Huffmann is definitely coying his idol Elon with the verified account thingy… which he can then use to pressure advertisers into paying more, see https://www.engadget.com/x-tells-advertisers-to-spend-1000-per-month-or-risk-losing-verification-status-201528621.html?guccounter=1
Not that I ascribe any sort of reddit awareness to Huffman but even then it’s a new level of not understanding his own product. Twitter had oodles of celebrities, politicians, journalists, activists, government accounts, companies and so on and the verification was important before musk ruined it. I’m not sure reddit has actual entities of public life that regularly post. I’ve seen a stray Arnold Schwarzenegger mentioned somewhere and I think a YouTube video about tenacious D responding to fans but that’s it. Who on earth needs verification on reddit as a user?
Yeah, a big part of the appeal of reddit was being anonymous. I signed up without even using an email address, and being able to do that was a most of why I was willing to create my account in the first place.
This. Reddit is a sea of whoever and that’s why I liked it. This is a major misunderstanding of the community on their part.
Reddit had a nice balance between being anonymous, but also making you care about your reputation enough to not turn completely into 4chan