When even the people that work for Reddit, for free, don’t want to buy your bs stonk
Reddit power users balk at chance to participate in IPO as Wall Street debut nears
Submitted 8 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
exanime@lemmy.today 8 months ago
ccunning@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I initially thought I might participate in the IPO. I’m still not over what /u/spez did last year but I justified it the same way I ever bet AGAINST my favorite sports teams. That way if they lose there would is still an upside. I don’t think Reddit will be a great investment. But if they are, hey, at least there’s some money in my pocket.
This would have been my first IPO. And what made me finally decide against participating was the recognition that buying into an IPO, unlike regular stock trading, is actually putting money directly into the company’s pockets.
Fuck that; fuck them; and especially fuck /u/spez.
GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
I read a pretty brutal analysis by a financial expert on some business magazine site. My biggest takeaways were:
- new shares get 1 vote per share, existing shareholders 10 per share
- under the rules they are doing the ipo they can skip providing solid numbers for the last years, and are unbound by board opinion on how much money can go into executive compensation and golden parachute packages.
Now I’m not an investor at all but this rings so many grift alarm bells I don’t understand why anyone would buy that shit. Seems like a completely dubious investment set up to pay out spez and then collapse.
kamenlady@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Seems like a completely dubious investment set up to pay out spez and then collapse.
gregorum@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I appreciated the article. Apparently not lost on the writer was the quote from the mod of r/Equestrian which was almost entirely obscure horse puns. Only on the last line did he manage to reign himself in.
Yaztromo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So they voted ‘neigh’?
gregorum@lemm.ee 8 months ago
They feel that the Reddit IPO would turn out to be lame.
Computerchairgeneral@fedia.io 8 months ago
Unsurprisingly the people who have had to deal with Reddit's leadership for years don't trust them. Shocking. That said I could see a lot of Redditors still buying in, just out of fear that they might miss out on the next big "get-rich-quick" opportunity.
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 8 months ago
All it takes is people going elsewhere and they are worth nothing. Reddit isn’t like Twitter, where it’s all about you. I came here, have the same conversations, and haven’t even noticed I’m not on Reddit any longer.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Not sure I would call myself a power user. While I did have a few posts over 50k, I was not exactly creating a ton of content. Still got an email though and decided against investing.
protist@mander.xyz 8 months ago
My few posts were almost exclusively in my local sub and plant identification, I never had a post crack 1000. Almost all my karma came from comments. Since I also got the offer, I’m guessing the bar was set very low
kautau@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yep, same, think I had 65k karma, got an email, also balked
BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Right, why would I bother with the reddit IPO? IPO pricing is all over the place. If I want it - I don’t - I’ll buy it day 1.
FunkPhenomenon@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
power users? i received the email and I wasnt a power user.
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Reddit doesn’t function like a real business (i.e. most of the work is unpaid volunteers, both mod and users). There’s no site-wide code of ethics beyond what will actually get them criminal charges. The written rules don’t actually matter - most of their moderators are unpaid bullies who permaban if their feelings are hurt. That system of banning users based on opinion kills discussion of “unapproved” views and sorts people into forums where their favorite opinions (and often outright hatreds) are popular. Loathe a particular race/gender/political ideology etc? Just find a subreddit where the mods agree and you’ll be fine saying some truly terrible stuff. Read the bloodthirsty posts on r/worldnews and tell me if the site-wide rules on not promoting violence or racism apply. For these reasons and more I don’t think anyone should be buying into their IPO because they aren’t a reliable business.
I don’t know if Lemmy is different because I’ve been here for less than a month, but at least here it feels like you can have different opinions and the worst that happens is you eat downvotes. Plus a lot of the really unethical takes are usually checked pretty hard in my (limited) experience by the users, which doesn’t happen when the only other voices are basically guaranteed to agree with you (a la most of Reddit).
The rest of this is just my Reddit survivor tale so if you don’t care stop here. I got invited to the IPO on the same week I got a 3-day site-wide ban after appealing a subreddit permaban for a fairly popular comment that the US should stop funding Israel and give the money to Ukraine (on a post about how the US is having trouble finding money for Ukraine). In those words, no hate speech or racism etc. When I asked why I was banned I got a 4-word insult as the only communication back. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it sure felt like I was being deliberately censored/punished for high-ish profile “dangerous” anti-Israeli opinion. May not be the case, but it was my first site-wide ban ever for a comment that broke no written rules.
My Reddit account is 13 years old and in 2023 I think I made about 100k karma, primarily with comments about history, education, and in one case a post about how awesome sperm whales are. Reddit has lost my participation (I’ve only posted 2x in the last 3 months, down from a few times daily) and my faith. I only go back to check on specialist communities (video game tips etc) and almost never participate anymore. Frankly I hope it either changes to allow for discussion or dies.
magnetosphere@fedia.io 8 months ago
I was targeted by someone pathetic whose feelings were hurt (knowing me, it was a remark about how MAGA folks are idiotic hypocrites). They dug through my post history, and reported a post I’d made months before about how someone needed a slap in the head. They reported it, and I was banned for “promoting violence”.
It wasn’t a permaban, but as far as I was concerned, it may as well have been. My account had been active for years, and I’d never been banned before. I felt let down that the mods had been fooled by such a stupid, obvious trick. Fortunately, a few weeks later, spez pissed everyone off and a lot of people left anyway.
Plus, I have the knowledge that I annoyed some troll SO MUCH that they read through months of my posts looking for something to report. Heh heh heh.
JoeCoT@fedia.io 8 months ago
The fact that reddit cares is mostly used for harassment told me all I needed to know about how they're handling their community.
Grunt4019@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Most people I think see through this, they’re just trying to bring in some bag holders to inflate the share price while they cash out.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah I don’t think mods and “power users” that stayed after last year are necessarily against reddit succeeding, just not willing to buy in at a 6.5bil valuation for a company that can’t turn a profit and lost 90+ mil last year and 700+ cumulative. And after the bad will they gained last year burning mods and third party apps it’s not a big surprise many are watching with a big ol’ bucket of popcorn.
Yaztromo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They kicked myself and my entire mod team from r/Canning because we held a vote and our users asked us to shut the community down in protest of their 3rd party app policies.
Then recently they emailed and messaged me telling me I could get in on the ground floor of buying shares.
That’s going to be a big resounding “no” from me there u/spez.
Mordiken@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I got the invite but didn’t do anything about it because:
I assumed the invite had been sent to just about everyone;
I like going there, but not enough to give them money… Or disable my adblock… Or switch to the accursed “modern layout”…
Come to think of it, I don’t like reddit at all, Just the communities that exist there.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I don’t think that they looked at activity in the past year. They just sent them out in waves based on total karma. I’ve barely been active and not eligible to participate and still got the emails.
APassenger@lemmy.world 8 months ago
“Popcorn tastes good.”
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
He didn’t get 190 mil. He got 190 mil of stock at that stupid valuation. He got paid like 300k cash. Spez gets nothing if the IPO is an albatross
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A private company doesn’t really need to turn a profit…
Even publicly traded companies just need to do it because it effects shareholder price.
With tax shenanigans, it’s often better for a private company to never turn a profit.
If profit was important, they could have just paid the CEO 100 million and turned a 3 million profit.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Yeah, I’ve said the same. The fact that they’re aiming for users with high karma means that really think they’re suckers.