I’ve only read terrible quality discussion about this so far. I could link the HN thread for completeness but it’s not worth it. I’m not sure what will happen to this stock; after all, Reddit has...
I’ve only read terrible quality discussion about this so far. I could link the HN thread for completeness but it’s not worth it.
I’m not sure what will happen to this stock; after all, Reddit has a significant network effect and if it dies out it could even take up to a decade for it to be truly out, who knows.
But the elephant in the room: Reddit is desperate, shooting hundreds of features at the wall to see what sticks, and a lot of that was obviously IPO-driven development. I doubt it will get better from now on. And it could definitely get worse.
I still occasionally open Reddit, primarily for my local communities (r/Brussels for example). But it’s out of my life and tbh I don’t get all the people who say “the day old.reddit is removed is the day I stop using it”. Either the content is worth the pain in which case you’ll find an alternative or will simply use the shitty UI, or the content isn’t worth it in which case… just stop using it now instead of Stockholm syndroming your social media diet.
Personal opinion, the content isn’t worth it. It’s getting worse still. But Reddit has had significant positives since early on. It’s the only site that really figured out how to let users create independent communities at scale, it solved the discovery problem, etc. These are unique selling points to the site.
However, they failed to capitalise on those. All their IPO moves have been anti-community if anything. Reddit is a chef’s delicate meal, and its CEO is following a frozen pizza recipe and putting it in the microwave to warm it up for the IPO.
Less informed investors will see it’s hot and might buy. I will not.
As someone who says "the day old.reddit stops working is my last day on the site", my reasoning is this: There are degrees of worth. Reddit's content could be so amazing that it would be worth...
Either the content is worth the pain in which case you’ll find an alternative or will simply use the shitty UI, or the content isn’t worth it in which case… just stop using it now instead of Stockholm syndroming your social media diet.
As someone who says "the day old.reddit stops working is my last day on the site", my reasoning is this:
There are degrees of worth. Reddit's content could be so amazing that it would be worth crawling through broken glass for; or it could be meh, worth consuming if it's easy to do so, but not otherwise; or it could be total garbage, not worth consuming under any circumstances or even worth going to lengths to avoid. (Any conversations about Reddit specifically are further complicated by the siloing of subreddits; any two people could have arbitrarily different experiences on the site depending on subreddit subscriptions.) For me, personally, it's just barely above the "meh" line—there's content I enjoy on the subs I'm subscribed to, but there's nothing I'd consider valuable with anything approaching regularity, and so if the site got more annoying to use, there's nothing remotely valuable enough for me to put up with that annoyance.
The new interface literally degrades the quality of the content, beyond just being an unpleasant eyesore. It parcels out content in tiny, not-even-bite-sized pieces, making it incredibly laborious to follow conversations and making those conversations just outright less likely to happen.
This is a little meta, but I have a strong suspicion that most of the people posting the rare piece of content I do find valuable are also in the "old. or death" camp. If they follow through on their ultimatum, that's also directly reducing the quality of the content.
I agree wholeheartedly with your take on the IPO, though. Maybe they can turn meme-and-racism "engagement" numbers into success on the IPO front (I mean, I sure as hell hope not, but I'm certainly not going to bet on the intelligence or insight of the people who buy into tech IPOs), but in the process, they will definitely lose every remaining vestige of real "value", at least from my perspective.
There's a deep level of cynicism I read here that I feel is unwarranted. Lots of publicly traded tech companies make money based on lots of different factors. There's everything from AMD to WeWork...
I agree wholeheartedly with your take on the IPO, though. Maybe they can turn meme-and-racism "engagement" numbers into success on the IPO front (I mean, I sure as hell hope not, but I'm certainly not going to bet on the intelligence or insight of the people who buy into tech IPOs), but in the process, they will definitely lose every remaining vestige of real "value", at least from my perspective.
There's a deep level of cynicism I read here that I feel is unwarranted. Lots of publicly traded tech companies make money based on lots of different factors. There's everything from AMD to WeWork out there.
This is only a response to a very small part of your comment, but I do not think "Reddit's content" is one giant thing that is equally "worth it" or not. It has a bunch of different types of...
This is only a response to a very small part of your comment, but I do not think "Reddit's content" is one giant thing that is equally "worth it" or not. It has a bunch of different types of content. Some are worth it, some are not, and this will differ for most people.
For me:
Discussion of links? Not worth it on most subs
Questions with mostly objective answers? Probably worth it
(How do I do X, r/tipofmytongue and it's category specific counterparts, etc)
Asking for recommendations (separated from questions since the answers might not be as objective, but upvotes generally work alright enough for most cases I've seen)
(What is the best X that does/is Y, etc)
Politics? No.
Memes and other "fluff"? Depends on which subs you look at. Smaller and/or strictly moderated subs (there doesn't seem to be much) are more "worth it" than the big ones.
Even the vaguely large ones get ruined by karma farmers, people who do not check before crossposting (I can't count how many times I seen the same thing back to back on /new from different people) and repost bots (which are way too easy to spot but regularly get upvoted).
That's why I stopped going, or going much less, since the 2016 era. I'm not really into politics but politics invaded even standard subs, much of it right wing. It got bad enough that I recall...
Politics
That's why I stopped going, or going much less, since the 2016 era. I'm not really into politics but politics invaded even standard subs, much of it right wing. It got bad enough that I recall comments endorsing rape being upvoted, racism upvoted, nationalist posts upvoted along with what happened to coincide with pro-Trump posts. I browsed 8ch at the time and you'd encounter upvote scripts which apparently were being used on the MAGA/conservative subs as I tried them myself and sure enough they worked, reddit didn't do a thing about it. /r/all was being invaded.
'Well there goes the neighborhood', or so I thought, and I began looking for other places to spend my time. Reddit since the beginning had a left-wing tilt but during that era it went crudely to the right and in recent years it seems to have slowly went left again, generally speaking. Since then I've only browsed a couple specialist subs involving women and motorcycles but I'll never have the same relationship with it or humanity again, to see a place and people you once loved turn so ugly and hateful in such a short time. I think it really did effect me more that I think about it; it's made me very untrusting of people in general. Of course it's not just reddit but youtube, HN, here as well but much less, that comments hating on certain people are upvoted; Amusingly, tildes seems to have a certain hatred towards people who cosplay as witches, I've found out. Anyway, I can understand more if it's retaliatory but when it comes to hating on innocents, that really lowers my view of people when they have nothing better to do than seek out ways to be offended by such benign things.
Edit: Maybe it's me though. I just seem to soak up hatred and become hateful when exposed to it. I used to be pretty right-wing and hateful myself and so it took a while for me to realize how to overcome it but it's just so disappointing to see it happen with what you'd think are much smarter and civilized people than yourself. You wonder why the hell humanity just isn't over it yet and so it's easy to lose faith in it.
/unintendedrant - Guess I had to let it all out as I never spoke about it before
The tildes community isn’t anywhere large enough to cast the wide net of a hive mind. Case in point: I know not just the thread but even the individual usernames you’re referring to in that...
Amusingly, tildes seems to have a certain hatred towards people who cosplay as witches, I've found out.
The tildes community isn’t anywhere large enough to cast the wide net of a hive mind.
Case in point: I know not just the thread but even the individual usernames you’re referring to in that sentence. (And hatred is a big word for that… but I digress)
I don't think hive minds are necessarily correlated with community size beyond a certain threshold (e.g. my partner and I agree on most issues, one could call us a hivemind). In one old friend...
The tildes community isn’t anywhere large enough to cast the wide net of a hive mind.
I don't think hive minds are necessarily correlated with community size beyond a certain threshold (e.g. my partner and I agree on most issues, one could call us a hivemind). In one old friend group of mine, we often find ourselves responding to jokes in the same way between us, so we have lots of jokes about us being a hive mind. Hive mind and echo chamber are both phrases I use to denote communities which have high levels of agreement on most issues.
Hive minds reside in small communities also and we have to admit, tildes does have one. I'd also say that hatred isn't just the extreme to which one expresses emotion but the number of hosts which...
Hive minds reside in small communities also and we have to admit, tildes does have one. I'd also say that hatred isn't just the extreme to which one expresses emotion but the number of hosts which express it. Even if the majority have mild disdain for something or someone, as history has taught us, it can easily turn into a death sentence with the power of the majority so no, I don't think hatred is a big word when a majority expresses even slight disdain for something. A mild power of one can turn into a large power when combined. That's also when a power vacuum is created, someone has power (hatred) to express and so you're an easy vector, certain malicious individuals feel it's safe to take you down when very few will care and so you have to constantly be on-guard, in turn it's easy to become filled with hatred yourself.
I digress also, I think as far as explaining myself goes. I've long digressed and just stopped caring, for the most part. Let people hate as long as I too can do it.
Why let yourself be ruled by such emotions? Focusing on hate allows it to occupy space in your mind, it poisons your thoughts and your mood. I know, I know, much easier said than done, but why not...
Let people hate as long as I too can do it.
Why let yourself be ruled by such emotions? Focusing on hate allows it to occupy space in your mind, it poisons your thoughts and your mood. I know, I know, much easier said than done, but why not try and at least make a conscious effort to reframe hate - to educate others, to try and be compassionate, to connect and to occupy your mind with healthier thoughts instead?
Because it's not as simple as hate = bad, love = good. Sometimes love can be bad and hate can be good. You hate being hungry so you seek food. You hate authoritarian dictators so you go to war and...
Because it's not as simple as hate = bad, love = good. Sometimes love can be bad and hate can be good. You hate being hungry so you seek food. You hate authoritarian dictators so you go to war and oust them. Some amount of hatred is a good thing. Why else would it pervade society so much? It has obvious evolutionary benefits or it'd be selected against.
Just like many disgusting things can be good for us. Many nutritious foods don't smell very good. Working out causes pain but it's good for us to an extent. Bacteria in our stomachs and mouths smell bad but it has its own benefit. I can't completely write off the hatred of others and invalidate it, even if it does disgust me. All I can say is I don't like it but I feel I'm fighting against a much stronger opponent than myself, mother nature. I have my own oasis' away from it sometimes but I can't not think about it because it's my own brain trying to parse and process the nature of humanity, to completely disregard it and not dispense it myself would be a disadvantage to myself and living with my eyes shut. As much as I wanted to be idealistic and not see a reflection of ugliness in others that is also in myself, I've come to accept the ugly for what it is. I think it's made me more reasonable as I'm more accepting of the negative thoughts of others and can work through it and with them better. I've tried compassion before all the while going nowhere, though sometimes it did, but it's an emotional tool like the others, there's a time that it works and a time that it doesn't.
I don't really view either of these as hate. The way I experience hunger is often a form of pain or desire. I do not hate the state of being hungry. In some cases, I actually enjoy the state,...
You hate being hungry so you seek food. You hate authoritarian dictators so you go to war and oust them.
I don't really view either of these as hate. The way I experience hunger is often a form of pain or desire. I do not hate the state of being hungry. In some cases, I actually enjoy the state, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish.
I do occasionally hate people who are vile- who demean and demonize others. People who put themselves above everyone else... but the hate is really just a response to the outcome they create and a longing for something different. It's a reflection of my disgust and being upset at the state of things. The hate is not necessary, in fact, re-framing to specifically focus on the suffering of others and how I can be of use can help to emphasize the good I want to see in the world is a practice I find particularly useful. I can focus on the happy stories -that there are people willing to sacrifice themselves to help out others, that people share their resources, hide the persecuted, defy authorities that oppress and spread harm.
I'm not so convinced that hate is necessary or useful. In fact, I would say I rarely experience anger or hatred nowadays. Contempt and scorn at times, but typically not hate.
I've come to accept the ugly for what it is. I think it's made me more reasonable as I'm more accepting of the negative thoughts of others and can work through it and with them better.
Accepting and processing to move past the negative or to use the intrinsic motivation it provides us is definitely a useful and good action. In fact, I would say it's a necessary one because we are not in complete control of our emotions, but what you are describing here is trying to minimize the time you spend focusing on that emotion. Why not take it an extra step and spend time trying to re-frame so that your mind doesn't automatically jump to these emotions, or moves on even quicker?
I've tried compassion before all the while going nowhere, though sometimes it did, but it's an emotional tool like the others, there's a time that it works and a time that it doesn't.
You do raise an important point here that any emotional state affects how we act and we need to safeguard against being taken advantage of or leaning into emotions that aren't useful in the moment. I just don't personally see where hatred is more useful than other emotions. However, I also recognize that the way I interact with the world is not how everyone else does, and others acting differently is a wonderful positive outcome of diversity - for example some people may be more likely to enact change or change their opinion in response to different stimuli. Perhaps seeing the anger that a particular action breeds in others is the stimulus needed for some, rather than seeing others be compassionate or redirecting.
I think we're arguing semantics here. Let's forget the word hate and use 'negativity' as it's more applicable and encompassing. And regarding acceptable times to use these emotions, it depends on...
scorn/hunger
I think we're arguing semantics here. Let's forget the word hate and use 'negativity' as it's more applicable and encompassing. And regarding acceptable times to use these emotions, it depends on context and person. Did responding positively to mass murdering dictators make them not do such things? In many cases it didn't so I know you don't outright say it but no, love, understanding and forgiveness, I'd call positive responses, didn't conquer them. As we've seen in recent years, positive responses don't always make the baddies go away and in many ways it just feeds them. Sometimes they just need kicked out or deplatformed because when it doesn't work, it acts as a power vacuum, not as a way to put out the fire. Like the paradox of tolerance, you can't have a tolerant system if you tolerate those who aren't, within some degree, so you have to play the enemy's game to some extent.
Okay if we're talking about the usefulness of any negative emotion and whether it can be ultimately moral or good to occasionally make use of these, I fully agree with that statement. Mostly I was...
Okay if we're talking about the usefulness of any negative emotion and whether it can be ultimately moral or good to occasionally make use of these, I fully agree with that statement. Mostly I was left with the impression that you were actively choosing to lean into negative emotions, and was curious why you'd allow them to poison your mind. If viewed through the lens of "this can be useful, if employed correctly", I have no quarrel with that statement. Thanks for the discussion.
More like 'biased to', hence why I tried to avoid politics for most of the election cycle as I saw I was succumbing way too much to the negativeness of it all. I already have enough negativity...
actively choosing to lean into negative emotions
More like 'biased to', hence why I tried to avoid politics for most of the election cycle as I saw I was succumbing way too much to the negativeness of it all. I already have enough negativity within and long ago realized it can easily become degenerate to oneself and society if not tempered by reason or some sort of positivity. It's also why I choose to be around more positive people as yourself, I need that more in my life. I know tildes isn't always a positive place but moreso than many other places on the internet.
That's a fair point. I'll clarify my comment and say that by "worth it" I meant "worth using Reddit as a part of the 'social media diet' of the day", comparing it to how most people use Facebook,...
That's a fair point. I'll clarify my comment and say that by "worth it" I meant "worth using Reddit as a part of the 'social media diet' of the day", comparing it to how most people use Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
To me, Reddit's situational upsides do not make up for how shit the site is in general.
I've been on Reddit for over 10 years on my /u/Algernon_Asimov account. In that time, I moderated a lot of subreddits, including some high-profile ones. For example, I was a very active moderator...
tbh I don’t get all the people who say “the day old.reddit is removed is the day I stop using it”.
I've been on Reddit for over 10 years on my /u/Algernon_Asimov account. In that time, I moderated a lot of subreddits, including some high-profile ones. For example, I was a very active moderator of /r/Help for a few years.
But, when the redesign happened a few years ago, it became more and more difficult for me to justify to users how and why Reddit worked the way it worked - so I stepped back from /r/Help, and a few other subreddits. These days, my footprint as "Algernon" is minimal.
However, during my heyday, I created a second account for a niche purpose. And, using that account, I started up a subreddit as a personal project. I then got invited to moderate a few related subreddits. Then I inherited a subreddit when its founder had a meltdown. So I'm sort of stuck with these subreddits and subscribers that I feel responsible for. I still take a very active interest in the subreddit I started up. It has over 20,000 subscribers now, nearly 5 years on. I also feel responsible for the subreddit I inherited. I've got some fellow mods who help out in these subreddits, but there's noone I can hand them over to. If I leave, my "personal project" subreddit will die, and I don't like that idea after spending a few years building it up. It's my little oasis of quality amidst a bunch of mediocre subreddits about the same topic. Also, I've got the inherited running smoothly after the founder's meltdown 2 years ago, and I don't want to cause those disruptions again by leaving.
So I'm still on Reddit, despite its new interface - which I avoid using as much as possible.
I think that's the rub. The reason why a lot of people visit the site (myself included) is because of the communities that develop on different subreddits. I know some people don't curate their...
Personal opinion, the content isn’t worth it. It’s getting worse still. But Reddit has had significant positives since early on. It’s the only site that really figured out how to let users create independent communities at scale, it solved the discovery problem, etc. These are unique selling points to the site.
However, they failed to capitalise on those. All their IPO moves have been anti-community if anything. Reddit is a chef’s delicate meal, and its CEO is following a frozen pizza recipe and putting it in the microwave to warm it up for the IPO.
I think that's the rub. The reason why a lot of people visit the site (myself included) is because of the communities that develop on different subreddits. I know some people don't curate their subs and even some people just browse the front page without even logging in. But, Reddit, at its best, isn't a one-size fits all type of thing. It just says, "Here are all the sizes, pick the ones you like! (Oh, and if you see a size that's missing, and you are motivated, make your own!)" There is no way to "capitalize" on that, holistically because of that inherent heterogeneity. I think Reddit is at its best when it's a "dumb pipe". But, "dumb pipes" aren't appealing to those who want to control the whole system.
Reddit's success has seemed to me to come largely from doing right by the users and mods. I highly doubt continuing to add features that users/mods never asked for that also go against the grain of letting subs do their own thing will lead to any sort of innovation that will lead to any meaningful improvement.
I still check out reddit maybe once or twice a day, but the volume of interesting content is basically a trickle. I no longer feel the need to scroll because there was always something else to...
I still check out reddit maybe once or twice a day, but the volume of interesting content is basically a trickle. I no longer feel the need to scroll because there was always something else to see. It's more like the first page has a handful of mildly amusing or interesting things in it and then trash.
Even the vaunted "niche subreddits" that people say are "still good" are actually not. The DIY hobbyists now follow YouTubers or streamers and have decamped their communities to places like Discord, Twitch Chat, or the comments sections of the creators they follow. The more consumptive niches (like fashion, cars, mechanical keyboards, etc.) are all just hypebeasty, lowest common denominator nonsense that you could find anywhere. There's no point in popular curation if all it does is replicate the front page of what you'd find on any mass-market online magazine. Like if I'm on /r/Watches how many "FINALLY GOT MY GRAIL WATCH!" posts with pictures of a Tudor Black Bay or Moonwatch do I need to see? What's the value of /r/Sneakers if all it does is plug into the press release of the handful of major brands? Any blog could have done that.
The formerly well regarded, well moderated subs are also useless. Interesting questions on /r/AskHistorians don't really get answered anymore. And even the questions that do get answered are being covered by people who are venturing outside their areas of expertise and don't necessarily have a great idea of what they're talking about. Ditto /r/AskScience. The other /r/Asks are just dead.
The News and Politics subs are, likewise, dominated by group-thinky bullies and being involved in them feels more like immersing yourself into a sea of 15 year olds practicing for jobs as Chief Propaganda Officer for when their [extremist political ideology of the week] is ascendant.
And it's mostly because, like you said, their changes have been anti-community. The AskExperts subs suck because experts don't idly hang out to happen upon questions anymore. The discussion subs suck because they're weighted so heavily for making it easy to post that low-value content drowns out everything else. Once that happened it started a feedback loop where people who aren't into that stuff leave.
On another level, I think Reddit style curation might also just be a relic of a past internet where most content was hosted on independent blogs and web pages. In today's internet most content is in silo'd platforms, which is why most of what you see on Reddit today is just links to Instagram posts, TikToks, and Tweets rather than direct links to images or blog posts. I don't need Reddit to find me tweets from people whose tweets I'd care to read. Twitter can already do that. I may have needed Reddit to find blog posts (or Substacks I guess) from people I don't follow but have interesting things to say, but Reddit is no longer good at doing that. Even the memes are bad now.
Reddit may have some longevity just out of some companies feeling obligated to engage with it. I know of several game studios who establish and maintain a subreddit largely just so they can have admin control over it rather than having a rogue web-page. But their hearts are rarely in it. /r/FrostGiant is actually pretty good, but the quality of discussion in it is largely garbage. They're just using it in lieu of publishing what are functionally "white papers" on their own website. I suspect this is just driven by inertia with the FrostGiant developers stuck in an outdated mental model of where online culture is now. I see no opportunity for stuff like this on Reddit to exist any longer.
Cool! I wish them the best of luck. I've been a Reddit user since... shortly after the Python rewrite. Reddit, the internet, and the whole world was a very different place then. Congrats to the...
Cool! I wish them the best of luck. I've been a Reddit user since... shortly after the Python rewrite. Reddit, the internet, and the whole world was a very different place then. Congrats to the long journey!
Noticed just yesterday that they outright shut their mobile web. Used to just be a really annoying "use the app" banner you could close but now you can't even close it. Not sure I'll ever be going...
Noticed just yesterday that they outright shut their mobile web. Used to just be a really annoying "use the app" banner you could close but now you can't even close it. Not sure I'll ever be going back to Reddit after that.
So I think anyone who has been using Reddit for a while can agree that as far as its utility as a discussion platform goes, it’s been on a long decline. I dislike the direction they are moving the...
So I think anyone who has been using Reddit for a while can agree that as far as its utility as a discussion platform goes, it’s been on a long decline. I dislike the direction they are moving the site in and have basically siloed myself into whatever niche communities I’m interested in.
However, what does everyone think of Reddit as an investment? Do you think the IPO will go over well? What about longterm? Despite some of the anti-user behaviour, Reddit does seem to be as popular as ever.
It’s really impossible to tell right now - the company is a complete black box, as private companies are. When the public S-1 is released is when everyone gets the chance to dig into numbers. On a...
It’s really impossible to tell right now - the company is a complete black box, as private companies are. When the public S-1 is released is when everyone gets the chance to dig into numbers.
On a side note, when a company IPOs and it’s stock immediately jumps that’s technically bad for the company although potentially good for employees and other shareholders. If it jumps that means all those expensive investment bankers priced you too low. The optimal case for the company is that it IPOs and the price stays the same or increases slightly - that means those Goldman Sachs folks did a good job figuring out what your market value is.
Well, you know what they say about timing the market. In particular, this is just filing the confidential S-1 to the SEC - given that, it would give them an actual likely IPO time of around...
Well, you know what they say about timing the market. In particular, this is just filing the confidential S-1 to the SEC - given that, it would give them an actual likely IPO time of around halfway through 2022, and who knows what the market would be like by them.
The dynamics of stock pricing going below or above the offer price being good or bad for a company is complicated in general, though. In some aspects, for the company as an entity's perspective, it's kinda good? If you believe the markets are being efficient (which they certainly are not always right now), then that means your IBs did a great job selling you to the institutional investors who bought your initial offering, and you raised way more money than you should have.
However, it's not great for insiders - particularly employees, who will be in lockup for ~6 months. It can cause those new board members to get quite unhappy and demand changes. It also can affect how capital the company has access to. But then again, if the markets were efficient then those would all be things that should have happened anyways, you just have a bunch more money now from pension funds and whatnot. A big if in the age of meme stocks.
If you believe in an efficient market, then everyone is discounting future expected cash flows, using a discount rate, that is expected to increase next year. Tech companies, with the bulk of the...
If you believe in an efficient market, then everyone is discounting future expected cash flows, using a discount rate, that is expected to increase next year.
Tech companies, with the bulk of the cash flows in the future, have the greatest rate risk.
2020 ended up with the largest number of overvalued tech stocks I have ever seen. 2021 was the year to IPO. 2022 is looking a little rocky.
If you believe in the meme market, even wsb is holding its nose on this one. I think they learned that meme stocks dont always just go up.
Then, the best time to IPO was yesterday and the 2nd best time is today. Likely they weren't ready before - IPOing is quite a bit of work. Mainly it's getting ready to meet all the regulations the...
then everyone is discounting future expected cash flows, using a discount rate, that is expected to increase next year.
Then, the best time to IPO was yesterday and the 2nd best time is today. Likely they weren't ready before - IPOing is quite a bit of work. Mainly it's getting ready to meet all the regulations the SEC expects you to before they let your stock be owned by the plebs. It's much more accounting than a private company that only needs to report to its board must do.
It's also just difficult in general to say anything about the market in the future in the short term with any certainty. Who would have known in early 2021, when Americans were going through their first bout with the coronavirus, that just a few months later AirBnB would have a blockbuster IPO after laying off much of its staff and being forced to take a large loan to keep its doors up months earlier?
Additionally, on the topic of the immediate movement of the stock after IPO, the company itself doesn't really care. Long term poor stock performance will limit the availability of capital, but in the short term it's mainly insiders who want to liquidate who suffer. After all, if Reddit successfully IPOs for $15b or whatever, then they got the money want from the chunk of equity they sold at a $15b evaluation to pension funds by goldman.
If it goes to $10b or $7b in the short term - the company got the chunk of change it wanted to raise at a $15b valuation.
If companies didn't care, they would incentivize bankers to maximize IPO price. It's not just about the bad PR. It's not just about the CEO & Boards stock options or RSUs. Retention of talent is a...
If companies didn't care, they would incentivize bankers to maximize IPO price.
It's not just about the bad PR. It's not just about the CEO & Boards stock options or RSUs. Retention of talent is a key differentiator in tech, and it's a huge challenge if your stock is heading down.
(I'm talking completely out of my ass here, having never been involved in an IPO.)
I think what is interesting is that I read Reddit increased revenue 3x to $100m.
That is a very fine reason for holding off on an IPO.
I really was interested in MCS's insights on the reddit thread I pointed to elsewhere in here.
They actually do in a way. The way the fee structure works for the IBs is usually that the bank takes a fraction of total deal as their fee, which incentivizes the deal to be as big as possible....
They actually do in a way. The way the fee structure works for the IBs is usually that the bank takes a fraction of total deal as their fee, which incentivizes the deal to be as big as possible.
It's actually somewhat the opposite w.r.g to retention of talent. Especially employees with more tenure will get antsy holding what's likely to be millions of dollars of their net worth in an illiquid asset. Especially since if those stock units weren't double trigger, they were paying income tax on it! And had to fork over their cash to the IRS since the stocks were illiquid!
In general, though, I don't think it's worth trying to time the market for IPOs. The process simply takes too long and has too many turns. If you think the markets are frothing for tech IPOs in Q2 2022, well it's very possible the IRS tells you that X, Y, and Z are issues on your S-1 and you miss that target entirely.
I don't have a way to confirm this, but I suspect it as well. The Admins don't ever really communicate with mods unless there are significant site issues that we badger them over (IE when 6 of the financial subs grouped together to complain about brigading they actually listened).
But, within the last few years admins have reached out to us at least 2-3 times to facilitate AMAs. We've always declined because the AMA individual seemed more like a snake oil salesman than someone that might bring value here. For instance the last individual the Admins approached us about was Haley Sachs, who is "Ms Dow Jones" (I think she gave herself that name?). We declined, because again it looked like she was just promoting her brand so she could make more money from referral fees, sponsorships, etc. Point being, the admins approached us with the idea - and they don't work for free. I'd have to assume there's some sort of deal where celebs/companies/brands are contacting the admins and compensating Reddit for targeted exposure. If that wasn't the case I'd imagine the admins would have just told her to message us directly rather than putting in the work to facilitate something. In this case we're talking about relative nobodys trying to build a presence, not major corps/entities coming in to influence things, like Vlad from Robinhood didn't message us asking to stop all the shit talking, but some nobody Instagram meme page person who's "financial guru" advice is "fund a Roth with my referral code" did. So that kinda illustrates what we're working with.
Now we're not really in the prime self promotion demographic for reddit, but with the whole post GME pop culture shift towards weird finance shit that's changing. It used to be that self promotion was mostly just college kids starting a blog or some weird crypto scams - more and more we're seeing curated personalities looking to build clout/presence on Reddit. And if I'm seeing it here I would have to assume it's already happening in major ways within more mainstream topics. My hunch is that 90% of "front page" AMAs are promoted by Reddit and involve some sort of compensation, lots of the "viral" stuff you'd see in like /r/movies, /r/pics, /r/news, or whatever is likely promoted by corporate entities or special interests as well.
Like I said, I don't have any proof or insight here, but given that I know for a fact admins are working with these personalities to facilitate AMAs I would have to imagine that rabbit hole goes pretty deep. Take that for what it's worth. From an investors perspective this is pretty enticing, and I think realistically where the most profit incentive lies for Reddit - targeted ads are great, but being able to facilitate specific "viral" brand/product/personality awareness is something that not a lot of other sites can do. (I'm pretty sure Instagram works with their top influencers as well, so there's that). I put viral in quotes earlier, to distinguish it from organically viral internet sensations, but I somewhat believe that at least half if not more of modern viral trends are deliberately created by brands or entities looking to facilitate a given narrative.
I wish them luck. Today when I look at reddit all I see are a couple of thousand interesting, though declining, communities that deserve a far better website. I don't miss moderating there one...
I wish them luck. Today when I look at reddit all I see are a couple of thousand interesting, though declining, communities that deserve a far better website. I don't miss moderating there one bit, less stress in my day without it. I rarely visit anymore unless it's part of a search result I'm interested in.
I've been trying to wean myself off of reddit, after 14.5 years (my current account age), though as others have said there's still a few nuggets hidden in the trash pile. I use a third party app...
I've been trying to wean myself off of reddit, after 14.5 years (my current account age), though as others have said there's still a few nuggets hidden in the trash pile. I use a third party app and old.reddit.com, which makes the UI a bit more bearable, and have a small set of subreddits that I subscribe to specific to niche interests that are hard to find elsewhere and get their value from the size of the userbase -- local (soon to be former) community subreddits, soon to be local community subreddits, the Tourette Syndrome subreddit (mostly to provide support for others who also have TS), some of the science and technology subreddits. I'm afraid to wander too far out of that safe haven as you quickly start to discover things that you'd rather not. That said, I do find it a useful resource to keep abreast of the pulse of the loopy side of the world by occasionally peeking in some of the ultra-right-wing conspiracy subs, which helps me to better prepare for what I'll be facing the next time I see my extended family.
$15 billion is too much for a site like Reddit. It may have become more mainstream in recent years but part of that is because it offers an unique experience that no other social media platform...
$15 billion is too much for a site like Reddit. It may have become more mainstream in recent years but part of that is because it offers an unique experience that no other social media platform really does. The other Reddit-clones have largely pandered to Reddit's undesirables in some way, which is where sites like Voat, Gab, Parler and Ruqqus have failed.
My hot take is that Reddit is not a good social media platform. It's poorly moderated by power tripping internet janitors, poorly monetised in the same respect that there's no real usability reason to subscribe to Reddit Premium, it's run by admins that care a lot more about "vote manipulation" than actually showing a shred of common decency, etc.
The IPO can only spell bad things for Reddit. Expect the site's monetization tactics to get a whole lot more egregious until the user base has had enough and flock to an alternative platform.
It's just gonna take one or two more major scandals for Reddit to have its Digg v4 moment.
If I had web dev experience, I'd be trying to create a Reddit-like with more stringent and consistent content rules.
I wish I shared your optimism, but unfortunately, I think you're wrong about this. One of the essential features of Digg v4 was that Reddit was already right there as a single obvious place for...
It's just gonna take one or two more major scandals for Reddit to have its Digg v4 moment.
I wish I shared your optimism, but unfortunately, I think you're wrong about this. One of the essential features of Digg v4 was that Reddit was already right there as a single obvious place for dissatisfied users to migrate to en masse. (Jokes comparing the two sites were commonplace, e.g. "Digg is Reddit's frontpage from yesterday".) Both were also much smaller than Reddit is now, and more similar to each other at the time than either is to modern Reddit. I don't know of an obvious destination for modern Reddit émigrés.
I guess one possibility is that the contributors who provide Reddit's dwindling supply of thoughtful and/or informative content finally all up and leave, leaving behind the teenagers, bots, trolls, and lowest-common-denominator internet point farmers and transforming the site entirely into the marginally-curated 4chan it clearly actually wants to be. But I don't think there'll be a watershed moment for this process. It's been ongoing for years (since Digg v4, ironically, if some of the saltier older users are to be believed) and will probably just continue, gradual but unabated, until the proportion of "quality content" reaches homeopathic proportions.
I maintain that platform centralization is bad and would love it if Reddit’s communities fractured into a million different, independent sites. Reddit killed forum culture so it stands to reason...
I don't know of an obvious destination for modern Reddit émigrés.
I maintain that platform centralization is bad and would love it if Reddit’s communities fractured into a million different, independent sites. Reddit killed forum culture so it stands to reason that once Reddit (and it’s link aggregators with commentary ilk) go something like it may come back. It won’t look or work like Reddit, in the same way Reddit doesn’t look like Usenet groups and BB forums, but it will occupy the same space in peoples’ hearts.
I'm honestly surprised all the power mods protesting against /r/NoNewNormal didn't just up and leave. They could easily have started their own site.
I guess one possibility is that the contributors who provide Reddit's dwindling supply of thoughtful and/or informative content finally all up and leave, leaving behind the teenagers, bots, trolls, and lowest-common-denominator internet point farmers and transforming the site entirely into the marginally-curated 4chan it clearly actually wants to be. But I don't think there'll be a watershed moment for this process. It's been ongoing for years (since Digg v4, ironically, if some of the saltier older users are to be believed) and will probably just continue, gradual but unabated, until the proportion of "quality content" reaches homeopathic proportions.
I'm honestly surprised all the power mods protesting against /r/NoNewNormal didn't just up and leave. They could easily have started their own site.
In this day and age I think it's very difficult. The internet is full of many actors of varying degrees of trustworthiness, indeed the consequence of giving so many humans a voice. Some of these...
My hot take is that Reddit is not a good social media platform. It's poorly moderated by power tripping internet janitors, poorly monetised in the same respect that there's no real usability reason to subscribe to Reddit Premium, it's run by admins that care a lot more about "vote manipulation" than actually showing a shred of common decency, etc.
In this day and age I think it's very difficult. The internet is full of many actors of varying degrees of trustworthiness, indeed the consequence of giving so many humans a voice. Some of these are kids who want to troll to get a rise out of someone, some have staunch political opinions, and some are nation-state actors who are trying to manufacture outcomes. The moment any site becomes popular it has to deal with all of these factors. Sites that try to restrict membership don't suffer from nearly as many of these issues but in my experience usually quickly start experiencing echo chamber effects where members usually only invite other people that largely share their experiences, views, and attitudes. Once this happens quality of discussion on topics that agree with majority opinions tends to decrease as there's little desire to check one's arguments for accuracy as there's nobody to call you out on flawed arguments. This happens on Tildes already IMO and happens on other invite-gated sites in my experience.
These are hard problems in the internet age. I don't think it'll be solved in our lifetime, but perhaps younger generations will grow up with better practices to deal with a world where so many humans of different backgrounds and affiliations are connected together.
Confidential as in the public cannot see the S-1 document yet. Only the SEC, and the SEC and the company will discuss any objections it has duration this period. Then the S-1 will become public...
Confidential as in the public cannot see the S-1 document yet. Only the SEC, and the SEC and the company will discuss any objections it has duration this period. Then the S-1 will become public before the IPO date.
I figured it was something like this. Thank you for explaining the specifics. You have to admit, though, it is a funny bit of terminology to see in a news headline. =)
I figured it was something like this. Thank you for explaining the specifics.
You have to admit, though, it is a funny bit of terminology to see in a news headline. =)
I’ve only read terrible quality discussion about this so far. I could link the HN thread for completeness but it’s not worth it.
I’m not sure what will happen to this stock; after all, Reddit has a significant network effect and if it dies out it could even take up to a decade for it to be truly out, who knows.
But the elephant in the room: Reddit is desperate, shooting hundreds of features at the wall to see what sticks, and a lot of that was obviously IPO-driven development. I doubt it will get better from now on. And it could definitely get worse.
I still occasionally open Reddit, primarily for my local communities (r/Brussels for example). But it’s out of my life and tbh I don’t get all the people who say “the day old.reddit is removed is the day I stop using it”. Either the content is worth the pain in which case you’ll find an alternative or will simply use the shitty UI, or the content isn’t worth it in which case… just stop using it now instead of Stockholm syndroming your social media diet.
Personal opinion, the content isn’t worth it. It’s getting worse still. But Reddit has had significant positives since early on. It’s the only site that really figured out how to let users create independent communities at scale, it solved the discovery problem, etc. These are unique selling points to the site.
However, they failed to capitalise on those. All their IPO moves have been anti-community if anything. Reddit is a chef’s delicate meal, and its CEO is following a frozen pizza recipe and putting it in the microwave to warm it up for the IPO.
Less informed investors will see it’s hot and might buy. I will not.
As someone who says "the day old.reddit stops working is my last day on the site", my reasoning is this:
I agree wholeheartedly with your take on the IPO, though. Maybe they can turn meme-and-racism "engagement" numbers into success on the IPO front (I mean, I sure as hell hope not, but I'm certainly not going to bet on the intelligence or insight of the people who buy into tech IPOs), but in the process, they will definitely lose every remaining vestige of real "value", at least from my perspective.
There's a deep level of cynicism I read here that I feel is unwarranted. Lots of publicly traded tech companies make money based on lots of different factors. There's everything from AMD to WeWork out there.
This is only a response to a very small part of your comment, but I do not think "Reddit's content" is one giant thing that is equally "worth it" or not. It has a bunch of different types of content. Some are worth it, some are not, and this will differ for most people.
For me:
That's why I stopped going, or going much less, since the 2016 era. I'm not really into politics but politics invaded even standard subs, much of it right wing. It got bad enough that I recall comments endorsing rape being upvoted, racism upvoted, nationalist posts upvoted along with what happened to coincide with pro-Trump posts. I browsed 8ch at the time and you'd encounter upvote scripts which apparently were being used on the MAGA/conservative subs as I tried them myself and sure enough they worked, reddit didn't do a thing about it. /r/all was being invaded.
'Well there goes the neighborhood', or so I thought, and I began looking for other places to spend my time. Reddit since the beginning had a left-wing tilt but during that era it went crudely to the right and in recent years it seems to have slowly went left again, generally speaking. Since then I've only browsed a couple specialist subs involving women and motorcycles but I'll never have the same relationship with it or humanity again, to see a place and people you once loved turn so ugly and hateful in such a short time. I think it really did effect me more that I think about it; it's made me very untrusting of people in general. Of course it's not just reddit but youtube, HN, here as well but much less, that comments hating on certain people are upvoted; Amusingly, tildes seems to have a certain hatred towards people who cosplay as witches, I've found out. Anyway, I can understand more if it's retaliatory but when it comes to hating on innocents, that really lowers my view of people when they have nothing better to do than seek out ways to be offended by such benign things.
Edit: Maybe it's me though. I just seem to soak up hatred and become hateful when exposed to it. I used to be pretty right-wing and hateful myself and so it took a while for me to realize how to overcome it but it's just so disappointing to see it happen with what you'd think are much smarter and civilized people than yourself. You wonder why the hell humanity just isn't over it yet and so it's easy to lose faith in it.
/unintendedrant - Guess I had to let it all out as I never spoke about it before
The tildes community isn’t anywhere large enough to cast the wide net of a hive mind.
Case in point: I know not just the thread but even the individual usernames you’re referring to in that sentence. (And hatred is a big word for that… but I digress)
I don't think hive minds are necessarily correlated with community size beyond a certain threshold (e.g. my partner and I agree on most issues, one could call us a hivemind). In one old friend group of mine, we often find ourselves responding to jokes in the same way between us, so we have lots of jokes about us being a hive mind. Hive mind and echo chamber are both phrases I use to denote communities which have high levels of agreement on most issues.
Hive minds reside in small communities also and we have to admit, tildes does have one. I'd also say that hatred isn't just the extreme to which one expresses emotion but the number of hosts which express it. Even if the majority have mild disdain for something or someone, as history has taught us, it can easily turn into a death sentence with the power of the majority so no, I don't think hatred is a big word when a majority expresses even slight disdain for something. A mild power of one can turn into a large power when combined. That's also when a power vacuum is created, someone has power (hatred) to express and so you're an easy vector, certain malicious individuals feel it's safe to take you down when very few will care and so you have to constantly be on-guard, in turn it's easy to become filled with hatred yourself.
I digress also, I think as far as explaining myself goes. I've long digressed and just stopped caring, for the most part. Let people hate as long as I too can do it.
Why let yourself be ruled by such emotions? Focusing on hate allows it to occupy space in your mind, it poisons your thoughts and your mood. I know, I know, much easier said than done, but why not try and at least make a conscious effort to reframe hate - to educate others, to try and be compassionate, to connect and to occupy your mind with healthier thoughts instead?
Because it's not as simple as hate = bad, love = good. Sometimes love can be bad and hate can be good. You hate being hungry so you seek food. You hate authoritarian dictators so you go to war and oust them. Some amount of hatred is a good thing. Why else would it pervade society so much? It has obvious evolutionary benefits or it'd be selected against.
Just like many disgusting things can be good for us. Many nutritious foods don't smell very good. Working out causes pain but it's good for us to an extent. Bacteria in our stomachs and mouths smell bad but it has its own benefit. I can't completely write off the hatred of others and invalidate it, even if it does disgust me. All I can say is I don't like it but I feel I'm fighting against a much stronger opponent than myself, mother nature. I have my own oasis' away from it sometimes but I can't not think about it because it's my own brain trying to parse and process the nature of humanity, to completely disregard it and not dispense it myself would be a disadvantage to myself and living with my eyes shut. As much as I wanted to be idealistic and not see a reflection of ugliness in others that is also in myself, I've come to accept the ugly for what it is. I think it's made me more reasonable as I'm more accepting of the negative thoughts of others and can work through it and with them better. I've tried compassion before all the while going nowhere, though sometimes it did, but it's an emotional tool like the others, there's a time that it works and a time that it doesn't.
I don't really view either of these as hate. The way I experience hunger is often a form of pain or desire. I do not hate the state of being hungry. In some cases, I actually enjoy the state, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish.
I do occasionally hate people who are vile- who demean and demonize others. People who put themselves above everyone else... but the hate is really just a response to the outcome they create and a longing for something different. It's a reflection of my disgust and being upset at the state of things. The hate is not necessary, in fact, re-framing to specifically focus on the suffering of others and how I can be of use can help to emphasize the good I want to see in the world is a practice I find particularly useful. I can focus on the happy stories -that there are people willing to sacrifice themselves to help out others, that people share their resources, hide the persecuted, defy authorities that oppress and spread harm.
I'm not so convinced that hate is necessary or useful. In fact, I would say I rarely experience anger or hatred nowadays. Contempt and scorn at times, but typically not hate.
Accepting and processing to move past the negative or to use the intrinsic motivation it provides us is definitely a useful and good action. In fact, I would say it's a necessary one because we are not in complete control of our emotions, but what you are describing here is trying to minimize the time you spend focusing on that emotion. Why not take it an extra step and spend time trying to re-frame so that your mind doesn't automatically jump to these emotions, or moves on even quicker?
You do raise an important point here that any emotional state affects how we act and we need to safeguard against being taken advantage of or leaning into emotions that aren't useful in the moment. I just don't personally see where hatred is more useful than other emotions. However, I also recognize that the way I interact with the world is not how everyone else does, and others acting differently is a wonderful positive outcome of diversity - for example some people may be more likely to enact change or change their opinion in response to different stimuli. Perhaps seeing the anger that a particular action breeds in others is the stimulus needed for some, rather than seeing others be compassionate or redirecting.
I think we're arguing semantics here. Let's forget the word hate and use 'negativity' as it's more applicable and encompassing. And regarding acceptable times to use these emotions, it depends on context and person. Did responding positively to mass murdering dictators make them not do such things? In many cases it didn't so I know you don't outright say it but no, love, understanding and forgiveness, I'd call positive responses, didn't conquer them. As we've seen in recent years, positive responses don't always make the baddies go away and in many ways it just feeds them. Sometimes they just need kicked out or deplatformed because when it doesn't work, it acts as a power vacuum, not as a way to put out the fire. Like the paradox of tolerance, you can't have a tolerant system if you tolerate those who aren't, within some degree, so you have to play the enemy's game to some extent.
Okay if we're talking about the usefulness of any negative emotion and whether it can be ultimately moral or good to occasionally make use of these, I fully agree with that statement. Mostly I was left with the impression that you were actively choosing to lean into negative emotions, and was curious why you'd allow them to poison your mind. If viewed through the lens of "this can be useful, if employed correctly", I have no quarrel with that statement. Thanks for the discussion.
More like 'biased to', hence why I tried to avoid politics for most of the election cycle as I saw I was succumbing way too much to the negativeness of it all. I already have enough negativity within and long ago realized it can easily become degenerate to oneself and society if not tempered by reason or some sort of positivity. It's also why I choose to be around more positive people as yourself, I need that more in my life. I know tildes isn't always a positive place but moreso than many other places on the internet.
That's a fair point. I'll clarify my comment and say that by "worth it" I meant "worth using Reddit as a part of the 'social media diet' of the day", comparing it to how most people use Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
To me, Reddit's situational upsides do not make up for how shit the site is in general.
I've been on Reddit for over 10 years on my /u/Algernon_Asimov account. In that time, I moderated a lot of subreddits, including some high-profile ones. For example, I was a very active moderator of /r/Help for a few years.
But, when the redesign happened a few years ago, it became more and more difficult for me to justify to users how and why Reddit worked the way it worked - so I stepped back from /r/Help, and a few other subreddits. These days, my footprint as "Algernon" is minimal.
However, during my heyday, I created a second account for a niche purpose. And, using that account, I started up a subreddit as a personal project. I then got invited to moderate a few related subreddits. Then I inherited a subreddit when its founder had a meltdown. So I'm sort of stuck with these subreddits and subscribers that I feel responsible for. I still take a very active interest in the subreddit I started up. It has over 20,000 subscribers now, nearly 5 years on. I also feel responsible for the subreddit I inherited. I've got some fellow mods who help out in these subreddits, but there's noone I can hand them over to. If I leave, my "personal project" subreddit will die, and I don't like that idea after spending a few years building it up. It's my little oasis of quality amidst a bunch of mediocre subreddits about the same topic. Also, I've got the inherited running smoothly after the founder's meltdown 2 years ago, and I don't want to cause those disruptions again by leaving.
So I'm still on Reddit, despite its new interface - which I avoid using as much as possible.
I think that's the rub. The reason why a lot of people visit the site (myself included) is because of the communities that develop on different subreddits. I know some people don't curate their subs and even some people just browse the front page without even logging in. But, Reddit, at its best, isn't a one-size fits all type of thing. It just says, "Here are all the sizes, pick the ones you like! (Oh, and if you see a size that's missing, and you are motivated, make your own!)" There is no way to "capitalize" on that, holistically because of that inherent heterogeneity. I think Reddit is at its best when it's a "dumb pipe". But, "dumb pipes" aren't appealing to those who want to control the whole system.
Reddit's success has seemed to me to come largely from doing right by the users and mods. I highly doubt continuing to add features that users/mods never asked for that also go against the grain of letting subs do their own thing will lead to any sort of innovation that will lead to any meaningful improvement.
I still check out reddit maybe once or twice a day, but the volume of interesting content is basically a trickle. I no longer feel the need to scroll because there was always something else to see. It's more like the first page has a handful of mildly amusing or interesting things in it and then trash.
Even the vaunted "niche subreddits" that people say are "still good" are actually not. The DIY hobbyists now follow YouTubers or streamers and have decamped their communities to places like Discord, Twitch Chat, or the comments sections of the creators they follow. The more consumptive niches (like fashion, cars, mechanical keyboards, etc.) are all just hypebeasty, lowest common denominator nonsense that you could find anywhere. There's no point in popular curation if all it does is replicate the front page of what you'd find on any mass-market online magazine. Like if I'm on /r/Watches how many "FINALLY GOT MY GRAIL WATCH!" posts with pictures of a Tudor Black Bay or Moonwatch do I need to see? What's the value of /r/Sneakers if all it does is plug into the press release of the handful of major brands? Any blog could have done that.
The formerly well regarded, well moderated subs are also useless. Interesting questions on /r/AskHistorians don't really get answered anymore. And even the questions that do get answered are being covered by people who are venturing outside their areas of expertise and don't necessarily have a great idea of what they're talking about. Ditto /r/AskScience. The other /r/Asks are just dead.
The News and Politics subs are, likewise, dominated by group-thinky bullies and being involved in them feels more like immersing yourself into a sea of 15 year olds practicing for jobs as Chief Propaganda Officer for when their [extremist political ideology of the week] is ascendant.
And it's mostly because, like you said, their changes have been anti-community. The AskExperts subs suck because experts don't idly hang out to happen upon questions anymore. The discussion subs suck because they're weighted so heavily for making it easy to post that low-value content drowns out everything else. Once that happened it started a feedback loop where people who aren't into that stuff leave.
On another level, I think Reddit style curation might also just be a relic of a past internet where most content was hosted on independent blogs and web pages. In today's internet most content is in silo'd platforms, which is why most of what you see on Reddit today is just links to Instagram posts, TikToks, and Tweets rather than direct links to images or blog posts. I don't need Reddit to find me tweets from people whose tweets I'd care to read. Twitter can already do that. I may have needed Reddit to find blog posts (or Substacks I guess) from people I don't follow but have interesting things to say, but Reddit is no longer good at doing that. Even the memes are bad now.
Reddit may have some longevity just out of some companies feeling obligated to engage with it. I know of several game studios who establish and maintain a subreddit largely just so they can have admin control over it rather than having a rogue web-page. But their hearts are rarely in it. /r/FrostGiant is actually pretty good, but the quality of discussion in it is largely garbage. They're just using it in lieu of publishing what are functionally "white papers" on their own website. I suspect this is just driven by inertia with the FrostGiant developers stuck in an outdated mental model of where online culture is now. I see no opportunity for stuff like this on Reddit to exist any longer.
Cool! I wish them the best of luck. I've been a Reddit user since... shortly after the Python rewrite. Reddit, the internet, and the whole world was a very different place then. Congrats to the long journey!
Noticed just yesterday that they outright shut their mobile web. Used to just be a really annoying "use the app" banner you could close but now you can't even close it. Not sure I'll ever be going back to Reddit after that.
i.reddit.com still works.
Offtopic, but still related:
Tildes user count spiked after this was announced... so thanks, Reddit, and welcome to all the newcomers! :P
So I think anyone who has been using Reddit for a while can agree that as far as its utility as a discussion platform goes, it’s been on a long decline. I dislike the direction they are moving the site in and have basically siloed myself into whatever niche communities I’m interested in.
However, what does everyone think of Reddit as an investment? Do you think the IPO will go over well? What about longterm? Despite some of the anti-user behaviour, Reddit does seem to be as popular as ever.
Reddit is probably banking on /r/Wallstreetbets making reddit the next meme stock. WSB knows this and would likely do it for the luls.
I think there are much better investments available. The only reason to buy Reddit stock is because you think it’s neat.
It’s really impossible to tell right now - the company is a complete black box, as private companies are. When the public S-1 is released is when everyone gets the chance to dig into numbers.
On a side note, when a company IPOs and it’s stock immediately jumps that’s technically bad for the company although potentially good for employees and other shareholders. If it jumps that means all those expensive investment bankers priced you too low. The optimal case for the company is that it IPOs and the price stays the same or increases slightly - that means those Goldman Sachs folks did a good job figuring out what your market value is.
Curious time to IPO.
Half of IPOs are trading below their offering price.
Well, you know what they say about timing the market. In particular, this is just filing the confidential S-1 to the SEC - given that, it would give them an actual likely IPO time of around halfway through 2022, and who knows what the market would be like by them.
The dynamics of stock pricing going below or above the offer price being good or bad for a company is complicated in general, though. In some aspects, for the company as an entity's perspective, it's kinda good? If you believe the markets are being efficient (which they certainly are not always right now), then that means your IBs did a great job selling you to the institutional investors who bought your initial offering, and you raised way more money than you should have.
However, it's not great for insiders - particularly employees, who will be in lockup for ~6 months. It can cause those new board members to get quite unhappy and demand changes. It also can affect how capital the company has access to. But then again, if the markets were efficient then those would all be things that should have happened anyways, you just have a bunch more money now from pension funds and whatnot. A big if in the age of meme stocks.
If you believe in an efficient market, then everyone is discounting future expected cash flows, using a discount rate, that is expected to increase next year.
Tech companies, with the bulk of the cash flows in the future, have the greatest rate risk.
2020 ended up with the largest number of overvalued tech stocks I have ever seen. 2021 was the year to IPO. 2022 is looking a little rocky.
If you believe in the meme market, even wsb is holding its nose on this one. I think they learned that meme stocks dont always just go up.
Then, the best time to IPO was yesterday and the 2nd best time is today. Likely they weren't ready before - IPOing is quite a bit of work. Mainly it's getting ready to meet all the regulations the SEC expects you to before they let your stock be owned by the plebs. It's much more accounting than a private company that only needs to report to its board must do.
It's also just difficult in general to say anything about the market in the future in the short term with any certainty. Who would have known in early 2021, when Americans were going through their first bout with the coronavirus, that just a few months later AirBnB would have a blockbuster IPO after laying off much of its staff and being forced to take a large loan to keep its doors up months earlier?
Additionally, on the topic of the immediate movement of the stock after IPO, the company itself doesn't really care. Long term poor stock performance will limit the availability of capital, but in the short term it's mainly insiders who want to liquidate who suffer. After all, if Reddit successfully IPOs for $15b or whatever, then they got the money want from the chunk of equity they sold at a $15b evaluation to pension funds by goldman.
If it goes to $10b or $7b in the short term - the company got the chunk of change it wanted to raise at a $15b valuation.
If companies didn't care, they would incentivize bankers to maximize IPO price.
It's not just about the bad PR. It's not just about the CEO & Boards stock options or RSUs. Retention of talent is a key differentiator in tech, and it's a huge challenge if your stock is heading down.
(I'm talking completely out of my ass here, having never been involved in an IPO.)
I think what is interesting is that I read Reddit increased revenue 3x to $100m.
That is a very fine reason for holding off on an IPO.
I really was interested in MCS's insights on the reddit thread I pointed to elsewhere in here.
They actually do in a way. The way the fee structure works for the IBs is usually that the bank takes a fraction of total deal as their fee, which incentivizes the deal to be as big as possible.
It's actually somewhat the opposite w.r.g to retention of talent. Especially employees with more tenure will get antsy holding what's likely to be millions of dollars of their net worth in an illiquid asset. Especially since if those stock units weren't double trigger, they were paying income tax on it! And had to fork over their cash to the IRS since the stocks were illiquid!
In general, though, I don't think it's worth trying to time the market for IPOs. The process simply takes too long and has too many turns. If you think the markets are frothing for tech IPOs in Q2 2022, well it's very possible the IRS tells you that X, Y, and Z are issues on your S-1 and you miss that target entirely.
Really interesting point here
I wish them luck. Today when I look at reddit all I see are a couple of thousand interesting, though declining, communities that deserve a far better website. I don't miss moderating there one bit, less stress in my day without it. I rarely visit anymore unless it's part of a search result I'm interested in.
I've been trying to wean myself off of reddit, after 14.5 years (my current account age), though as others have said there's still a few nuggets hidden in the trash pile. I use a third party app and old.reddit.com, which makes the UI a bit more bearable, and have a small set of subreddits that I subscribe to specific to niche interests that are hard to find elsewhere and get their value from the size of the userbase -- local (soon to be former) community subreddits, soon to be local community subreddits, the Tourette Syndrome subreddit (mostly to provide support for others who also have TS), some of the science and technology subreddits. I'm afraid to wander too far out of that safe haven as you quickly start to discover things that you'd rather not. That said, I do find it a useful resource to keep abreast of the pulse of the loopy side of the world by occasionally peeking in some of the ultra-right-wing conspiracy subs, which helps me to better prepare for what I'll be facing the next time I see my extended family.
$15 billion is too much for a site like Reddit. It may have become more mainstream in recent years but part of that is because it offers an unique experience that no other social media platform really does. The other Reddit-clones have largely pandered to Reddit's undesirables in some way, which is where sites like Voat, Gab, Parler and Ruqqus have failed.
My hot take is that Reddit is not a good social media platform. It's poorly moderated by power tripping internet janitors, poorly monetised in the same respect that there's no real usability reason to subscribe to Reddit Premium, it's run by admins that care a lot more about "vote manipulation" than actually showing a shred of common decency, etc.
The IPO can only spell bad things for Reddit. Expect the site's monetization tactics to get a whole lot more egregious until the user base has had enough and flock to an alternative platform.
It's just gonna take one or two more major scandals for Reddit to have its Digg v4 moment.
If I had web dev experience, I'd be trying to create a Reddit-like with more stringent and consistent content rules.
I wish I shared your optimism, but unfortunately, I think you're wrong about this. One of the essential features of Digg v4 was that Reddit was already right there as a single obvious place for dissatisfied users to migrate to en masse. (Jokes comparing the two sites were commonplace, e.g. "Digg is Reddit's frontpage from yesterday".) Both were also much smaller than Reddit is now, and more similar to each other at the time than either is to modern Reddit. I don't know of an obvious destination for modern Reddit émigrés.
I guess one possibility is that the contributors who provide Reddit's dwindling supply of thoughtful and/or informative content finally all up and leave, leaving behind the teenagers, bots, trolls, and lowest-common-denominator internet point farmers and transforming the site entirely into the marginally-curated 4chan it clearly actually wants to be. But I don't think there'll be a watershed moment for this process. It's been ongoing for years (since Digg v4, ironically, if some of the saltier older users are to be believed) and will probably just continue, gradual but unabated, until the proportion of "quality content" reaches homeopathic proportions.
I maintain that platform centralization is bad and would love it if Reddit’s communities fractured into a million different, independent sites. Reddit killed forum culture so it stands to reason that once Reddit (and it’s link aggregators with commentary ilk) go something like it may come back. It won’t look or work like Reddit, in the same way Reddit doesn’t look like Usenet groups and BB forums, but it will occupy the same space in peoples’ hearts.
I'm honestly surprised all the power mods protesting against /r/NoNewNormal didn't just up and leave. They could easily have started their own site.
In this day and age I think it's very difficult. The internet is full of many actors of varying degrees of trustworthiness, indeed the consequence of giving so many humans a voice. Some of these are kids who want to troll to get a rise out of someone, some have staunch political opinions, and some are nation-state actors who are trying to manufacture outcomes. The moment any site becomes popular it has to deal with all of these factors. Sites that try to restrict membership don't suffer from nearly as many of these issues but in my experience usually quickly start experiencing echo chamber effects where members usually only invite other people that largely share their experiences, views, and attitudes. Once this happens quality of discussion on topics that agree with majority opinions tends to decrease as there's little desire to check one's arguments for accuracy as there's nobody to call you out on flawed arguments. This happens on Tildes already IMO and happens on other invite-gated sites in my experience.
These are hard problems in the internet age. I don't think it'll be solved in our lifetime, but perhaps younger generations will grow up with better practices to deal with a world where so many humans of different backgrounds and affiliations are connected together.
That doesn't seem very confidential to me. "Hey! Major news organisation! Over here! We're doing a secret filing, but don't tell anyone!"
Confidential as in the public cannot see the S-1 document yet. Only the SEC, and the SEC and the company will discuss any objections it has duration this period. Then the S-1 will become public before the IPO date.
I figured it was something like this. Thank you for explaining the specifics.
You have to admit, though, it is a funny bit of terminology to see in a news headline. =)