[oldtownroad]

Steve has always been the leader reddit deserves, not the leader it needs. The position Reddit is in is of his own creation. Even the most uninspired out of touch corporate leader would have avoided this entire clown show. Steve believes that his relationship with Reddit makes him the best leader but alas, it makes him the worst.

Steve has finally said in his AMA today, that Reddit has to be a sustainable business to survive! Very true, and that alone is justification for making radical change that people may hate. Yet, he has been so resistant to saying it that it seems like he didn’t want to admit it to himself either… and so the decisions he’s made haven’t been founded in an embrace of that idea but rather in a desperate attempt to avoid it.

Any competent business leader in charge of Reddit would understand that the reason Reddit only spends 100m/year on salaries is because they receive hundreds of millions in free labor from the small minority of Reddit power users who are fundamental to its success… any competent business leader would squeeze the 99% of users who have never delivered a single contribution to Reddit… and yet, Steve decided to target the smallest minority who actually matter to reddit’s future.

Putting YouTube style unskippable video ads into the official Reddit app would have pissed off zero power users and 10xed revenue.