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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company'
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says a mass protest on Reddit did not change the company's plans to start charging for data, despite how it upended the popular site and turned thousands of discussion groups dark.
"It's a small group that's very upset, and there's no way around that. We made a business decision that upset them," Huffman told NPR in his first interview since nearly 9,000 subreddits staged a 48-hour boycott2. "But I think the greater Reddit community just wants to participate with their fellow community members."
Reddit is used by some 57 million people every day to discuss all sorts of things, like news developments; share memes and favorite recipes; swap3 stock market tips; and chronicle public photos of bread stapled4 to trees.
But on Monday, Reddit's unpaid5 volunteer moderators turned thousands of discussion groups private, making them inaccessible6. It lasted for 48 hours, but some groups have extended the "blackout" period. The coordinated7 backlash had a rallying cry: "Don't Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!"
Huffman said the action did not cost the company much, even though it managed to create "a fair amount of trouble," he said.
Huffman characterized the Reddit protesters as a small but vocal8 cadre of angry users who are not in touch with the greater Reddit community.
"The protest, what it really affects is the everyday users, most of whom aren't involved in this or the changes that spurred this," Huffman said.
Huffman says he's willing to negotiate with third-party developers wanting to have "productive conversations"
In April, Reddit announced new fees for allowing third parties to access the site's data. But this month, the company detailed9 what the cost would be, causing outcry among some of the third-party apps.
While the fees will not hurt everyone, some third-party developers say the new bills from Reddit would be exorbitant10. Christian11 Selig told NPR that the new charges could cost Apollo, which has just one part-time employee, around $20 million a year.
Four of the most popular mobile Reddit apps, including Apollo, have announced they will be going out of business because of the new costly12 fees for accessing what is called the application programming interface13 (API), which allows different pieces of software to communicate with each other.
Huffman said negotiations14 have broken down with two of the most popular apps, Apollo and Rif Is Fun (formerly Reddit Is Fun), but he said Reddit is willing to negotiate with most third-party developers. "The other third-parties apps we're in conversation with," Huffman said.
"There are areas of opportunity to be more flexible, to give longer transition times," he said. "For folks who want to have productive conversations with us, we're here and we're having those conversations."
Human beings talk about interesting things on Reddit. "We are not in the business of giving that away for free."
Huffman said 97% of Reddit users do not use any third-party apps to browse15 the site. He said "the vast majority" of moderators also do not rely on third-party apps.
Still, he said the company's plan was never to kill third-party apps. At the same time, Huffman acknowledged that if those users instead browsed16 with Reddit's own app, it would shore up the company's bottom line.
"And the opportunity cost of not having those users on our platform, on our advertising17 platform, is really significant," he said. "At the end of the day, it's simply expensive to run an app like Reddit."
Giving away a service for free, Huffman said, is not something Reddit would be able to do forever.
"We've been subsidizing other business for free for a long time. We're stopping that. That is not a negotiable point," Huffman said. "We simply were in an unsustainable position."
In some situations, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement, he said. For instance, Reddit results appearing in Google or Microsoft search results help drive traffic to Reddit, so both the search engines and Reddit get something out of it.
But with artificial intelligence-powered large language models like Microsoft-backed ChatGPT and Google's Bard18, a massive corpus of conversations is being hoovered up. And in return, Reddit receives very little, he said.
"If they take our content and build businesses on it, that's an issue," Huffman said. "If they build businesses such that people come to Reddit less, that's an issue."
Huffman said Reddit's back-end infrastructure19 includes separate server pools solely20 dedicated21 to handling the scraping that Google and Microsoft do from Reddit every day.
"Reddit represents one of the largest data sets of just human beings talking about interesting things," Huffman said. "We are not in the business of giving that away for free."
Huffman: We're 18 years old. It's time we grow up.
Some subreddits, still upset that Huffman has not rolled back any of the announced changes or lowered the cost for accessing Reddit data, have extended the blackout beyond the initial 48-hour period.
In their last update, organizers of the boycott wrote that "our core concerns still aren't satisfied," adding that "Reddit has been silent since it began, and internal memos22 indicate that they think they can wait us out."
Huffman said that right now, 80% of the top 5,000 subreddits are back online.
In 2021, Reddit filed paperwork for an eventual23 initial public offering but shelved those plans when technology stocks plummeted24 shortly afterward25. Now, Reddit is reportedly eyeing an IPO for later this year.
But Huffman said taking the company public was not part of the calculation that led to the new fees. He said it was more about survival. "It is essential for us to be a sustainable business, whether or not we go public," Huffman said.
"Now, we would like to be a public company. Not the best market to be doing that. It's not top of our mind today as it has been in the past," he said. "We'll get there when we're ready, when the market is ready."
Reddit, which was founded in 2005, has long relied on advertising. It, along with peer social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and others, has been dealing26 with a slowdown in digital ad spending, which has pressured the companies to find new ways to generate revenue.
Huffman said the reckoning that Reddit is now in the grips of has been long overdue27.
"We're 18 years old," Huffman said. "I think it's time we grow up and behave like an adult company."
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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boycott
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| n./v.(联合)抵制，拒绝参与 | |
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swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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stapled
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| v.用钉书钉钉住( staple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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coordinated
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| adj.协调的 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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interface
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| n.接合部位，分界面；v.(使)互相联系 | |
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negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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browse
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| vi.随意翻阅，浏览；(牛、羊等)吃草 | |
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browsed
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| v.吃草( browse的过去式和过去分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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infrastructure
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| n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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memos
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| n.备忘录( memo的名词复数 )；（美）内部通知 | |
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eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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plummeted
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| v.垂直落下，骤然跌落( plummet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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overdue
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| adj.过期的，到期未付的；早该有的，迟到的 | |
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