• smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    “Our company doesn’t make money, it also is projected to not be able to continue to make money. We’ve attempted multiple ways of monetizing the userbase, all of which has not recouped costs. We value ourselves at 6.4 billion dollars.”

    lol, she said.

    lmao.

    • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      That means that over and above whatever debts they have, they think the market values the data their users have given them is worth that much. That said, if Google is only paying then $60M/year for access to that data, they are going to need a lot of customers like that to reach $6.4B valuation.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        It’s also only valuable if people keep contributing to it. It’s highly likely the majority of current existing reddit data has been largely incorporated into many LLMs prior to the API access limiting. Google paying them 60 million dollars is a hilarious pittance to keep training their LLMs, given how much money AI services will likely generate off of the training data.

        I don’t actively use reddit anymore, but when I need an answer to something that isn’t programming-related, it’s usually the top source on any given web search. That kind of content is basically the only stuff I would give a shit about. I can’t imagine how much absolute garbage you have to sift through on the platform to get reliable training data. Maybe the ratio is terrible and that’s why Google paid so little.

  • PenguinCoder@beehaw.org
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    9 months ago

    And so enshrined is that final nail in the enshitiffication coffin that was Reddit. I give it 3mo before Spez leaves Reddit to focus on [whatever].

    • Xatolos@reddthat.com
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      9 months ago

      As the site has never posted a profit in all its 18 years of operation, when has it not failed in a business sense?

    • Sabata11792@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      They know it will be big backlash so they got to wait till the move is profitable. Knowing these morons though, they will do it as soon as business times brings it up.

        • Sabata11792@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          Some one somewhere is dumb enough to select the worst possible business decision for their niche audience. Look at tumblr.

          Some one is going to see banning porn will bump up ad revenue without caring that it kills the platform. Got to keep the inverters happy.

        • Zworf@beehaw.org
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          9 months ago

          Or OnlyFans 😆 They almost went out of business. It was really disingenious to have a porn site… ban porn? 🤔 😶

          I don’t think porn is a huge part of Reddit though. I always loved the way they had these great amateur communities of real exhibitionists, but lately things have been ruined anyway with more commercial people just teasing their onlyfans.

          But due to the niche communities there, I think reddit banning porn would be a real opportunity for lemmynsfw. A mainstream community is much harder to move but a niche community can move pretty rapidly.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    9 months ago

    They must not have gotten a lot of takers when they offered buy-in options to power-Redditors (or whatever they called it). My account is old but was never super active, and I got an email a few weeks ago trying to get me to buy in. LOL nope.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        I think it has to do with karma count.

        I had two accounts, one had been scrubbed and was mostly used for commenting, and the other was a porn alt.

        The porn alt has hundreds of thousands of karma and it got multiple IPO messages while the original, older account got nothing due to being sub 5k on posts.

        Edit: Suspicions confirmed!

        Reddit is planning six tiers of early access based on each “participant’s contributions to Reddit,” the company said in its updated SEC filing. Those tiers are based on a user’s “karma” score, ostensibly an aggregate total of up/down votes on posts and comments.

        The first tier of users will be those “who have meaningfully contributed to Reddit community programs,” though what that means isn’t explained more clearly. After that come tier 2 users, who must hold at least 200,000 karma points or have taken at least 5,000 moderator actions. Tier three includes users and moderators who hold at least 100,000 karma points and have taken 2,500 moderator actions. Tiers 4 and 5 are each half of the previous tier’s total, and tier 6 includes everyone else, with a waitlist available if the total number of shares purchased exceeds the original 1.76 million.

        • blindsight@beehaw.org
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          9 months ago

          I just checked and I got two emails from then asking if I want to buy in.

          lol, hell no.

          I would buy puts, if anything, but the valuation on puts will make them too expensive.

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        9 months ago

        I haven’t logged in for months, but I’d guess I’d have similar DMs too (that will forever remain unread). Only reason I didn’t delete the account was because so many people kept showing their accounts being restored against their wishes.

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    users could become unruly if Reddit stock falls below the IPO price.

    Lmao, dude doesn’t know redditors at all, do they?

    • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Actually part of their IPO paperwork lists WSB as a potential positive benefit to the stock, in terms of having a clear userbase that will theoretically help sustain the value through shenanigans. That, to me, however, sounds like a securities violation waiting to happen.

      I don’t check reddit anymore. Does WSB actually consider this stock to be, uh, actually valuable? Every corner of the internet I’ve seen discuss this topic have all noted how worthless they think the shares are going to be. My money is on them shorting it.

      • athos77@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        Lmao, I was thinking more about how fractious reddit is even without provocation, but you’re right, too!

  • megopie@beehaw.org
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    9 months ago

    I mean, this will probably kill the platform long term. Not the stock its self, but what’s going to happen when they need to start answering to an outside pool of share holders.

    The website became popular because of its user curation and moderation. That meant it was showing people what they wanted to see and allowed them to self select into communities that facilitated that.

    They’ll be forced to bring in smooth brained business types that will focus on putting ads and “native content” in people’s faces as much as possible. At the same time cracking down on “not advertiser friendly” content and mod teams that don’t play ball.

    All of this has kind of happened already to some extent, but it’ll get a lot worse when shareholders demand they bring in consultants or new leadership who think they know better than the team that’s been struggling with this for over a decade. Even if the average user won’t understand what is wrong, they’ll spend less time there as it starts to fail to show them what they want. But hey, the share holders might make their money back before the platform dies.

  • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Oh man are reddit users in for it when they have to answer to the market and public shareholders. Who really will just be a bunch of evil boomers holding institutional blocks.

  • BioDriver@beehaw.org
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    9 months ago

    I am not a broker and this is not advice. But I think this is a fantastic short opportunity.

  • neocamel@lemmy.studio
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    9 months ago

    Lol they’re trying to sell me shares at “pre-ipo prices”.

    I asked if they have any puts available… So far no reply…

    • rinze@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      What has been your involvement with Reddit as a user so far? I’m trying to understand what users are getting those offers.

      • Brad@beehaw.org
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        9 months ago

        I received the offer on my 16 year old Reddit account, but not on another account I have that’s more like 12. Not sure if they went by account age or activity or what.

        I did not try to get in on the IPO (or pre-IPO.)

          • Kissaki@beehaw.org
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            9 months ago

            If they’re profiling then they’re bad at it. They offered it to me despite being a US-resident-only offer - which I am not.

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        9 months ago

        I got an offer. I was a user since 2012, I think? Definitely not a top poster or anything.

        Ignored it, of course.

  • Neato@ttrpg.network
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    9 months ago

    So that’s how much they value their current and future data gathering operations to be. Because we know it isn’t going to turn a profit, ever.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      NFTs, crypto…

      Oh wait, they axed the main vector to make those valuable (third party apps), didn’t build a real market for any of it, then rugpulled everyone. Guess it’s just the Google results now… for comments that people forgot to blank.