollars
  I've decided that's what's wrong with everything at the core -- the only virtue is money and it doesn't matter how you get it. Spez or anyone else could be doing way worse and everyone would shrug.
  
  Yeah, I'm not sure how to curb the trend of money destroying companies and countries.
  It's hard to incentivize not being greedy.
  There's plenty of billboards/ads/magazines/etc idealizing rich athletes, celebrities, CEOs, etc. There's no MTV cribs for modest/honest/hard working single parents, community volunteers, small business owners who kept their own pay lower to afford employee's medical benefits, etc.
  There's no awards show for most humble (ha), most improved, most selfless, most mentor, etc.
- Plenty of CEOs are psychopaths, it's practically a requirement to rise to the top. The business world would see him as one of their own.
  
  Makes you wonder which came first: the psychopathy or the CEO position. Could be an interesting study to be performed, for sure.
- Member when everyone was Happy Ellen Cho was gone? Peppridge Farm remembers when that asshole promised not to asshole. He lied.
- A lot of people invest looking not too close, it seems. Those with some knowledge of what Reddit is likely wouldn't, but I think the plan may work.
  
  i feel all price movements of all stocks is all fake. I know only siths deal in absolutes but that is what I see. 1.1 trillion in wealth by the top 12 americans. We need to form a fellowship and quest for these dragons.
- So, with all these negative opinions of reddit and spez, I’m both curious what the business world generally thinks of him, and their plan for the business.
  They probably think he's doing a great job.
Adult companies enshittify.
Reddit seems like IRL Silicon Valley. They had no idea what they were/are doing, winging everything, and somehow failing upwards. It's a complete bullshit company, and hopefully Wall Street will see it for what it really is at IPO launch.
- All of Silicon Valley is just like the show. Some friends of mine couldn't even watch it because it hit too close to home.
  
  Exactly. It was dramatized and way more entertaining than reality but the premise was based on very realistic scenarios.
  
  That's me. I started the first episode and I was laughcringing too hard.
- Remember the whole thing with GameStop? Wall Street knows, but they definitely don’t care, as long as they can make a fast buck and get out.
The really titillating question is what happens when reddit collapses as a trustable source of information and google search is then totally useless.
It turns out social networks aren't great businesses unless you heavily exploit the people maintaining those communities.
- The trust is already gone.
- People end up doing what they have always done, and go elsewhere.
  They went to Reddit to begin with, and they can just as readily leave it.
Is that the same Spez who moderated /r/jailbait?
- Wasnt that back when you could make anyone a mod, without their permission?
  If we're gonna point to things that spez actively has done, then theres plenty of shit..
  Like knowingly letting all the pedo subs exist and run rampant (until the news media caught wind and hurt advertising)
  
  Editing people's comments without their input/consents another big controversy with his involvement too.
  
  It is entirely possible he was tagged as a mod without knowing. At first. But if he wanted to he could have immediately removed himself. And then there's the fact that the main mod of that sub was given some kind of special custom flare
BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS,
BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS,
BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS, BOTS,
BOTS,
#EVERYBODY!
- Beets, beets, beets, beats!
- Probably federation would have started with him, knowing how he wanted to keep reddit open source and for more people to have their own servers
He meant that Reddit should start behaving more like an 'adult entertainment' company, so basically everyone that provides content for it is getting fucked.
Not to defend Huffman, who's a huge asshole, but...
He wasn't really oaid 193 million. That's the value (on paper) if the stocks and options he received. His actual salary eas 341,000$.
- "he wasn't actually paid in money. it was just the value of the gold bullion he received".
  Is that better somehow? I never understood this logic. Money itself is existentially just paper with no value until you spend it on something, and its value also rises and falls based on other factors. It's basically stock in the US economy.
  Why is it not okay to give someone one kind of paper but not another?
  
  Because those stock grants are conditional on a lot of things. It's not money yet, it's potential money if certain things happen. Yes, those things are likely easily achievable - they either unlock over time, or on the IPO, as long as he is still with the company. But until they vest, they don't fully exist yet.
  FWIW, when they do vest the IRS will consider the value of the stock on that day as income. They don't mess around with that shit. Even if he decides to hold the shares, he will still need to pay taxes on them based on their value on the day of vesting, but not before. He has people to advise him on what is best to increase his treasure horde, though.
  
  Are you asking why stock of a single company is different from "stock" of the richest country and only superpower on earth?
  Also, money is liquid, can be spent immediately. Stock is not liquid, it has to be traded, vested, etc. and given enough stock will tank yje value if too much of it is liquified at once.
  
  That much stock is not easy to sell, he'd tank the value of the entire company and never retain anywhere near 193M. You could sell that much gold.
  
  Money is not wealth. That's a very big difference.
- Separating these things is how the rich avoid paying taxes.
- Stocks and options that he's about to unload in the open market, assuming they will be vested. I think that's the real reason why they are opening up the IPO to Redditors. They want a fair amount of the stock - but not too much! - sold to people with an emotional attachment to it, who won't get in the way of their selling.
  Note the Trump people playing the same exact game with DWAC.
  
  He can't unload all his stock for $193m.
- I don't like the idea of calling it a non-payment when receiving compensation in the form of valuable assets in addition to money.
  Receiving stocks or gold bricks or houses or blow jobs, or anything else of value, is payment, and should be taxed as such.
  
  For the record it absolutely is taxed as such. As soon as it vests the IRS considers it income, whether they sell it for the cash or not.
  Its a huge headache for startups sometimes. I had team members I wanted to compensate but just giving them the equity would have been an imediate big tax bill on a non-liquid, and speculative, asset. There's ways to massage it (like vesting) but he will absolutely have that taxed.
  Oh, and I could be wrong but I think the share value is just taxed as ordinary income, not capital gains. Ie: if the award is denominated in $1 shares, which he sells for $1.10, the $0.10 gets capital gain rates (if he held it for a year) but the $1 is taxed just like a paycheck.
  
  "Dear IRS, this year I received 69 blow jobs. How much do I owe on this?"
- I think he is fully expecting the 193 Million to tank as soon as it goes public. Hence why he paid himself so much. The value right now is whatever they say it is.
- AND it’s the board that decides on his remuneration, not himself.
How much of that compensation is in stock? It's pretty common for executives to be largely compensated in stock, particularly right before an IPO.
I only point this out because the math isn't necessarily as simple as revenue minus executive compensation. Issuing stock isn't a cash transaction for reddit.
- His pay was $300k something. So it was almost all stock. To convert his ownership stake into shares ahead of the IPO as you mentioned.
  He supposedly owns around 3-4% of Reddit. And they're trying to IPO at an initial valuation of $5B. So when that goes to shit like it probably will this theoretical $192M drops dramatically.
  
  His pay was $300k something. So it was almost all stock.
  Ahh, that makes all sorts of sense. The idea that he was paid $193 Million was unbelievable.
  You could pay 1,000 moderators $100k for the year and still give Spez $93 Million if that were his salary.
  
  Unless he pumps and dumps them, selling them after the IPO
There is just no reason why Reddit's CEO was making almost 200 million dollars other than short-sighted greed. They weren't even paying him stock options: just straight cash out of the coffers.
title-and-post-gore!
I see he went to the Adam Neuman school of business...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Reddit is used by some 57 million people every day to discuss all sorts of things, like news developments; share memes and favorite recipes; swap stock market tips; and chronicle public photos of bread stapled to trees.
Four of the most popular mobile Reddit apps, including Apollo, have announced they will be going out of business because of the new costly fees for accessing what is called the application programming interface (API), which allows different pieces of software to communicate with each other.
Some subreddits, still upset that Huffman has not rolled back any of the announced changes or lowered the cost for accessing Reddit data, have extended the blackout beyond the initial 48-hour period.
In their last update, organizers of the boycott wrote that "our core concerns still aren't satisfied," adding that "Reddit has been silent since it began, and internal memos indicate that they think they can wait us out."
In 2021, Reddit filed paperwork for an eventual initial public offering but shelved those plans when technology stocks plummeted shortly afterward.
It, along with peer social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and others, has been dealing with a slowdown in digital ad spending, which has pressured the companies to find new ways to generate revenue.
The original article contains 1,022 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Ha ha ha, what a curve ball!
Probably very unpopular thoughts but...
A) How many of us wouldn't angle for an almost 200 million dollar payout? Seriously? All of us are too good for that?
B) Social media like reddit is basically free for users and costs way more than most of us could afford to run. We probably need to figure out some middle ground where people expect to pay a few pennies for something they use for hours a day. Unfortunately, advertising etc has conditioned/conned people into thinking everything should be "free" and with ads.
- Most people wouldn't even know what to do with that kind of money, I doubt spez even has use for it all, its just big number goes up.
  He should give it back to society and have a humble income, everyone should do this.
  As to "B:" we have Lemmy, run by enthusiasm and donations. Maybe one day we will get media like video to an even smaller size and have a federated YouTube style site.
  
  AV1 could actually be huge for PeerTube, now that I think about it
  
  And when you become a multi-millionaire through your work, come back here and respond to this comment to tell us all the charities you’ve given all your money to. Can’t wait.
- It's not free. Moderators spend their time keeping things sensible and users spend their time creating content, by posting, commenting and voting. Millions of people contribute tiny amounts, giving the community great value. They're the reason the site has any value at all. In comparison, the operating costs, and whatever work the company execs perform, are small compared to the not-at-all free work people in aggregate put into the community.
  
  These are sites premised on free labour but the end user pays nothing to enjoy the site.
  As much value is created by those volunteers, the operating/dev costs are very real and can't just be hand waved away.

123 comments