I have a feeling like he is being squeezed by the investors. It feels like they want a tiktok/Instagram clone and he is the one that has to tell the Reddit community.
I don’t think this was his vision for the site or he would have done it years ago.
Like it doesn’t make it less shitty but more understandable I guess?
I get that he may be under pressure to make unpopular decisions, but I still can’t believe that he invited the whole of Reddit to an AMA and then just answered 14 questions - as if that wouldn’t turn out to be the PR disaster it was. Trying to think of a rational explanation beyond “just incompetent” is really hard after that - unless he has some hidden agenda that involves sabotaging Reddit. There’s surely no way he couldn’t have known that AMA would be a disaster.
I think the AMA was to slander the Apollo Dev and make him seem unreasonable. The 1$ per user and month line suggests this to me. Christian just pre-empted it with his post but since they had already made the announcement there was no going back now.
My reaction to the AMA was “…but he’s lying! How did he think that would end?!”
If the Relay for Reddit dev thinks he can do it for $3/month, maybe spez has a point? Please let me know where I’m going wrong with this line of reasoning
There is an interview with him on the verge where he lays his numbers out. One big point was that the people that already bought a yearlong subscription need to be served at great loss. He says it would cost $50,000 for July. Then ofcourse some subscriptions would expire but it would still be a huge chunk of money that had to be paid every month decreasing over the next year.
I don’t know either way but he doesn’t seem like the type to play foul. I’ll edit this comment with the interview if I find it.
Found it on lemmy already lol: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit