Stop What You’re Doing And Read The Hell Out Of This of the Day: So here’s the story so far: The controversial pro-legalization “Yes On Prop 19” ads, which were infamously rejected by Facebook, were earlier today resoundingly rejected by Condé Nast, and Reddit — Condé Nast’s most visible online property — was banned from posting them.
The Reddit mods responded by releasing a statement on the site saying they vehemently disagreed with Condé Nast on this issue, and that they were in the process of “trying to convince Corporate that they’re making the wrong decision.” Condé Nast refused to relent and issued a statement of their own, saying, “As a corporation, Condé Nast does not want to benefit financially from this particular issue.”
No problem, said the mods. “Since we’re not allowed to benefit financially, reddit is now running the ads for free.” Nice. The Redditors, for their part, got in on the fun by ensuring a post titled “YES to Prop 19; NO to corporate censorship” garnered the top spot on the front page, and by spamming many subreddits with the notorious ad until they were all full up (see above).
With seemingly irreconcilable differences between Reddit and its parent company, the question becomes: Where do we go from here?
In an e-mail to The Daily What, Ben Huh, CEO and Founder of the Cheezburger Network, offers a whopper of a solution:
Condé Nast, I’m publicly offering to buy Reddit.
Hi TDWers, I’m Ben Huh, and I run the Cheezburger Network (which includes The Daily What, if you were too Prop 19’d to notice). I have made this offer privately to a few people associated with Reddit, and I’ll say it publicly now:
I believe that Reddit is one of the best communities I have seen on the Internet. I also believe that Reddit would benefit from more resources and less corporate interference. We can offer all of the above. And we’d love to buy Reddit and all those pesky troublesome users that we love so much.
Condé, we’ll be waiting for a call.
Cheers,
Ben Huh.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens next.
[screencap: reddit.]
