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Ask HN: Did Reddit ever end up giving equity to any of its users?

112 points by jimhi 6y ago

https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/30/6874353/reddit-50-million-funding-give-users-10-percent-stock-equity I always thought this was a bold idea and yet I never heard anything about it after was this one comment from Sam Altman's AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new/ckwqv8x/ Did it not pass regulation or did they just abandon the idea? Gigster also made similar claims and I have not heard anything since: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/01/gigster-fund/

rshnotsecure 6y ago
Reddit has changed ownership structure significant since these comments were made. It is highly unlikely that Tencent would be willing to see their $300 million investment from last year diluted at all [1]. Tencent is also one of the largest companies in China, essentially a State Owned Enterprise (SOE). Such a move would clearly privilege American users, who have been on Reddit significantly longer, than it would Chinese citizens. Keep in mind the telecom connections to add the internet to China were not made until 1994, and residential was not available even to Beijing until 1997. [1] - https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/amp/
- henriquez 6y ago
  Reddit is basically a Chinese propaganda outlet at this point. If you watch the moderation strategy of the default subs it is plainly obvious. Anything that makes the Chinese Communist Party look bad on current issues gets memory holed quickly. Occasionally Tiananmen Square memes are allowed to filter up, since these are super edgy and also ceded ground.
  - nojito 6y ago
    Hard to believe that when the COVID-19 subreddit is firmly promoted on the front of the website and the mobile app.
    - anewdirection 6y ago
      The retoric that china had 'better response' is strong there. Again, like tin square, that is public and more or less ceded ground. Even if that was not the case, why would they not want more control over the conversation?
      - yread 6y ago
        Better response (vs US) is basically a fact no?
        throwaway1997 6y ago
        Better response would have been to not cover up the existence of a Coronavirus for months.
        henriquez 6y ago
        Or not allow outgoing international flights from Wuhan while restricting in-China travel from Wuhan.
        yread 6y ago
        Which country restricts their own citizens from travelling in a quarantine? It's always the foreigners who are not allowed to come in.
        henriquez 6y ago
        > Which country restricts their own citizens from travelling in a quarantine? China. They were literally locking Wuhan residents in their apartments, blocking off all roadways out of the city with military, but allowing Wuhan elites to jet-set all over the world (but not anywhere within China) _during the lockdown._
        lostmsu 6y ago
  - anewdirection 6y ago
    Bingo. Its one of their biggest infosec ops. The rest are 'power users' and moderaters selling influence to the highest bidder. Its actually quite insidious.
  - rat9988 6y ago
    I see more anti-china sentiments there than in hacker news. And I see it on hacker news way too much in my opinion.
    - rukittenme 6y ago
      You see too much criticism of a fascist state that at every turn subverts human rights for its own benefit?
      - henriquez 6y ago
        It’s impressive how well the corporatist media has twisted popular opinion, making criticism of the Chinese Communist Party a matter of “woke” politics. These are the same liars who sold us the Iraq war and told us to buy property on interest-only loans in 2007. But now we celebrate perjurers like James Clapper and brand people who rightfully criticize a totalitarian regime as racists.
        jakemauer 6y ago
        Somehow I am able to admonish both simultaneously.
      - pbk1 6y ago
        It's almost like people forget the US has no problem caging children at the border, that lynchings of black people are brushed off as self defense by our "justice" system, or that only a generation ago we detained Asian Americans in camps not that different from those in China..
        rukittenme 6y ago
        Its almost as if people can live in countries other than China and the USA. But of course, you're right. All criticism of the Chinese state must be couched in the language of America's own failures. They're just like us after all. Maybe when they nuke Japan we will acknowledge our own sins rather than dare criticize our dear friends in the CCP.
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  Tencent owns a portion of reddit? BRB deleting my account. edit: done https://www.reddit.com/user/nsielicki https://www.reddit.com/user/nsielicki
- boshalfoshal 6y ago
  You know, on HN I at least expected some nuanced discussion about this idea more than typical Reddit threads, but even here it devolves into "Tencent has a stake in Reddit, everythings censored, China Bad." Think constructively here. I am not touting any of my points as facts that China isn't massively censoring Reddit media, but take these as you will. 1. Tencent's stake is only 10%. This is far less than other VC ownership, and it shows. Reddits board of directors are all placed by American VC firms, and of course the founders themselves [1]. The majority of Reddit's funding is from individual investors and AMERICAN VC funds. 2. Reddit is banned in China. If all these CCP posts get so many awards, which in turn provide (probably negligible) revenue for Reddit, it would make more sense to let all of them slide by instead of ban every single one of them. After all, these "revelations" never reach Chinese users anyway, because there are none. And honestly, can't you use Occam's razor here? I know I am being very generous here about the CCP/Tencent, but don't you think that when Tencent makes foreign investments... they do it so that they can... wait for it... extract more value from them? This is all supposition, but Tencent will likely not invest in companies like Reddit on the basis of "Oh, a free speech platform, we can get money from this AND stifle their free speech, which is a literal selling point of Reddit in the first place!" I'm going to assume here that Tencent's goal is to make money first. If this is the case, it is in their benefit to maintain the integrity of Reddit, lest it receive the (ultimately meaningless) "wrath" of their "politically aware" userbase. Do these ideas 100% disprove that Tencent somehow influences Reddit to censor anti china posts? No. Am I at least making an attempt to think critically about the situation instead of falling on my crutch of "China involvement --> bad?" I think I am. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0893288D:US https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0893288D:US
  - Lutger 6y ago
    I'm surprised by this too, and then again not really. The Trump strategy to blame China seems to work really well and fit right in with some of the knee-jerk reactions in the tech-world, which does have a strong libertarian tendency. Censorship is the devil of tech world, and invoking the image of our Satan does not lead to cool and rational thinking. The West tends to want an outside scapegoat these days because things are getting ugly in it's backyard, and China is fit for purpose.
nojito 6y ago
They just announced the vault. Which uses what they call "community points" https://www.reddit.com/vault/ https://www.reddit.com/vault/
- eps 6y ago
  Aaaand it forces you to use their bloody app on mobile... Reddit just can't take a hint it seems.
  - outime 6y ago
    That's been their priority since it was released and "hints" from users are just ignored as anyone can see if you go to the site with a browser and you have to close the banners reminding you to install the app.
  - nojito 6y ago
    What hint? Mobile is growing and Reddit is a business.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      The hint that we don’t need an app. What use is served by the app over the website? The only thing I can think of is that you can’t (easily) block ads on an app, but can in a browser (if it lets you). Sure, they’re in the business to make money, but if enough users leave because of the app and ads being shoved in their face, Reddit will start to make less money than they did without the app. It’s not gonna happen anytime soon, but it’ll happen eventually. Reddit won’t last forever, just like Digg and /. didn’t. Sure, they still exist, but (last I heard) their active user numbers keep going down.
    - pgrote 6y ago
      Boy, glad they missed the video is growing train.
    - thinkingemote 6y ago
      Mobile is huge and most people will consume Reddit via mobile. The flaw is that Reddit is also based upon content creation and these people don't use mobile to create or at least not their app.

totalZero 6y ago

Your argument is a false equivalence and seeks to absolve China of its crimes against humanity by pointing a finger at Americans for unrelated things. (aka "whataboutism") Americans had a problem with caging children at the border. Attention was immediately drawn to the abuses there, and several federal lawmakers visited the facilities to observe conditions and draw more media coverage to the situation. There are three people charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, due to massive outcry across our country. About a hundred thousand Japanese Americans were wrongly detained, during World War 2, out of fear they may be disloyal to the United States. Laborers in those internment camps were paid and reparations were later paid and Congress formally apologized. BTW "a generation" is 30 years, not 78. Xinjiang camps are slave labor camps, motivated not by war but by ethnic and religious differences, and they imprison ten to thirty times more people than the Japanese internment camps ever did. Inmates are tortured, brainwashed with Communist propaganda, subjected to unethical medical practices, and forced to violate their own religious beliefs. This is all happening now, not almost a century ago. It involves millions of people, not a hundred thousand. And it has been defended by the Chinese government and media, rather than being a point of contention for lawmakers and journalists domestically. The US and China are not alike.

dntbnmpls 6y ago
> Your argument is a false equivalence and seeks to absolve China of its crimes against humanity by pointing a finger at Americans for unrelated things. (aka "whataboutism") "false equivalence", "whataboutism", etc standard propaganda terms. Refrain from using it too much as it will be obvious to most that you have an agenda. > Laborers in those internment camps were paid and reparations were later paid and Congress formally apologized. They weren't paid anything of value in comparison to what they lost. And virtue signaling apologies don't amount to much. > Xinjiang camps are slave labor camps, motivated not by war but by ethnic and religious differences Doesn't it have more to do with terrorism and separatism ( back by foreign powers )? And aren't the "slave labor camps" actually job camps because unemployment ( especially amongst young males ) is the major cause of unrest/terrorism/etc? > The US and China are not alike. You are right. They aren't going all over the world overthrowing democracies, invading countries and killing millions of people. This is happening now. Also, you can scream crimes against humanity, but didn't the "CCP" lift hundreds of millions of their people out of poverty? Where is the nuance? Maybe, the "CCP" isn't all evil like you claim, maybe the US isn't all evil. Maybe it's time to tone down on the propaganda?
- henriquez 6y ago
  > Maybe it's time to tone down on the propaganda? Brilliant gaslighting there!
  - dntbnmpls 6y ago
    "gaslighting". There is another one of those terms I warned about.