- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
- news@hexbear.net
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
- news@hexbear.net
- technology@lemmy.world
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Despite having been founded in 2005, the S-1 notes that Reddit is “in the early stages of monetizing our business and there is no assurance we will be able to scale our business for future growth.”
Did they seriously just say “although our company start 19 years ago, we only able to start figure out how to make money, and if you buy our stock, we can’t guarantee our company will grow further and give you more profits.”
Where’s the plan, Stevie?
"there is no assurance we will be able to scale our business for future growth.”
Then why IPO? Lol.
Yes, we can’t make money and can’t grow. Invest pls?
To cash out
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Potentially the most valuable single source of information on the internet.
I beg to differ, there’s Wikipedia
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Having data means nothing if you can’t monetize it.
As you say, AI can already access it all completely for free with nothing more complicated than a web crawler. Long term, charging AI firms for access is not a viable strategy unless the law changes.
And they’ve been trying for years to monetize visitors through advertising and other schemes, and so far come up consistently short.
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That data is valuable, but I’m unconvinced that it belongs to Reddit. They didn’t create it.
I also don’t believe it should be free/legal for someone else to come along and take all that data off Reddit. While it was provided to Reddit by its creators, they haven’t consented for it to be used by another party.
How you go about stopping that, I have no idea. How you go about monetising Reddit, I’m not sure about that either. It isn’t by claiming you own everything though. Yes, you own the platform. But not the people, nor what they post. And those are the things that attract visitors.
Using IP laws to legislate this could also lead to disastrous consequences, like the monopolization of effective AI. If only those with billions in capital can make use of these tools, while free or open source models become illegal to distribute, it could mean a permanent power grab. If the capitalists end up controlling the “means of generation” and we the common folk can’t use it.
Lying on an S-1 isn’t an FTC problem; it’s an SEC one.
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Spez is trying to outfit his doomsday bunker and wants the cash.
AI.
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Reddit’s pretty good for niche support communities that still manage to have an active userbase. I wish I could cut the cord entirely but Lemmy just isn’t there yet.
It doesn’t help that you’ve joined an instance that defederated from the largest (world). Welcome, by the way!
The fact that the largest is still so significantly bigger than the rest that this can be a concern shows that Lemmy still hasn’t come anywhere close to being where it needs or is supposed to be.
The network should not rest one the shoulders of one or two websites.
…I totally forgot that was a thing, thank you. It’s been a while since I was active on the fediverse.
And thanks!
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I didn’t mean that was a complaint against reddit, I just meant it’s a reason a lot of people have been reluctant to leave. I’d love to see the site die personally, but I still think it’s a little more complicated than self respect.
Also while yeah I hate to be a person who complains and then doesn’t take any action, I know for a fact that I don’t have it in me to moderate a support group between jobs.
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Yup, there’s a handful of niche communities that just don’t exist on lemmy. I joined their discords instead, some of the content crosses over anyway
Is it insider trading if wsb members short the stock, then make controversial content that frightens investors away?
If thousands of people contribute to it, even if it is insider trading, can it be reasonably investigated and prosecuted?
But more seriously, not a lawyer, but no I don’t think so. The users don’t know any non-public business information about future Reddit business decisions (i would assume) and compete fairly with other potential shareholders. It’s not like other shareholders couldn’t do the same thing, after all.
In the MOONs sunsetting, some moderators got a 1 hour advance warning before the public announcement… and some sold before it was made.
For the IPO, it would depend on the kind of user: if some mods decided to short Reddit, then stage a sub locking protest like during the APIcalypse, they would have both information and means not available to other public investors.
A lot of redditors hate reddit
It’s a Love-Hate relationship. The core concept and idea of Reddit is wonderful. But the corporate decisions ruins it. Just like in good videogames…
Just like anything else that started good and had more pure intentions than “money at all costs!”
The core concept and idea of reddit can be found in other places, such as right here. And without the corporate decisions ruining it.
“I hate it here but i don’t wanna leave here because i love here.”
Pretty much why people stay in abusive relationships.
That’s so reddit.
This is the most interesting information I could find (while skipping a lot paragraphs): BTW Huffman is CEO Steve “u/spez”.
Altman was, and still is, the CEO of OpenAI. Altman’s also Reddit’s third-largest shareholder and owns more than twice as many shares as Huffman. Altman was the CEO of Reddit for eight days.
why was he ceo for only eight days??? did he quit??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman#Other_endeavors
Another CEO resigned, and he took over (for eight days).
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Altman and short stints regarding being CEO or not, name a more iconic couple.
It’s clearly a move for Huffman to cash out before bailing out. I wonder if things would have gone any differently with the last CEO? I forget her name.
Also buying into the stock early, seems stupid. For a company that’s never been profitable, during a time of mass tech layoffs, and how the valuation of other social media has tanked after an IPO, just seems like you’re gonna lose money investing in Reddit.
My guess is that they’re offering early sales because they predict that the stock value will tank after the public offering, so this way there’s a slightly higher margin of profit for the current shareholders. If that’s correct then it’s completely scummy. (i.e. extremely typical for Reddit)
Another possibility is that they’re trying to “force” power users to be more cooperative towards the platform, by giving them a financial incentive to do so - “if you shit here you’ll be tanking your own shares”.
Stock options: “if you make the thing work, you’ll be able to cash in on the stock price increase”
Pre-sale: “pay us now, find about later”
One incentivizes cooperation, the other can be a way to get support from large investors to grow a new business… or a scam to cash out from a 19 year old unprofitable one.
Nothing like investors who they perceive will be less rational, and will buy / not sell at a price above what the fundamentals suggests is rational.
It could pay off for Reddit if they get a short squeeze - non-institutional investors might be slower to sell, and I bet a lot of people will be shorting the stock unless the IPO price is really low.
Ellen Pao.
It’s never been profitable but Huffman gets millions as CEO. Fuck spez.
I am not sure why anyone cares. As far as Reddit, I moved on last year.
I care about it like Facebook or Twitter. It has a big influence on our society, even if I don’t use it.
I care because its a good drama.
I did too. My life is all the better for it. The fediverse is much more positive overall, and even if you don’t like something, just find a different instance then. You don’t lose the ability to peacefully use the product. Unlike Reddit…
Of course we hate it. It will trigger a whole new phase of enshittification.
I still use reddit because for some things it’s still a valuable resource that Lemmy isn’t yet for lack of users. Hopefully more redditors will find lemmy as this proceeds.
One of the nice things this time around is that Lemmy has really crystallized as an ecosystem. It’s missing some significant niches, but now people who need a working example, and can’t just envision it based off of the concept, can see it truly in action, instead of just seeing Leninist wankery.
Future waves should, hopefully, be stickier.
It’s missing some significant niches
It’s missing some pretty mainstream interests, as well. Some of my favorite parts of reddit from the before times related to sports, television, music, etc., and there just isn’t a critical mass on any lemmy community to really get that robust dialogue going.
The biggest problem is that federation splits the communities between instances. So a single interest may have 5-10 different communities, all with fewer users than on an equivalent subreddit.
I’ve been saying this since the beginning, Lemmy needs a way to follow topics that allow you to subscribe to all related communities at once. And posting to a topic on one community allows it to show up across different communities of the same topic.
I don’t know if I agree with you. Your idea of following a topic over all communities is a solid one, for sure. Not sure I would agree with a comment being posted across all. Maybe an option for cross-posting, should one wish? How would you deal with the replies though, like certainly that all couldn’t be cross posted, could it?. I just think it would get too complicated in a hurry, that’s all. I like your ingenuity, anyways.
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I genuinely don’t think so. Even though it’s technically federated, it’s still mostly under a thin veneer of an “App”, and hiding its true nature.
It’d be more like if Lemmy.world released its mobile app, that could connect to any other Lemmy instance, but that buried that functionality enough that 98% of people downloading it just ended up on LW.
That’s not really federation, and it’s definitely not doing anything to make people comfortable with the idea.
Just curious here, because I don’t really know how this works - will they have to disclose how many shares they sold to power users prior to the IPO? I’d love for that number to be as close to zero as possible.
But won’t move anywhere else 🤷
Why do boomers put a license link on public comments where the license has no value? I’d recommend removing it since having it automatically makes your opinions worth less.
From the notices section
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain
Which means comments posted anywhere.
Online sovereign citizen?
idgaf
Just automatically lowers the value of what you say when it has no bearing on anything.
I honestly agree that it seems silly and kind of detracts from your comments to add that to all of them, and may seem spammy to some people, but I also am pretty sure I get where you’re coming from and kind of admire that you’re sticking to it and not giving a fuck that some people think it’s dumb or whatever. That’s pretty cool.
And, really, it’s not like you’re hurting anyone by adding that link to your comments. Who cares? Do yo thang, buddy. :)
I actually find it a bit funny that a single line at the end of comments sparks so much ire in some. So much so, that they feel compelled to take more time out of their day to write a message than it took to read the line, and hurl insults at me. Not my problem 🤷
Thank you for understanding🙏 Have a good one.
I also find it odd that it automatically makes you a boomer. You’re not hurting anyone, and you’re not the only one doing this on the fediverse. I don’t think having a creative commons license at the end of your comment detracts from your comments at all. I agree with the above, keep doing you.
Do you have any source for your claim that comments on the Internet are public domain? It’s a common sentiment that anything posted on the Internet is public, but I don’t believe it has any legal basis. Often websites have a ToS saying that anything you submit belongs to them in perpetuity, but programming.dev doesn’t have that.
This comment, and others in the thread below, are not engaging in the spirit of this instance. If you have questions about why someone has formatted their post the way they have, you can ask them without insulting the user. I’ll be removing any further comments that engage in this manner.
Maybe they need to be told about the alternatives, along with a cost/benefit analysis ™
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On r/technology, the top comment on the IPO story is, “The beginning of the end.” There’s gloomy speculation about the measures management may take to make the company profitable — which subreddits might be banned, how much users might have to pay to post, a heavier ad load.
“While the rest of the internet is all a giant mess, Reddit still feels like a place where you can learn things and have fun,” says u/itsreallyreallytrue, who also received an invitation and is considering buying into the share program.
Events such as the war in Ukraine and the release of the video game Elden Ring — these are Reddit’s own examples — lead to spikes in user engagement.
Sure, Reddit’s trying to diversify its revenue by selling its data to help train AI; I don’t think the timing of that Google deal, just days before the S-1 became public, was a coincidence.
(During the peak of NFT hype, some of these assets sold for millions — and now the majority of NFTs are “worthless.”) It also had to end the Community Points product, which was a disaster for many whose tokens suddenly had no value.
He’s said that the API price increase last year that led to user protests, for instance, was partly because “Elon Musk did it.” (How’s Twitter — sorry, I mean X — doing with advertisers, spez?)
Saved 84% of original text.
Then leave
It’s going to be a dumpster fire. I think any savvy investor can see straight through it. Institutional investors are fucking sick of these trainwreck, unprofitable tech companies. The only people lining up for these IPO shares are going to be a few FOMO folks, the CNBC crowd, and other uneducated idiots that want in at the beginning plus (lol) all their power mods. All of whom are going to be left holding the bag following the first earnings call.
It will trigger a whole new phase of enshittification.
this
