How Will Reddit's IPO Change the Service? (bbc.co.uk) 86
"Reddit users have been reacting with deep gloom to the firm saying it plans to sell shares to the public..." the BBC recently reported:
The company has said its plans are "exciting" and will offer the business opportunities for growth. However many users worry the move will fundamentally change the website... "When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person. "It becomes 'what can we do this quarter to squeak out an additional point of revenue', instead of 'how can we make this product better'...."
[T]he company has recorded losses every year since its start, including more than $90m last year. In the filing, Reddit said it had not started trying to make money seriously until 2018. It reported $804m in revenue last year, up more than 20% from 2022. Advertising accounted for nearly all of the revenue, but in a note to prospective investors chief executive Steve Huffman said he was excited about opportunities to make the platform a venue for commerce and license its content to AI companies.
[T]he company has recorded losses every year since its start, including more than $90m last year. In the filing, Reddit said it had not started trying to make money seriously until 2018. It reported $804m in revenue last year, up more than 20% from 2022. Advertising accounted for nearly all of the revenue, but in a note to prospective investors chief executive Steve Huffman said he was excited about opportunities to make the platform a venue for commerce and license its content to AI companies.
moderator fee (Score:2, Troll)
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>When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person. "It becomes 'what can we do this quarter to squeak out an additional point of revenue', instead of 'how can we make this product better'...."
Don't buy reddit gold. Buy shares instead. That way you're a shareholder, and you can demand better services instead of return on your investment!
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>When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person
The person your quoting hasn't seen how Costco operates. Shareholders complain about the fact that the employees are well paid and that the profits are based on membership dues. The CEO in turn generally ignores them. The philosophy is that if they want to invest in a company that does what they're asking, they should invest in a company that does what they're asking. But yeah, too many people are too focused on what the investors want. Speaking of which, what ever happened to Circuit City?
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You may want to watch recent Lex Fridman podcast with Bill Ackman. It goes hard on this specific topic in great detail on the opposite side of your opinion.
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>When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person. "It becomes 'what can we do this quarter to squeak out an additional point of revenue', instead of 'how can we make this product better'...."
Don't buy reddit gold. Buy shares instead. That way you're a shareholder, and you can demand better services instead of return on your investment!
That quote is a direct misunderstanding of what IPO actually means for a message board / social media site. When the most important customers shift from users to shareholders, the users become the product, and all movement from that point forward is toward maximizing the amount of data / value that can be pulled from them. That's it. That's why the "product" as it is pre-IPO stops looking like it matters. Because it's no longer the product.
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Users of any free site are a product from the start. Customers are actual purchasers of services, for example ad slot buyers.
So IPO brings zero change. Customers continue to be ad buyers. The only thing that changes is that ownership shifts from whoever was bankrolling the company to people who actually agree to buy shares in a company that makes a massive loss every year.
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People often confuse who the "customers" of a service are when money comes from other sources. The typical users of a "free" service are not the product and they are the customers. Additionally there are other customers (advertisers) that are buying attention/screen real estate of the typical users in exchange for money. Without the users, the advertisers won't spend money so the users have to be kept happy if the service is to make money.
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People often confuse who the "customers" of a service are when money comes from other sources. The typical users of a "free" service are not the product and they are the customers. Additionally there are other customers (advertisers) that are buying attention/screen real estate of the typical users in exchange for money. Without the users, the advertisers won't spend money so the users have to be kept happy if the service is to make money.
Reddit seems to have taken exactly the opposite approach over the last few years. I'm always surprised to hear how many people stick with them. It's not like there aren't other options for online discourse.
So... (Score:1)
I haven't logged onto reddit in years. As in at least 4-5 years. And got an email recently telling me that for my "contributions to reddit" I "get to participate in their IPO". Just need to pre-register with them first, by 5.3.2023.
It's amazing how low reddit has fallen. Spamming, ass kissing and trying to push FOMO.
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I haven't logged onto reddit in years. As in at least 4-5 years. And got an email recently telling me that for my "contributions to reddit" I "get to participate in their IPO". Just need to pre-register with them first, by 5.3.2023.
It's amazing how low reddit has fallen. Spamming, ass kissing and trying to push FOMO.
Is there an initial public short that I can take advantage of?
Re: So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember - markets can remain irrational for longer than your can remain solvent.
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I haven't logged onto reddit in years. As in at least 4-5 years. And got an email recently telling me that for my "contributions to reddit" I "get to participate in their IPO". Just need to pre-register with them first, by 5.3.2023.
It's amazing how low reddit has fallen. Spamming, ass kissing and trying to push FOMO.
Is there an initial public short that I can take advantage of?
$800M in revenue coupled to $90M in losses? Why on Earth would you ever short that? In the Tech world, that’s a damn blue chip winner. Watch and see.
Re: So... (Score:2)
It certainly would have been in the bottom days. Maybe not nowadays.
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Not at current interest rates and capital availability.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
It'll be bad (Score:4, Insightful)
As toxic as it is with management trying to do as little as possible with volunteers moderating for the glory of wielding power over other users... Now it's going to have management dedicated to squeezing every possible bit of monetization in futile pursuit of actual profits to satisfy the shareholders.
I don't know exactly how it'll get worse, but it will.
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Caveat emptor! (Score:2)
I suppose there is a reason that 'exciting' and 'exiting' look so similar. Likewise, 'exciting' and 'better' are quite different. So what does it mean? Buyer (and user) beware (aka "caveat emptor" if you like your Caesar or Cicero). Let's just watch and mourn, not much else can be done.
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For the Worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Evey time Reddit gets a cash influx, the user experience gets forcibly worse. $50MM from Tencent: New Reddit happens. $60MM from Google for feeding the "AI": API rates skyrocket into fantasyland.
I expect the IPO (which is almost guanteed to tank) will lead to the end of old.reddit. At which point I am done, because new Reddit is the most user-hostile thing I have ever experienced that wasn't inside a Walmart.
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Well, for me the new new reddit is unusable. The few months ago version worked fine, but then they started messing with things and broke both commenting and downloading of pictures.
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I didn't really start visiting reddit when "old reddit" was reddit. Even after starting on "new", I switched to old reddit after finding it. There is a lot about old reddit I dislike, especially on a mobile browser but it is still better than the alternative.
So I assume they will remove old reddit.
And probably add viewing restrictions to non-logged in readers to try and drive user accounts.
This comes as no surprise... (Score:3)
Because they have been 'fattening Reddit for slaughter' for the last few years. Lots of changes that look good to investors but which shred every cent of real value.
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One has to wonder if investors are by default stupid and whether investing is a "fool and his money" situation.
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It is basically the system that is broken.
As an intituional investtor/investment manager you have to look in the past, not future.
If you predict that something will happen in the future and are wrong, you will lose credibility/bonuses/your job. If you are right you might get a bit bigger bonus.
If you instead base your investing on the past you can always point to it as evidence. That means that you will never lose your job, though your bonus might be a bit lower.
Thus the 99% chose the second option.
In case
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This is very true!
Take a stock like Cracker Barrel. It's shit. It pays a high dividend but has lost 50 percent of its overall value for its investors for the last 5+ years.
What else but backward looking thinking and yield chasing can explain why 96% of the stock is owned by institutions? Why would so many institutional investors own this dreck? Because they're trying to goose current returns without concern for some principal.
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The core of what's broken is that a value of a company is not based on how it performed but rather how some magic-8-ball owners think that it will perform.
no, that's always how it worked (Score:2)
The stock market is a retirement piggybank. These 'institutional investors' we speak of are people running retirement accounts. They have a responsibility to be always invested, but are looking for returns that are higher than what could be achieved through traditional business activity. You could expect 2-3% increases YoY from traditional activity. This market wants 10% YoY. Therefore, you get what we get. The understanding is that every business is ultimately going to be destroyed because you can't
What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Reddit forums are already filled with ads. Could someone restart usenet?
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Unlike Reddit, people pay for that since ISPs dropped them.
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Restart usenet? It still exists. Just need more users!
When what now? (Score:4, Interesting)
"When the most important customers shift from [users]
Have the users ever been the most important customer? The users aren't even the customer, they're the product, always have been. That's the entire point of the site; focused areas for focused advertising dollars. The AI licensing is gravy but will probably be big business, too.
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Have the users ever been the most important customer? The users aren't even the customer, they're the product, always have been.
That's one dimensional. Users go to Reddit for something, that makes them the customer. They can *also* be the product to another customer, but that doesn't make them any less of an important customer. Piss off users and they leave (keep the customer happy), and then you won't be able to sell them to another customer.
The you're the product meme needs to die, it's the result of a lack of critical thought.
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To Reddit the users are not the customer. They are unpaid content generators.
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Yeah they are man. If users stop consuming reddit then the site dies
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To Reddit the users are not the customer. They are unpaid content generators.
Congrats on missing my point. This is two dimensional. You can be both the "customer" and the "content generator" as is in the case of Reddit, a platform that is built to keep content generators happy (after all they wouldn't generate content otherwise). The meme about being the product not the customer is predicated on the belief that a site isn't built in "products" in mind. That is stupid one dimensional thinking. You can be both a customer, a consumer, and a content generator all at once. The words aren
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I didn't miss your point, your point was bullshit.
In what way has Reddit shown that it considers its users "customers"? As in what has Reddit done to benefit them? I can site several things they did that made the Reddit experience harder.
Now maybe *you* like to fuck your customers in the ass and make life difficult for them. But I'll go out on a limb and suggest that's not how an organization that values customers is suppose to act.
Will it be enough to inspire a worthy compeitor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Services almost never improve end user experience after an IPO. I expect the usual which is that it gets worse. The question is, will it get bad enough to finally inspire a solid competitor?
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What would a worthy competitor actually look like?
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https://lemmy.world/ [lemmy.world]
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https://lemmy.world/ [lemmy.world]
Interesting that there is something but Lemmy.world seems to the same toxic free-for-all moderation scheme as Reddit. I must be missing something. What does Lemmy.world have to draw people away from Reddit?
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No ads/promoted posts, the userbase is (currently) a bit higher-brow and technical, and it's a bit smaller which is nice because you can't scroll for hours. I also don't think there's admins banning people for being subscribed to other communities. I've been enjoying it ever since Reddit broke my beloved RIF app.
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What would a worthy competitor actually look like?
One easy thing would be to clone Slashdot's moderation system. Or even improve on it. I mean, it has only been 25 years.
Allowing photos in the comments would also be helpful for image heavy groups, albeit less profound that fixing the current group think exaggerating moderation system.
Maybe even resurrect Usenet's hierarchy so it becomes easier to find appropriate groups.
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Slashdot's moderation system is pretty garbage, especially for smaller communities
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Slashdot's moderation system is pretty garbage, especially for smaller communities
Compared to what? It is far superior to what Reddit uses despite being created several years before Reddit was founded. I'm not say that Slashdot moderation is perfect and enough time has elapsed that someone must have a better solution but If Slashdot is "garbage" than Reddit moderation is "toxic nuclear waste". Still an improvement.
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The major issues are:
No reordering of threads so you get the "first" posts stay on top for the lifetime, even if they're low quality. This tends to drive the discussion more than it needs to.
Only posting or Moderating. I can see the thought behind it, but it doesn't really make sense in practice unless the community is the exact right size. Either the community is large enough that there are more moderators to balance things out or the community is small and it reduces the moderation/posting because peop
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The major issues are:
No reordering of threads so you get the "first" posts stay on top for the lifetime, even if they're low quality. This tends to drive the discussion more than it needs to.
Only posting or Moderating. I can see the thought behind it, but it doesn't really make sense in practice unless the community is the exact right size. Either the community is large enough that there are more moderators to balance things out or the community is small and it reduces the moderation/posting because people can't do both.
This is necessary. If you allow people to moderate and post, people will routinely downvote comments that disagree with their own comments. This happens all the time on Reddit. Slashdot forces users to choose to between arguing their points (and generally getting wrapped up in their own viewpoints) and being the quality filter.
Similarly, random moderation is just a hinderance. I guess it goes with the rarely used meta-moderation, but that depends a lot on user interaction to work.
Random moderation is also necessary. Moderation should be an occasional privilege not another channel to participate in the thread as it is on Reddit. If volume is slow, as happe
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Yep, there are bunch of decisions that theoretically sound like they're great, but in practice don't really work any better than the alternatives. Just to be clear here, there's the moderation done by "official" moderators that will delete posts of certain nature (spam, illegal, etc), and then there's the moderation done by the users which is used to highlight or hide posts. We're only talking about the second one.
If you allow people to moderate and post, people will routinely downvote comments that disagree with their own comments.
Who cares? One person can only moderate a handful of posts anyways and there should be lots
Not That Long Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
We had this thing called Usenet. Not only was it free, it was important enough that it had its own Internet protocol called NNTP. It was separate from the web and email. It wasn't under someone's control. Nobody owned it.
For reasons that still have not been adequately explained, the people who invested most heavily into the concept of a free and open Internet cheered when big tech came to usurp our power. They aggressively set out to destroy everything. Flash, Netscape, the web, email, Usenet - all claimed and then either choked into submission or thrown overboard in the name of "safety."
Now the entire commercial software market is controlled by three companies. All Internet communication is strictly controlled by a half dozen companies. The web is all but dead. Nobody knows what Usenet even is. Big tech is on the verge of outright blocking email at the router. It's all going away. It didn't even last 30 years.
The least technologically knowledgeable people who have ever lived have convinced the entire world that the Internet is unsafe, and we not only let it happen, we made it happen.
We don't deserve the Internet. That's why it will be taken from us.
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Ok.. I'm not easily impressed. But I'm impressed..
The writing was on the wall as of the Eternal Autumn. We would not elevate.
But then again two first gen ISPs arguing about peering agreements on USENET is at least as noxious (in the end game) as say Reddit?
Maybe there was just an elitism back then which made the pain unimportant.
Re:Not That Long Ago (Score:4, Funny)
The elitism back then was that it took an IQ above room temperature to successfully connect to the internet.
Since that dropped considerably, we now just have to do our own type of elitism: We keep the room temperature IQ people outside and herd them to places like Reddit.
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Story of my life. Post something insightful, see it being modded funny. Post something funny, see it modded troll.Be pissed off and post a troll posting, see it modded insightful...
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The elitism back then was that it took an IQ above room temperature to successfully connect to the internet.
To be fair: It took an IQ above room temperature to even be interested in the internet.
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Maybe that's why there was no reason to dumb it down.
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We had this thing called Usenet. Not only was it free, it was important enough that it had its own Internet protocol called NNTP.
to be fair, it wasn't "free", it was paid for by the universities and isp who ran the servers. it was actually part of any basic internet access package, just like email. later dedicated paid news services appeared that didn't fare too well.
also, it was indeed "unsafe" as nntp was designed by well meaning academics with exclusively bona fide use in mind. spoofing or even deleting other's content was trivial. as soon as it went slightly popular it was recklessly abused by spammers, trolls and loads of people
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Usenet still lives. Let's use it.
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If we use it with our current clients it will suck rocks. There will be too many users and it will be infeasible to wade through the shit. You will spend 99% of your time updating your kill file. USENET was from a more civilized age, you can't pretend things haven't changed and get good results.
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Pay for it. Yup, no longer "free" for some illusion of free.
They will increase the ban on politically incorrec (Score:2, Interesting)
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Yeah, get used to it. Get a new mail address, get a new account and move on.
Re:They will increase the ban on politically incor (Score:5, Informative)
You say you were banned for expressing conservative views, but let's consider what passes for the "conservative" viewpoint lately:
- Women can't have abortions under any circumstance, even if their life is in danger and there's no realistic chance for the fetus to survive. Any doctor who provides one will be subject to arrest for murder and their fate decided by Christian extremists who have no medical training whatsoever but still feel entitled to make medical judgements.
- Regulatory agencies should be gutted and all control passed to Congress (who can't even agree on funding the government)
- Corporations and the wealthy deserve huge tax breaks that add trillions to the deficit
- Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and all other programs that benefit the poor should have their budgets slashed into nothing to help make up for the deficits caused by giving corporations tax breaks.
- More people should go to jail and stay there for minor offenses, particularly poor people who can't afford bail.
- The only conceivable solution to mass shootings is to provide more people with more guns
- Trying to overthrow an election is okay
- The President is immune to being charged with a crime
- Putin should be allowed to take over Ukraine (bonus: points for insisting Putin is welcome to attack NATO allies and insisting the USA won't defend them)
- Dressing up as a Nazi and marching in the streets while chanting "Jews will not replace us" is perfectly okay, but protesting the murder of black people at the hands of police is terrorism.
- Forcing everyone to adhere to Christian beliefs even if they aren't Christian is also perfectly okay
I could go on, but let's be honest; you posted some inflammatory bullshit and got smacked down for it. Now you're here whining about it and hiding behind the term "conservative views" as if the conservative party hasn't been completely taken over by extremists who espouse some of the worst opinions available in the USA these days.
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You do realize that the word conservative has a meaning, right?
You do know that there are people who are conservative in their views and politics right?
You do realize that there are people who are claiming to be Conservative (yes, capital C) who are not actually being conservative right?
If you let them hijack the language, we can no longer communicate.
TL;DR, there are numerous people claiming to be Conservative who are not conservative. That does NOT erase the original meaning of the word conservative. Assu
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You weren't posting in r/conservative. I guarantee it.
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I was already banned for advocating for conservative views a few weeks ago
What? You were banned for wanting lower taxes? Smaller government? Deregulation? Oh, those views.
We might get an answer to an eternal question (Score:2)
Is there a way to escalate "worst"?
Enshittification (Score:2)
They are now very close to the end state. Mindless greed will do that.
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Oh you're cute, you think Enshittification has an end state.
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It has. The platform dies. For large heaps of crap (like Microsoft), that may take decades, but for Reddit?
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It has. The platform dies. For large heaps of crap (like Microsoft), that may take decades, but for Reddit?
But Reddit is already manure and has been for... I'm not sure. Has it ever not been manure? And yet it persists. I'm not sure why. It doesn't have the strong network effect of eBay.
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True. This is surprising, no argument. My personal theory is that there is a trigger-point where the heap just has gotten a tiny bit too high and then it collapses. Just a theory and there is not enough research into the question at this time.
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In that case why would you think Reddit is close to the end state? Monthly active users were at an all time high in 2023. Daily active users were at an all time high in 2023. If you are judging a platform by its death spiral as the enshittification end state then Reddit's enshittification by your metric hasn't even started yet (which it clearly has).
It's very very far from the end state. They still need to do a metric shitton of things wrong before the platform even calls in sick for work, let alone dies.
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So, you have absolute truth in this question? I do not. I have an intuition and I know it can be wrong. You should try that approach some time.
when a company loses money, how do people get paid (Score:2)
One word says it all (Score:2)
Enshittification [wikipedia.org]
(Word of the Year for 2023)