Mirage's recent activity
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Comment on I kind of feel bad for spez.. what would you do if you were in that position? in ~tech
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Comment on Any Tildesian railfans? in ~transport
Mirage LinkVery much so! When I lived in Japan ~10 years ago (wow, does it not feel like that much time has passed), I really liked riding the trains there, especially since it was a lot more freeing for a...Very much so! When I lived in Japan ~10 years ago (wow, does it not feel like that much time has passed), I really liked riding the trains there, especially since it was a lot more freeing for a teenager who was too young to drive. The part of the US I currently live in doesn't have any trains or subways, but if I ever move back to the mainland, it's a dream of mine to one day do a trans-continental trip through Amtrak.
I don't think there's anything he could have said in the memo that could have satiated the controversy right now (short of reversing his stance), but he 100% could have avoided the current situation in the first place if he'd done a better job of communicating with the community, or honestly even just did what he actually said reddit was planning to do in his own prior statements. For example, even if we assume that his plan of monetizing API access is the right thing to do (which I personally disagree), he could have gone about it in a far less controversial way. He could have provided 6 months or a year's notice about what the pricing will look like, so they have time to update their apps and evaluate how their business model will change. If the lack of ads in Reddit's API is making it unprofitable, he could have very easily converted 3rd party app access into a reddit gold feature, something they already sell as a product and which would take minimal work to implement. He could have followed through on his own statements promising to be flexible with app developers with regards to the deadlines for pricing, as the Apollo and Relay app developers have made very clear they want to work with him. They're not shutting down because they have inherent objections to a subscription model, just the strict 30 day time limit.
This whole fiasco is a textbook example of how poor communication and a lack of willingness to listen to its own userbase, and while spez is not 100% responsible (as large companies almost never have decisions made by just one person), as the CEO of the company, he is by far the person with the greatest individual share.