Reddit’s CEO Debuts As A Billionaire 20 Years After Cofounding The Company

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicahunter-hart/2025/11/01/reddits-ceo-debuts-as-a-steve-huffman-billionaire-20-years-after-cofounding-the-company/

“Q3 was a strong quarter,” Huffman said on Thursday’s earnings call, in which he lauded Reddit as being “for humans by humans” and seemed to take a subtle dig at AI slop (the low-quality AI content clogging corners of the internet): “Reddit is in a unique position; we’re not trying to be the next anything. We’re focused on being the best version of ourselves and what the internet needs most: a place where people can connect on almost any topic and find genuinely useful information.”

410 points · 82 comments · view on lemmy.world

82 Comments

ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world · 232 pts · 312d (8 replies)

If you wanna rise in the West, you better be evil.

RIP Aaron Schwartz. 🙏

qualia@lemmy.world · 65 pts · 312d

RIP Aaron Schwartz. 🙏

Is he related to Aaron Swartz?

Edit: Peak documentary of his life (free) for those unfamiliar. 🥹

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 17 pts · 312d (4 replies)

Important morals if you want to be "successful": have no morals. And no self-respect either.

teft@piefed.social · 10 pts · 312d (3 replies)

Morale is being happy. Morals are the principals principles of right and wrong.

jaybone@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 312d (1 reply)

Principles.

qualia@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 311d

Values opposing bad habits are vice principles.

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 312d

Yes yes, corrected.

Velypso@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 312d (1 reply)

1

anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 311d

That was 10 years before only Nazis used that term, but I take your point.

thefluffiest@feddit.nl · 208 pts · 312d (2 replies)

And all he had to do was fuck over everyone who helped him get there. His co-founder and users most of all

Peak US

WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world · 90 pts · 312d (1 reply)

And his narcissism is rewarded with extreme wealth and power.

Peak capitalism.

blahblahblah@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 311d

Ah, yes. The Steve Jobs model. Find someone with true talent, attach yourself to them like a lamprey, and slyly fuck them over at every turn until you are at the top with all the money.

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 185 pts · 312d (9 replies)

The wrong founder died, unfortunately.

Ulrich@feddit.org · 118 pts · 312d (7 replies)

Died due to criminal prosecution for something Meta was able to get away with Scott-free.

God damn America.

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 312d

Bleak.

But you're not wrong. Motherfuckers.

tehn00bi@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 311d (3 replies)

Wait was he the guy that hosted all of those academic articles and was prosecuted for it, the killed himself?

Ulrich@feddit.org · 15 pts · 311d (2 replies)

He hooked his laptop up to school servers and was copying all the data on them.

https://fedi.video/w/6mc8MBSTGCpSC4YoZZi5r6

sqgl@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 311d (1 reply)

(1) Swartz didn't share the files. Maybe he would have but when he earlier slurped the legal library it was to provide an indexing capability.

(2) He wasn't a founder of Reddit (but was an early developer).

The excellent documentary on him is online for free (watch it before it gets taken down): https://youtu.be/9vz06QO3UkQ

Ulrich@feddit.org · 4 pts · 311d

I didn't say he shared the files. I linked to the documentary in the comment you replied to, but on PeerTube.

aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 310d (1 reply)
[ removed ]
Ulrich@feddit.org · 1 pts · 310d

Thank you for not being dishonest about that.

aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 310d
[ removed ]
FahrenheitGhost@lemmy.world · 157 pts · 312d (3 replies)

Fuck you /u/spez.

thefluffiest@feddit.nl · 87 pts · 312d (2 replies)

Or fuck /u/spez, for short

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 312d (1 reply)

One of my three strikes for my perma was because I posted that on a bandwagon thread during the API exodus lol

thefluffiest@feddit.nl · 14 pts · 312d

May you wear it proudly

edible_funk@lemmy.world · 137 pts · 312d (2 replies)

Spez was the mod of a pedo sub. He's also a white supremacist piece of dogshit.

VeryInterestingTable@jlai.lu · 56 pts · 312d

Success doesn't ring at your door by chance. First you have to demonstrate how horrible you are and how you can contribute to make humanity worse.

Lawnman23@lemmy.world · 52 pts · 312d

Fuck spez.

very_well_lost@lemmy.world · 119 pts · 312d (2 replies)

he lauded Reddit as being “for humans by humans” and seemed to take a subtle dig at AI slop (the low-quality AI content clogging corners of the internet)

That's pretty funny coming from the CEO of a platform that was already overrun by low-effort bots even before AI slop became a thing...

pupbiru@aussie.zone · 33 pts · 311d (1 reply)

not to mention whose recent valuations have basically been about selling their data to train models which will be used to make AI slop

JackbyDev@programming.dev · 17 pts · 311d

Yep. Shutting down the API was 100% because they were angry they got scraped and didn't get money.

datavoid@sh.itjust.works · 117 pts · 311d

Not a single mention of Swartz in the article. Absolute scum

unconsciousvoidling@sh.itjust.works · 105 pts · 312d

Fucking parasite. I wish him nothing but the worst.

MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 94 pts · 312d

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

DrCake@lemmy.world · 91 pts · 312d (1 reply)

For humans by humans

Could have fooled me

WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 312d

For bots, by bots

resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world · 78 pts · 312d (3 replies)

The moderator of r/jailbait?

Glytch@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 312d (1 reply)

That just means he fits in with the rest of them.

resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 311d

Hard to fit all those egos on Little Saint John.

drmoose@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 310d

Worth mentioning that at that time you could add anyone as moderator and they wouldn't even know or decline the mod rights.

someguy3@lemmy.world · 74 pts · 312d (2 replies)

"Thanks for all the unpaid work mods!"

Lol he'd never thank the plebeians.

lobut@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 312d (1 reply)

They can't afford to pay so many mods! You're crazy! /s

Now, if you'll excuse him ... he's buying a new yacht.

SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 311d

Probably to fuck children

PlanterTree@discuss.tchncs.de · 50 pts · 312d (15 replies)

The previous moderator r/jailbait is now a billionaire.

idk what jailbait is. And do not want to know lol.

Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 18 pts · 312d (13 replies)

I put what little I know about it inside a spoiler tag

::: spoiler spoiler It used to be a subreddit related to... very young girls? My understanding is it means by taking the bait (=using the subreddit) you risk going to jail. So essentially a place catering to pedophiles. I think the sub disappeared before I even discovered Reddit, so I don't know exactly if users were posting pictures or something else :::

Kirp123@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 312d (5 replies)

It was a subreddit where redditors would post pictures of underage girls. The images weren't outright pornographic, they were images some of the members took of unsuspecting girls in public or other locations(I remember there was a teacher posting pictures of his students) or images the girls posted themselves on various social media. Some were suggestive some weren't but all of them were leered over and discussed by creeps with language that should never used towards minors.

At some point the subreddit came into the attention of Anderson Cooper which run a segment on CNN about it. Even then Reddit refused to ban the subreddit citing "free speech". Eventually one of the people on the subreddit posted a picture of a minor and said he had naked pictures of her which created a feeding frenzy of creeps asking him for those pictures. This finally made Reddit ban the subreddit.

The guy that created the subreddit, Violentacrez, was also the "victim" of an expose by Gawker who found out his real life identity. Reddit tried protecting him by banning links to Gawker when the article came out. Before all that Reddit gave him an award and various redditors voted him as the best moderator or some shit like that. Besides /r/jailbait he was running a lot of other questionable subreddits.

FridaySteve@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 312d (1 reply)

When I encounter teenagers who use reddit I tell them to look up "subreddit of the year 2008" just to gross them out.

StopSpazzing@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 312d

Priceless. Doing the lords work

themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 312d

I removed it from the post because allegedly reddit had a feature were you could add anyone to any sub Reddit as moderator and someone added him. Doesn't change the fact he allowed the sub to exist and didn't get it banned until news coverage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Jailbait

very_well_lost@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 312d

The guy that created the subreddit, Violentacrez, was also the "victim" of an expose by Gawker who found out his real life identity. Reddit tried protecting him by banning links to Gawker when the article came out.

I remember when this happened. Violentacrez himself showed up in one of the threads that didn't get nuked and tried to defend himself. I remember his (heavily down-voted) comments all being surrounded by dozens and dozens of [deleted] comments — presumably people attacking him for being a pedo piece of shit.

I'd never heard of the guy before, but I was so disgusted by the story and by his attempts to justify himself that I went back through weeks of his old posts, down-voting everything.

The next day, I came back to a week-long temp ban from Reddit for vote manipulation. Fuckers.

Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 312d

Thanks for the writeup

gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 312d (2 replies)

I'm not saying I agree with it, but this is the actual meaning of the word:

::: spoiler Spoiler The term jailbait existed long before the subreddit and is used to refer to underage girls that are sexually attractive, therefore they are "baiting" you to go to jail by having sex with them.

Oh, and the posts on the subreddit were non-nude photos of underage girls the posters thought were attractive. It was very gross. :::

Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 3 pts · 312d

ah ok thanks

shalafi@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 312d

For some reason I subscribed to your definition IRL, but thought it meant "of age, doesn't look like it", which I suppose is how porn sites use it.

drmoose@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 310d (3 replies)

Not to defend it but people have a bit of selective bias here as it was not "very young girls" but <18. Still nasty but it was not out right full pedo shit and more geared to cringe teen culture at the time of "I'm 18 but this 17 year old is jail bait". Then the subreddit became a big free speech topic and people straight up started posting young teens to really push the topic which proved reddit's free speech stance wrong and they banned the subreddit.

lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com · 0 pts · 310d (2 replies)

proved reddit’s free speech stance wrong

free speech is never wrong

drmoose@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 310d (1 reply)

except when it's sharing harmful content like pedophilia? no?

lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com · 1 pts · 310d

expressing an opinion we disapprove of isn't an exception to free speech: for that we can express our condemnation

the harm principle requires more than mere offensiveness such as true threat or incitement of imminent, lawless action

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus · 10 pts · 312d

Just to note, at the time anyone could be made a moderator without their approval, so that alone is not demonstrating his support for that subreddit.

Allowing it to continue was his implicit support of it. He was well aware of what they were doing, and only acted when it became a PR issue.

billwashere@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 311d

Fuck Spez

zaugofficial@lemmings.world · 33 pts · 312d

Fuck reddit, fuck censorship, and fuck advertising.

Also fuck all the dumbasses that disagree.

jordanlund@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 312d

Redditors: "Billionaires shouldn't exist!"

Also redditors: Helps make latest billionaire...

kokesh@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 312d

Fuck you, Spaz.

theherk@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 312d

Greedy little pig boy

dil@piefed.zip · 23 pts · 312d (6 replies)

Im convinced he killed the other cofounder, never a suicide

CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 312d

The US government did that via a guy who wanted a promotion at the DOJ.

el_abuelo@programming.dev · 10 pts · 312d (4 replies)

Convinced by what evidence?

shiftymccool@piefed.ca · 12 pts · 312d (2 replies)

"Reddit's CEO Debuts As A Billionaire"

el_abuelo@programming.dev · 11 pts · 312d (1 reply)

That's not evidence. That's just making stuff up to fit a narrative of your choosing.

I'm no fan of billionaires either, but they do plenty of evil without us having to just make shit up. That only serves to dilute your (our) credibility.

dil@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 311d

Cool, like they give a shit about their credibility, like credibility means anything when mfs like trump could become president lol

When not having a degree and being unedecuted is lauded by the citizens, who gives af about mantaining credibility, you think they have the critical thinking skills to notice either way

They wouldn't even go near this liberal site, it's also extremely niche, I'm not trying to change anyones opinion here, it'a literally a throwaway comment about how I feel. There is no reason at all for me to take my time and dig into this conspiracy theory, it's not that deep, it's literally a comment on lemmy , it can only have so much reach/meaning

dil@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 311d

If you expect me to be the first conspiracy theorist to provide actual evidence you are out of your mind

PriorityMotif@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 312d

A billion rubles? The company has been allowing outside actors to manipulate the platform since at least 2016. No way they let them do that for free.

pyre@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 310d

this calls for a celebration

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 312d (1 reply)

Guys wouldn't it be funny if Luigi had a brother named Mario?

cough

Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 311d

A distant cousin Lemmio just stares blankly at the family affairs, feeling in danger :).

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 312d (1 reply)

From a company that was constantly in the reds?

falseWhite@lemmy.world · 52 pts · 312d
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muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 310d

I’m more likely to find humans on grindr than Reddit at this point.

boogiebored@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 310d

Worst coming out ever.

synae@lemmy.sdf.org · 10 pts · 310d

rip aaron swartz

peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 310d

Fuck reddit and it's CEO.

RBWells@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 311d

Ooh a debutante. Does he get a fancy dress and a coming out party? How exactly do you get jumped into that club?

far_university1990@reddthat.com · 6 pts · 310d

Spez ist ein Hurensohn

architect@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 308d

Fuck spez.