Well as of about 6 months ago, Steve Huffman is a billionaire.
Comment on this absolute bullshit from reddit
mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 day agoWhy does every discussion, especially on Lemmy, eventually turn into “it’s run by a pedophile” or “it’s owned by billionaires”?
Reddit is a publicly traded company. Steve Huffman is still the CEO. From what I can tell, the largest shareholders include Tencent and Advance Publications, along with various institutional investors.
Could there be pedophiles working at those companies or individuals who own Reddit stock? Maybe. That’s true of practically any large corporation. It doesn’t mean Reddit is “run by pedophiles.”
And for the love of God, can we stop bringing up Elon Musk every five minutes? I’m exhausted by people forcing him into conversations that have nothing to do with him. Whether you love him or hate him, not every discussion needs to revolve around the same handful of public figures.
My problem isn’t with criticizing Reddit. Criticize the company all you want when it’s deserved. My problem is replacing factual criticism with lazy slogans and guilt-by-association. If you’re going to criticize a company, criticize what it actually does, not some cartoon version of who you imagine owns or controls it.
chunes@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Why does every discussion, especially on Lemmy, eventually turn into “it’s run by a pedophile” or “it’s owned by billionaires”?
It’s the jerk. Everything is the fault of billionaires (never mind that they actually don’t own most stuff), and every billionare has all possible negative personality traits.
Occasionally, we manage to have actual intelligent conversations, in between all the huffing our own upvotes.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
Okay, so if you were to get banned from Reddit because you said that paedophiles should face harsher legal consequences, you wouldn’t think that maybe the site is run by paedophiles? So maybe you appeal, maybe you caught one bad apple, but then it’s upheld by a second one. Then I think it’s absolutely fair to say the site is run by paedophiles. And I think that’s deserved.
True, you didn’t have all the facts. I’m not gonna tell the story every single time. So maybe that’s on me. Maybe you feel like I pulled a bait and switch.
It sounds like you’re just tired of hearing about the bad shit the ruling elite do. Not much for that, I’m afraid.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I think who financially owns a company is largely irrelevant, whether they’re saints or pedophiles. In this case, reducing the discussion to “immoral billionaires” or mythical dragons hoarding wealth misses the point entirely.
Reddit is a publicly traded social media and news aggregation platform with ownership spread across institutional investors, including a major publishing conglomerate and a large Chinese technology company. The possibility that some wealthy individuals connected to those organizations may be immoral is, to me, one of the least interesting aspects of the discussion. There are far more substantive issues surrounding Reddit’s ownership, governance, moderation policies, business incentives, and corporate structure than the personal character of people at the very top.
For example, if someone is banned after criticizing a public figure, what is the more plausible explanation? That Reddit is deliberately protecting a specific pedophile because of who they are, or that moderators or administrators are enforcing a political or ideological preference? The latter strikes me as vastly more likely. If you’re trying to explain why moderation decisions happen, political bias or inconsistent enforcement is a much more convincing explanation than a coordinated effort to shield particular criminals.
Focusing on whether a billionaire somewhere in the ownership chain is a bad person is like criticizing cars because they produce CO₂. It’s true, but it’s so obvious and commonplace that it contributes very little to understanding the actual issue.