Reddit’s golden geese foul up its IPO plans
Reddit’s golden geese foul up its IPO plans
Thousands of moderators overseeing the site’s subreddits are on strike. It’s a wrinkle in Reddit’s plan to go public, and a sign that plan is premature, columnist Anita Ramaswamy writes.
Thousands of moderators overseeing the site’s subreddits are on strike. It’s a wrinkle in Reddit’s plan to go public, and a sign that plan is premature, columnist Anita Ramaswamy writes.
I want all of the scabs and the naysayers to see this. Without the protest, without the exodus, without the blackout, we don't have Reuters, one of the world's most respected journalistic institutions, publishing disparaging info on Reddit's IPO. The longer this goes on, the worst it gets for u/spez and any other rube who feels entitled to make tens of millions off of the backs of the community they neglected.
Lmao I didn’t realise the article was on Reuters until I read your comment. Pretty fucking funny man.
I don't know, the actual tone of the article leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. The basic point seems to be that reddit should become more like a business and stop giving so much of itself to users and mods. In essence, it is exactly the mindset of this writer that got us to where we are.
This writer fails to understand the exact same thing that spez fails to understand: the only reason that Reddit grew, the only reason that Reddit is valuable, is because for the last 15 years it has not operated as a business. Reddit could never become a successful one because in order to do that, all of the community power, customizon, and the inherent human element has to be stripped away and replaced with elements that turn profit.
The only way to make Reddit profitable is for the users to (stealing a line from a blog post a few months ago) "stop talking to each other and start buying shit", i.e. stop having genuine interaction with each other and start being dragged in front of other corporations that paid good money for the user' eyeballs. And the moment that happens, Reddit stops being Reddit.
This was a folly from day one. Spez thinks he owns a cow he can milk for years and years. Really, he just owns a pig, that he's convinced himself will provide bacon forever once he takes the knife to it.
The funny thing is, Reddit might have had a chance to become profitable. If spez implemented a reasonable pricing scheme for the API (even charging two or three times what they'd expect to make from a user using the first party app--magnitudes lower than the proposed pricing), and if they made a few other adjustments, it might be profitable. They already had the advantage of not having to pay for moderation, which was huge.
I think the pig is getting away though--he might not even get that first round of bacon.
You're not alone, I too am angry at the writer, she doesn't understand anything of what's going on and why, most importantly.
But there's a positive in my opinion, the fact that the protest ended up on Reuters and that's huge, if that doesn't make investors aware I don't know what else could.
Yeah, I agree. I love the idea of u/spez trying to explain to the potential investors why so many users of the investment are working together to actively disturb and destroy the platform as much as they can, while being way more effective than users of pretty much any other other popular social media platform.
good! I more people see Huffman’s bottom tier communications. Reading his comments do not sound like the CEO of a company, it’s always very embarrassing, like he’s cosplaying what a kid thinks a CEO should be.
I am hopeful more people are starting to see that a vast majority of CEOs are conservative terrorists in human clothing. From Elon to Huffman all of them want to rule over the common person for their benefit.
Yes, but the blackout didn't instantly fix everything everywhere therefore it wasn't worth doing.
It's still disapointing to see media misrepresent the reason for the protests. Nobody went up in arms when Reddit announced they'll charge for API access, which was announced in April. The protests started because they're charging a bazillion dollars, aka "the fuck you price" effectively banning 3rd party apps without actually banning 3rd party apps
And the "strike" got extended due to the extremely poor handling of the protests from Reddit, like slandering the Apollo dev
I'm thinking Reddit's handling of this is going to be a case study for executive MBA programs in the future, as in, "What not to do."
I mean some people are complaining about the price. But I don't care about the price necessarily, as I'm not "protesting". I'm simply tired of participating in the shittification of social media sites while they seek to monetize us. So them charging anything, or attempting to be profitable, is inherently the turnoff for me, because there is an inevitable path that a for-profit social media website takes.
In my view, or at least why I left Reddit (and support the strike), it's not about the API charging.
It started as the price. Then it was also about
Lies about the 3rd party apps.
Lies about 3rd party app developers.
The whole process from January (no API changes planned) to announcing there will be a cost, to 6 weeks later giving a 1 month deadline and stating the ridiculous prices.
Back up by years and years of failed promises from Reddit, as well as whatever bullshittery they seem to concentrate on instead (chat, streaming, NFTs)
What I find curious is how long it's taking for Google to react.
2/3s of my searches have Reddit as the top result and the only one with good answers, and the majority of said results are broken due to a closed subreddit. I know how to use the cached page, most users do not. I can only imagine that's very frustrating for a casual Google user.
It'll be more frustrating that reddit has become the best source of information for a lot of stuff. This will hurt in the beginning, but they can go fuck themselves nonetheless.
I maintain a game wiki that had an extended (~month+) downtime due to hosting issues.
It took about two weeks for us to fall off the first page of google, and our site was far more niche and not well linked throughout the internet than a behemoth like reddit. It's been about six months since we changed hosts, and I still see google try to send people to the old wiki now and then.
Google is trash these days. Now we can add "page indices so old they're growing mold" to the growing list of reasons why.
The primary excuse for the API change, to charge AI companies for Reddit's data, doesn't hold water. After the change goes into effect, AI companies can just switch from the API to web scrapers for continued free access. It'll require marginally more processing power, which AI companies already have in spades.
Ironically, if Reddit were to adopt a reasonable pricing scheme for the API, the more reputable AI companies would probably just pay it instead of switching to web scraping, and Reddit could actually make something from it.
I've been a software developer in corporate America long enough to have some guesses as to why they really want everyone using the first-party app.
One option would be to pay mods, or [...] reward them in other ways.
Maybe let them use the apps they want to use? Like we had before?
People with this sort of business mindset fail to see that not all mods do it for monetary benefit or rewards. Some people just want to build and be part of a genuine community that shares their interests, and that is all the motivation and reward they need.
The ongoing strike, spurred by Huffman’s plan to charge fees to third-party apps that serve up Reddit content, was supposed to last for 48 hours.
Not just charge fees... Exorbitant fees. Outrageous fees.
If Huffman wanted to target these much higher costs to LLMs, they could have instituted an approval process for 3PAs which got charged sane API fees while they charge much more for LLMs. I'm no dev but I think they could tell the difference between the two by just analyzing the API traffic.
But they aren't doing that. Maybe LLMs were the primary target but they sure aren't even trying to keep 3PAs around.
The only way to align the interests of mods with those of investors is to merge the two groups. Give the mods shares (preferably few enough that even if every invested mod bands together, they're below 30% of the float), and allow outside investors to become mods on any subreddit they choose. That way, mods have a dog in the financial fight, which has not historically been the case.
allow outside investors to become mods on any subreddit they choose.
I see this going very badly almost as soon as it's implemented.
While I understand your concern, I'm not sure I agree. Investors have an incentive to make their investment profitable. Therefore, if they have to maintain a level of effort for an investment, they'll do everything to make it grow. That means they'll work to widen the community without making it too broad for advertising, work on building in organic advertising, etc.. Having given it thought for six hours, I really do believe that keeping mods and investors in alignment will be important. It's the reason why the fediverse tends to work; those who have the financial investment are the moderation team.