The reality is that unless you have immense, immense scale (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn), making money off social media is impossible. Twitter barely made any money before Elon Musk took it over, and it's making less now.
Reddit is pseudo-anonymous too and is harder to monetize, because high ad rates come from being able to identify your users.
I couldn't care less about corporate investors. They deserve what they're getting. But far too many ordinary people have been forced to put their retirement funds in the stock market (via 401(k) accounts instead of retirement plans), and I hope they're safe.
If one believes a CEO over financial data and technical analysis they are not an investor, they're a gambler. As such it is appropriate and expected that they lose money over time. Reddit is not profitable and does not have a clear path to profitability. Anyone who would invest in such a company is a fool.
This explains the spez iron boot. The business is in a lot of trouble and he’s concerned about his job and the jobs of everyone around him. Ironically, the iron boot is making the whole situation worse. Because spez isn’t very good at strategy. Often, bankers are appeased when a business takes bold decisions to cut things. But in this case, it has only revealed what a fragile business Reddit has, from a Wall Street perspective, anyway. Associating himself with Elon Musk is absolutely suicide after that fool got taken for billions in the Twitter sale and has only damaged it further since then. But like I said, not very strategic there Mr spez…
Impact is already more than evident through search results. Google has had to tweak their search functions because of this and Microsoft pulled out from Minecraft subreddit, and both made sure to announce to the world that it's because of spez and the protest.
The IT tech industry isn't doing great currently. Everything was fine as long as there were a practically infinite amount of money going around, but lately investors have been increasingly demanding signs of profitability over "limitless" expansion and growth.
That's why a lot of companies have been doing these seemingly drastic changes lately. It may absolutely result in long term damages, but that is not their main concern at the moment. In some cases this is also somewhat a moment for these companies to show their cards and prove that they actually deserve the evaluation that they been given. I suspect that there will be quite a lot of agitated people in the coming months and years.
Remember that there is a general decline in tech stocks at the moment. A few names are being elevated by the AI boom, but for the most part the party has been over for quite a while now. If you keep an eye open, you'll see stories about a number of different tech stocks declining.
Every time I see such a story, I tend to reply with "why would Elon Musk do this?" Since people acted like Twitter was a unique case being caused exclusively by his leadership, but we've seen massive declines in many companies including Meta and Netflix.
I remember reading that reddit went on a hiring spree and they like multiplied their workforce during the pandemic. I heard some speculation that this API change was about that, because they now have to make ends meet somehow or at least convince the investors that they are doing something. They invested and expected further growth and the pandemic tech boom didn't last forever. One miscalculation leads to another.
TechCrunch notes that the majority of Reddit’s turmoil in holdings occurred last year and this most recent valuation only accounts for the worth of the company’s holdings up to May 31.
That's before the protest was even started, I would like to know how the value is after (that is now).
and once again, not a single word about the rise of alternatives that will likely hurt reddit much more deeply longer term than the initial, but vitally important, protest.
at this point, not including analysis of the alternatives in any reddit reporting is journalistic malfeasance (or intentional, malicious debate scoping). smh.