Steve Huffman, aka /u/spez, is the CEO of Reddit. He is responsible for the introduction of prohibitively high costs for using the Reddit API, which is required to access Reddit’s data as a third party app developer. The Apollo developer (the most popular reddit app on iOS) would have to pay 20 million per year for using the Reddit API, which is of course impossible. That’s the reason why several third party apps are going to end their service at the end of June. This caused extreme outrage, a basically Reddit wide protest by the mods where more than 7000 subreddits went “dark” (meaning they either went private or disabled theoption to make new posts).
This will probably kill reddit, as no one is willing to use their incredibly shitty official app. The official app has an abysmal UI and UX and causes lots of mobile data usage, which indicates that lots of personal data is being gathered by it. There are also no mod tools, which are basically indispensable for doing your work as a mod. He basically fucked over the people who carry reddit: The mods and power users.
Spez also lied and defamed the Apollo dev, who recorded all his calls he had with Reddit.
Can someone explain to me what u/spez does?
Do you know about the whole API situation or do you mean what he did now?
Steve Huffman, aka /u/spez, is the CEO of Reddit. He is responsible for the introduction of prohibitively high costs for using the Reddit API, which is required to access Reddit’s data as a third party app developer. The Apollo developer (the most popular reddit app on iOS) would have to pay 20 million per year for using the Reddit API, which is of course impossible. That’s the reason why several third party apps are going to end their service at the end of June. This caused extreme outrage, a basically Reddit wide protest by the mods where more than 7000 subreddits went “dark” (meaning they either went private or disabled theoption to make new posts).
This will probably kill reddit, as no one is willing to use their incredibly shitty official app. The official app has an abysmal UI and UX and causes lots of mobile data usage, which indicates that lots of personal data is being gathered by it. There are also no mod tools, which are basically indispensable for doing your work as a mod. He basically fucked over the people who carry reddit: The mods and power users.
Spez also lied and defamed the Apollo dev, who recorded all his calls he had with Reddit.
It’s a complete shit show.
Thank you for your summary. It helped me!
and what has he done to make the API disaster worse?