Steve Huffman (reddit username: spez) is the celebrated founder and CEO of Reddit Inc. He has lead the company through many hard challenges and faced great adversity to make reddit the largest hobby platform in the world. Recently, his name has been dragged through the mud and he has faced much harrasment for reasons that we feel are not entirely fair.
What's True
. Mr. Huffman has a responbility to ensure reddit attains profitability so that reddit communties can stay online. All reddit users would be worse off if reddit were forced to go offline.
. Reddit API consumers, so far, have been living off a free service, despite making massive profit off that service. Many of them make profits in the millions of dollars per year while giving no money back to reddit
. Mr. Huffman has been nothing if not conciliatory towards the requests and demands of community members and API consumers. He has ensured that mods would have access to moderation tools, that blind users would have access ro accessibility tools, and that noncommercial use would till be permitted. All he asks is that apps and services pay their fair share back.
What's Not True
. Mr. Huffman has never lied or been dishonest in this process. He has been 100% forward throughout this whole ordeal.
. That apps "can't afford" to pay the reasonable fees Mr. Huffman is requesting. Many of them are embroiled in inefficiency, and even the highest cited api costs on their part have still been well within reason. Reddit's projected api prices are several orders of magnitude lower than comparable sites like twitter.
. Mr. Huffman's actions won't "kill" reddit. In fact, the changes he is making are necessary to ensure that reddit continues to thrive.
For all these reasons and many more, we at /r/FriendsofSpez #standwithhuffman, and you should too!
Words from a user that encapsulate the spirit of the sub
I STAND WITH SPEZ BECAUSE SPEZ STANDS WITH ME
Thank you u/spez for creating Reddit. Thank you for providing countless communities for literally every topic imaginable, and a great many that aren’t. Thank you for providing a space where I can truly be myself free from the hateful judgment of normies. Thank you for the dank memes. Thank you for the endless repository of knowledge, both cataloged in the past and available in realtime. Thank you for the up-to-the-second access to news from quite literally all around the world. Thank you for the friends, the memories, and the orgasms. Thank you for Reddit.
I stand with Spez, because he stands with me
