Steve Huffman on His Plans to Take Reddit Public and Why He Thinks TikTok Should Be Banned

So what is the biggest risk to Reddit, would you say, as we speak? What is the factor that retains you up at evening?

Regulation. TikTok.

Part 230 regulation [the US law that allows web operators to moderate content as they see fit]?

That is a giant one. I am extra apprehensive about this simply normal development in western democracies to be extraordinarily anti-democratic. This want for the federal government to manage speech, which is successfully controlling what folks can and might’t suppose. 

What can be an instance of that?

Take a look at the Twitter Files: the federal government actually controlling speech. I feel speech and democracy are inseparable ideas, and Reddit is a democratic platform. It’s managed by voting for different folks. I feel the development over the previous couple of years is that, “Folks have an excessive amount of energy, folks have too many opinions… The whole lot wants to return from central authorities or media managed by the federal government.” That could be a development that’s actually alarming.

How does TikTok fear you?

Okay, there are two dimensions. One, the app whenever you make a video on TikTok, it is recording, not simply you, not simply the video you suppose you are making, however your face, your likeness, your voice, the voices of different folks within the room, all of the objects you have got within the room, possibly the place you might be, the issues within the background and different folks going straight to a database managed by a hostile overseas nation. Perhaps essentially the most hostile. 

And if when folks say that’s not occurring, that could be a ludicrous take. Or the concept that we will retailer the information in the USA? That’s laughable. Such a head faux, as a result of all of the algorithms run the present in Beijing.

That is one dimension…

I can criticize different tech firms for possibly being grasping or clumsy. However plenty of firms are grasping and clumsy. However in lots of or most instances, their coronary heart is in the precise place they usually’re making an attempt to do the precise factor, which is tough, they usually do their greatest to reside inside the legal guidelines of the lands. I do not suppose any of that’s true of TikTok, they’re a Chinese language firm and do not care about our legal guidelines. There’s zero accountability there.

So do you suppose TikTok must be banned? 

Sure.

Okay. However you’ve got simply frolicked speaking about how free speech is vital to you…

You suppose this assaults free speech? It’s the propaganda arm of the Chinese language Communist Social gathering. What’s free about it? It is utterly censored.

However you are fairly proud of that contradiction?

Social media is media, and the fastest-growing social media app is managed by the Chinese language Communist Social gathering.

However it will profit you if TikTok was banned?

Reddit will likely be nice with or with out TikTok, with or with out Fb, Twitter… no matter. We have seen opponents begin from small firms and switch into the world’s largest firms. We have been round 18 years and I am not apprehensive about competitors. The one competitors I fear about is our capacity to construct the very best Reddit. We’ve sacrificed development for our idealism, time and time once more and we nonetheless survived. So sure, it is easy to write down what I am saying off as coming from a self-interested tech man. However I am additionally a considerably educated tech man who can see what’s happening.