42 ms·

Reddit files to go public

541 points by stevemk14ebr 5y ago

karmasimida 5y ago
How would they make money with such toxic audience/traffic?
- jstx1 5y ago
  I don't think the toxicity plays into profitability that much; if anything it might even help. Facebook is doing great financially.
jyu 5y ago
If you thought site performance is bad now, wait a few quarters when there are grey beard investors pressuring leadership to wring out the last shekels from this carcass.
Havoc 5y ago
Who wants to invest in something that is one user revolt away from being digg on an endless list of edgy topics
multifasciatus 5y ago
What does it mean to confidentially file for an IPO? Is this a common process before filing an S-1?
- gregorymichael 5y ago
  It is. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/25/heres-why-more-companies-are-filing-confidential-ipo-paperwork/?sh=72ce8c496e68 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/25/here...
- financetechbro 5y ago
  It means that the company has started the review process with the SEC. The company is going to go back and forth with the agency to make sure their filings, audits, disclosures, etc. are up to par before the company files publicly in a few months. Once the filing is public the company will wait for 15 days before launching their roadshow. And yes, this is how the process works with every company
  - _sword 5y ago
    This is accurate. They have lead left for their syndicate selected if they’re going the traditional underwriter route. They’ll pick all the banks for their syndicate with help from their advisors, and then teach sell side research about the company and use this as a trial period for fielding questions while everyone is under NDA’s before the public flip. Once the roadshow is launched it’ll be something between 1-2 weeks before pricing, though that’s been compressed towards ~1 week since everyone is doing digital meetings now vs in person.
    - financetechbro 5y ago
      Exactly ^
SQueeeeeL 5y ago
At least Reddit had it's massive downward spiral years ago, no one can blame their current website layout on this.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Don't worry, we're next.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Strongly agree. Those who are skeptical and have recently joined HN just need to rewind, read a few threads from 2015, let alone 2010. The quality of discussion, the disagreements, the back and forth, the deep respect for each other - all those are eroding away on HN, albeit slowly. Still there is good discussion, especially on deep technical topics (e.g. Semiconductors). It may not be the fault of HN - today's internet is full of toxicity and pretty much everything is politicized. I naturally like to play devil's advocate and it is basically impossible on HN without getting flagged or worse - called names and get insults thrown at you. I would love to get Dang's perspective but it would be difficult for him to say anything.
    - ggm 5y ago
      I'm not dang (or spartacus) but I want to say, I think the logic here is fallacious. Quality may or may not be going down, overall I tend to think not, its distortions of size effects, not absolute decline. But more specifically there is no nexus between the decline, or behaviour, and a desire to IPO and realize profit. Not all things co-relate, they can be contemporaneous and un-related. Whatever Dan has, and he has a lot of "it" -it includes tolerance and forbearance, and an ability not to buy into the paranoia at large. I don't think he'd be part of an IPO decision logic which went "yea it's boring: lets profit and run" -there might be a "profit" and there might be a consequential "run" and there might be "its boring" but I don't personally see them as causally connected.
    - belval 5y ago
      Mandatory guideline quote: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. The actual quote has a bunch of links that I worth looking at. People were echo'ing your comment 7 years ago.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
How is Reddit IPO'ing after they were bought by Conde Nast? I've never really looked into it. It's an interesting thing that they managed to get un-acquired somehow. In fact, there are so many questions. Does YC get a payday out of this, or was their stock acquired during the acquisition? 2% of $5B is $100M, so it's a lot of money at stake.
- riffic 5y ago
  they were spun off a while ago https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/reddit-just-raised-a-new-round-that-values-the-company-at-1-8-billion/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/reddit-just-raised-a-new-r...
  - shmatt 5y ago
    * keep the old.Reddit.com design for everyone * spend 9 figures for a redesign The choice was obvious
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I don't think a lot Gen Z don't like the old.reddit.com because it looks kind of old fashioned vs say react "modern" pages and they're afraid of lookign old-fashioned. However, that is what keeps me coming back along with relative anonymity and content on topics that I like.
      - trophycase 5y ago
        information density is too low. Why would I spend 2.5x time scrolling through www.reddit.com/r/fantasyfootball when I can read all the important headlines faster at old.reddit.com ... the redesign also loads fewer posts at a time so you constantly wait for a spinner to fetch new content
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Mobile apps solved that problem. The redesign made desktop problems.
nine_k 5y ago
A strange choice of time, to me. With such intense market volatility, it's easy to both leave money on the table by setting the IPO price too low, or to have trouble selling stock by by setting it too high. OTOH the freshly printed money look for returns, so the stock market is more likely to be bullish even in relatively near term; maybe they are trying to catch this trend?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Market volatility doesn't seem to be extraordinarily high right now: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/VIX:INDEXCBOE?safe=off&sxsrf=ALeKk00LsbUuspWz08dDNjzptL18zgufFA:1584728838112&ei=Bgt1XobcAYeFytMP29-ZuAE&btnG=Search&oq=amazon&gs_l=finance-immersive.1.0.81l3.801.1693.0.2905.7.7.0.0.0.0.203.667.2j2j1.5.0....0...1c.1.64.finance-immersive..2.5.665.0...0.-e7S7KZnG4c&window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/VIX:INDEXCBOE?safe=off&...
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Market predictability is at an extreme low. Rug pulls are happening on a regular basis, and spy is regularly being propped up by a few random, overvalued stocks.
    - b9a2cab5 5y ago
      It's being propped up by the Fed, which just announced their QE decision for the next 3 months or so today. That gives plenty time for an IPO.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      I actually don't know what "market predictability" means. Like, the market is never predictable, right? That's why most money managers don't consistently make big profits. Is this a notion that can be quantified? Can you cite some evidence for what you've said? Anyway, the person I was responding to said volatility and that is the metric I cited.
      - 5y ago
satellite2 5y ago
Now it makes sense why they implemented all those user hostile strategies recently. To grow the user count. Hopefully, they'll be able to remove it after they go public.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  they're never removing any of that
  - satellite2 5y ago
    They made a comment on that?
    - ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
      not the parent commenter, but my sense is the argument is that all-the-more-so as a public company, user/engagement growth will be king, so the notion that dark patterns and growth hacks will go away is wishful thinking at best.
      - varenc 5y ago
        Agreed. The pressure to push numbers before an IPO will be even stronger after. Especially as control of the company/board shifts more towards returns focused shareholders.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Investors will demand the golden goose be slain, as per usual.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Short term profits instead of investing to build something truly great...
- gruez 5y ago
lucasverra 5y ago
Are they declaring themselves a web3 company ?
- zen_of_prog 5y ago
  Nice, I hadn't heard of that [1]! I'm pretty indifferent towards owning a Blockchained micro-share of a publicly listed company, but I'd be very interested if reddit were to end up user-owned akin to the Packers [1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/web3-explained-crypto-nfts-bored-apes.html https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/web3-explained-crypto-n...
- 1270018080 5y ago
  It's a company with experienced software engineers and a real product, very unlikely.
- worker767424 5y ago
  They actually tried in the Yishan days. Someone was working on JS blockchain vaguely meant to be something like but not really an ICO. It was bizarre.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ferdowsi 5y ago
Congratulations folks! I'll say that Reddit has become one of my favorite sites to visit occasionally and I feel they've earned their success. I honestly feel it is a positive factor in my life, for the little I use it. There's really excellent content to be had, like well moderated educational content at subreddits like r/AskHistorians and r/COVID. I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I also like that they've kept discussions text oriented, instead of allowing for embedded tweets, images, or videos to clog up comment threads (I like this about HN, as well). They might renege on this in the future, but I like the distinctly 2000s feel to discussions.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  I hope they have enough to point to from other instances to show that it's a bad idea.
- Rendello 5y ago
  Reddit already has embedded GIF comments, ie. https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/wut/ggsmzhy/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/w...
  - colordrops 5y ago
    <embedded gif of Vader screaming nooooooooooooooo>
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I wish that was my experience too. Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. It's great for things I'm not interested in, though, as it's a quick way to get genuine information on what is considered a good brand of bike shorts or hair curling products.
  - naiwenwt 5y ago
post_break 5y ago
Will they be banning porn like tumblr? I know they removed it from "All" and then I believe they hid it in other ways. Just wondering when the Digg 4.0 / Tumblr will happen to Reddit. So far it's been a slow burn but I'm waiting for the great purge to bring down the house. It always seems to happen around an IPO.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  The day they shut down old.reddit.com will be the day the site dies for me. I feel like it's inevitable that it will happen at some point.
  - lijogdfljk 5y ago
    Yup, agreed. I might use it on mobile, but on desktop "new" Reddit is such a massive degrade that i can't put up with it.
    - modeless 5y ago
      I use old reddit on mobile too. It's legitimately a better experience (just make sure to turn off the font size boosting feature of mobile Chrome which interacts poorly with the layout).
      - a5aAqU 5y ago
        There is also https://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/
      - lijogdfljk 5y ago
        Oh i should amend, i say mobile because i use a mobile app on my phone (not the official one!), so the crap UI doesn't affect me on my phone.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I like the looks and functionality of the new reddit but it s just dog slow compared to using old reddit and RES
paxys 5y ago
Content aside, Reddit is possibly the worst performing large commercial website I have ever seen. Like half of all page loads and requests end with “something went wrong”. Search has been unusable from day 1, and somehow getting worse. Their new video player makes me want to throw my computer across the room. I have been using it on and off for a decade now and I can’t think of one aspect of the site (whether in terms of performance, reliability, UI, usability, features) that hasn’t degraded in quality. Happy about the IPO, but PLEASE invest in some engineering and infrastructure work. (Edit: weird that this comment was sitting at the top of the page for an hour and then suddenly moved to the very bottom. Someone on the HN team must really like Reddit.)
- fortylove 5y ago
  The page loads ending in failure has not been my experience at all. Search is not great though, agreed.
- kactus 5y ago
  The redesign and video player issues finally convinced me to stop using Reddit and delete my account after 10 years, last year. Haven’t looked back.
- thundergolfer 5y ago
  I use Reddit daily, and for the last ~week their UI has added multiple things to click and be taken to my 'Reddit recap', which I think is supposed to be like Spotify's 'your year in review' feature. Reddit's product managers very much want me to check out my 'Reddit Recap'. Well I've navigated to my recap about 30 times now in the last week, from multiple links, in app and desktop, and it's still totally broken. On desktop now, it doesn't show anything except a "retry" button which is incorrectly stuck to the left side of my screen (CSS fail). I can understand things being broken, but its really bad form to funnel a user to a prominent feature, have that feature be broken, and then have a broken and terrible error state. I do wonder what kind of engineering team bungles a big feature release like this.
  - sergiotapia 5y ago
binwiederhier 5y ago
My first reaction was "Oh no, here comes the the paywalls and the ads and all that". I sincerely hope that my initial reaction is wrong here, but the constant desire to please investors is unlikely to have a positive impact on the communities, no?
Shadonototra 5y ago
i love reddit i hate the CDN they use, it's slow af, you notice a lot on the gifts hosted on the reddit hostname
fourstar 5y ago
It's a shame that none of the subreddit creators that helped their success (made subreddits and grew/foster them) never were rewarded.
pyronik19 5y ago
They better get rid of the scores of woke power mods pushing users off onto alternate platforms.
- kuhl 5y ago
  At the very least delete u/maxwellhill
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I believe they codified their intention to keep doing exactly thta, into their terms of service.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
It's sad what Reddit has become and I only believe IPO-ing will accelerate that demise.
- dmart 5y ago
  Yes, despite how Reddit has gotten worse over the years, it will be a huge loss for the web once it finally fully jumps the shark. Already it’s pretty much the last place to find real human opinions in a sea of content marketing garbage.
  - disconcision 5y ago
    yes, i only visit reddit directly a 1-2 times a day now as opposed to 100+ from maybe 2010-2017, but i still often append 'reddit' to certain searches with great effect.
plasticsoprano 5y ago
Reddit has me on some sort of ban that causes accounts to be permanently suspended within 24 hours of account creation regardless of what I do with that account, even if it's just make it and leave it alone. Also, anyone that comes to my home and connects to my wifi and then their reddit account will find their account permanently suspended within 24 hours. I've reached out to them multiple times to see what is happening and what can be done about it but get a boilerplate "your ban will be upheld" message from them with a link to the content rules so I can "prevent future bans". I had over 40k useless internet points on that site before the ban and an 11 year old account but they refuse to help. Oh well.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Have your ISP cycle/release->renew your IP address. Don’t attempt to sign in to any of the previous accounts from the new IP. Should avoid their anti evil team’s tooling as long as you’re not causing trouble.
  - plasticsoprano 5y ago
    That's a whole other can of worms. I assumed that and asked ATT to do so and got the phone support equivalent of blank stares. I miss the old cable modem days where you could change the MAC address of the primary device attached to the ethernet port and force a new IP but not so with this Fiber ONT they gave me.
    - modeless 5y ago
      VPN. I've been pleased with Mullvad.
  - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
    This but also don't use any email previously associated with any account cause they will go and blacklist your new IP too.
    - kgwxd 5y ago
yalogin 5y ago
This is not good. The only reason I am still using Reddit is because of the old.reddit.com interface. Feels like an IPO will make them retire it at some point.
- wussboy 5y ago
  I’d actually welcome that. I spend exactly 15 minutes a day on it, and getting rid of the old site would be just enough to cut the cord forever.
- the_duke 5y ago
  There are a few alternative front ends tha uphold the spirit of the old UI. Both web based and mobile apps. But they might of course try to shut them down as well.
  - Shared404 5y ago
    Part of the problem is that different front ends encourage different types and levels of discourse. Being able to chose to use a different front end only solves part of the problem.
- Duralias 5y ago
  If they retired old.reddit then the only time I would browse reddit would be when I use my phone, which I only do when I have no computer to interact with or before bed. If they then do the logical thing and block third party apps then I will just stop using reddit completely, because using the official app just isn't worth it.
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    Right there with you. There are a LOT of us. This is ostensibly why they've allowed old.reddit.com to live for so long despite almost no development and maintenance anymore. This IPO will probably be the catalyst for some "house cleaning." I imagine old.reddit.com is not long for this world.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
bryans 5y ago
Reddit is operating on the shakiest house of cards, and their investors are being swindled, along with their advertisers. For one of many examples, they're grossly inflating viewership numbers on Reddit Live by injecting the top broadcast into the front page of 25,000 users every ~30 seconds -- largely against their will[1] or without knowledge[2] -- and then selling those as "video views" to record labels, Adobe, League Of Legends and others. The administrators and moderators have repeatedly lied about this to the community, going as far as claiming they "don't even have the ability to manipulate the top broadcast mechanism," and yet they have a list of streamers who receive special treatment, along with the paid ads (which are not marked as ads, and instead offered as "user content.") A year ago, they even implemented a follow mechanism so that streamers' fans could get push notifications when they went live. But when the admins decided to make manual manipulation of the top broadcast mechanism a priority, they removed the notifications for Reddit Live altogether because it was too easy for the Reddit community to upvote "riff raff" into the top spot. They changed their story about why bringing back notifications "was impossible, but we're working on it" a dozen times or more. In reality, they just need certain broadcasts to receive the most views to generate the most money through their awarding system. On top of hundreds of lies at this point, they've been actively banning anyone who discusses this. They ban streamers who ask questions about how the ranking mechanism works, including an autistic streamer with a large following on the site, simply for making note of how certain streamers get special treatment. They even banned a user for making a notifications replacement and discussing why they made it. In fact, if you get banned from the r/pan subreddit for asking any of these questions (which happens often), you have to be careful about the content you interact with on Reddit as a whole. Since they forcefully inject the Reddit Live top broadcast into every desktop page view (and most mobile ones) without actually labeling it as r/pan content, if you click on that broadcast and vote or make a comment, they ban you from the site. It's completely out of control, and that's how every level of the site operates these days. The influxes of cash and IPO hyping paint a rosy picture, but peeling back just one layer of the Reddit onion quickly reveals a company which is flailing, and desperately grasping at anything that will help maintain the charade until crossing the IPO finish line. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rejfsa/what_in_the_f_is_rpan_and_why_does_it_say_its_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rejfsa/what_in_the_f_i... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rcvi52/according_to_the_reddit_recap_ive_contributed_15k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rcvi52/according_to_th...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stareblinkstare 5y ago
Congratulations to Aaron Swartz and the team.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Copernicron 5y ago
So Reddit is going to get even worse than it already is? Ugh, no thanks.
imgabe 5y ago
Man, what a ride Reddit must have been. I wonder if any of the original team are still there, or if they still have any equity. One of the first useful things I ever programmed was a Greasemonkey script to collapse comment threads on Reddit before they had the ability to do that. They implemented the collapse feature a few weeks or months later and made it useless. I still like the way my script worked better though, it left the top comment visible. I wish I hadn't deleted my original Reddit account. It would probably be one of the older ones around by now. I saw yesterday that gilding in /r/AskReddit have paid for 868 years of server time. It seems like they might be able to make a vanity payment model instead of just advertising. That would be nice. If they made the old.reddit.com interface available by subscribing to Reddit Gold only, they might make a fortune off of just that...
eljimmy 5y ago
I can’t help but think this is the end for that site. It started off with a very old school minimalist designed forum vibe and has been devolving into dark patterns and advertisements as of late. I guess good things can’t stay free forever and the bills need to be paid somehow. Wish they went to a donation model like Wikipedia instead.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  I found reddit from the great digg.com exodus. They didn’t learn.
  - agiacalone 5y ago
    Slashdot did the same thing even before digg. I miss those days sometimes.
  - donio 5y ago
    The fact that old.reddit.com continues to be available suggests that they did.
    - metamet 5y ago
      To this point, I would probably stop using the desktop version of the site if they nixed old.reddit.com.
      - ramphastidae 5y ago
        I’m a fan of teddit.net
      - geuis 5y ago
        Same. I only use old mode for both mobile and desktop. It’s super annoying that about once a week they drop me back into their utterly awful mobile web experience. Then have to go back to settings and choose request desktop site yet again. Most recently they’ve switched image galleries to using their new desktop design, so simply trying to view images often pops up this new and totally incompatible experience. Earlier today the left/right nav icons stopped working so I just gave up on trying to view those images.
CamelCaseName 5y ago
Half the comments in here boil down to "I would stop using Reddit if they discontinued old.reddit.com" and it really rubs me the wrong way. It's like saying "Facebook will die if they start charging users to post to their wall". Like, okay, sure. But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it. In fact, I don't think Reddit has a history of deprecating anything! Freaking. .compact is still around from god knows when! https://www.reddit.com/r/all.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/all.compact
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  > But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it. Let’s be honest. Every company says this. Some actually try to stand by their statement. Public companies very often wipe those statements from existence because some MBA found a way to increase profits 27% this quarter (who cares if it the company borders on bankrupt in 2 years) or some intern found a way to double clicks. If someone demonstrates that old Reddit results in fewer ad views, shutting it down is a matter of when and not if.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Reddit also used to say "We won't use your email address for anything except password resets", and we all know how that went. They've basically stopped adding new features to the old UI, so a lot of account settings require you to go to the new UI if you want to change them (and of course the most annoying settings typically default to "on" when the toggle is added). The markdown handling has also changed. That's why on old Reddit you'll sometimes see broken URLs with superfluous escape characters.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    > every subreddit are rabid radical liberals who won't tolerate the slightest dissent from the party line. > I'm glad he's dead - he'd probably kill himself again if he could see what's been done to the site. Woof, there's one echo chamber and then there's this...
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Ouch, this could mean big changes for the site. Once they come under investor scrutiny the wild wild west activity will likely get banned.
doodlebugging 5y ago
I just logged in to my oldest Reddit account. It was opened in 2006. I have kept it around just to be able to read some of the posts I made over the years. I'll delete those now, close the account, and move along. I have had so much fun but I think the time is right for a change.
swyx 5y ago
never thought i would see the day. I guess congrats to YCombinator’s first golden child? They were first cohort of YC I believe? really happy for them, for a long while they were languishing with no growth whatsoever. Their monetization strategy is still really unclear/unproven but clearly some investors saw enough to go ahead and bet big. good for them.
ipsin 5y ago
So does an IPO make their dark patterns ("download the app or we will annoy you forever") better or worse? It's either money for continued operations or the pressure to milk active users for cash.
- bagels 5y ago
  Unlikely to be better. Same or worse.
JamesAdir 5y ago
Reddit in the last 2-3 years was ruined by itself. The homepage became more and more polarized and I'm sure it's by tweaking the algorithm to create more traffic and clicks. The killing of Secret Santa and Reddit gifts showed that the company doesn't care about the community at all, but it's focused on maximizing revenue for the future IPO. Really sad about this as the site was being able to stay out of the toxic environment of the social media giants for a long time.
randmeerkat 5y ago
I keep wondering, why hasn’t someone made a new Reddit that’s pretty much just the old Reddit? It seems like there’s a ton of demand for it. Disrupt what Reddit has become by creating what it used to be.
- gpm 5y ago
  lemmy.ml is an example of this, and I'm pretty sure that it's far from the first. The hard part is attracting a crowd, network effects are real.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    The font colors require some adjusting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- moreira 5y ago
  Because network effects. Even if you clone Reddit you still need to convince people to come use your clone, that’s where the actual hard work is. And “ton of demand”, there isn’t really. Just some loud critics, but nowhere near a big enough mass to make a difference. Just as Mastodon will never beat Twitter, despite fixing a lot of its shortcomings.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Because there's nothing intrinsically good or novel about it any longer. It's not the tech, it's just that people are there already.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nunez 5y ago
  voat.co tried. when the last reddit exodus happened in 2017, the site crashed all of the time. you need A LOTTTTTTTTTT of resources to run reddit, and reddit 10x’ed the “unified forum with image and video hosting” problem.
henning 5y ago
The Reddit of 2006 where tutorials on generating HTML in Lisp rocket to the top of the homepage is long gone. I can't imagine investing in an ad company that is fueled by clickbait and outrage the way Reddit is. Plus, some percentage of the userbase will always run aggressive ad blockers and be impossible to effectvely monetize. However, my brain works very differently from other people's, so I could be wrong.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  It's not really gone though. There are plenty of subreddits you can subscribe to if that's your interest. Or there are others to subscribe to for almost any interest you may have.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  Those tutorials can still rocket to the top of YOUR homepage. That's the power of reddit. That everyone can craft their own experience by subscribing to subreddits. So subscribe to the lisp subreddit and you'll see the content you want.
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    This concept is not long for this world. I've been a daily user for for than a decade. * [Your default sort and filter list no longer only contains content you are subscribed to.](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/m1pb9u/comment/gqgh821/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/m1pb9u/comment/gqgh82...) * They continually "improve" the default (and Hot, New, Top, and Rising) sort and filter algorithm(s). Every day it contains less relevant content for you, and more content peppered with ads and outrage. All of these options are slowly morphing into the same sort and filter set. * They are aggressively shutting down interesting communities which don't fit their advertiser profile, and using the above algorithms to ensure no one ever sees them. These include, for example, discussion of covid or vaccines from a critical perspective; assisted suicide; Donald Trump; guns; trans controversies; etc. * They are aggressively policing language. There is a growing list of words which, if used, will earn the user a ban. * They stopped work on old.reddit.com, which gave users more transparent control over sort and filter. I predict they will kill it soon. * They currently allow API access for third party aps. These aps don't serve ads and can employ their own sorting and filtering. I predict open APIs will be shut down, just like all the other major platforms have done. Long story short, Reddit is going to turn into Facebook. They've made that intention clear. It's only a matter of time before they demand Facebook-like verification for users.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
What's Reddit need access to public capital for? Of course they want to make some individuals rich, but other than that?
- nowherebeen 5y ago
  Moreover, who would buy that stock? What is the growth prospect of an Internet forum that has been around for 10 years. Not even advertisers use it because it so bad at targeting. I would rather put $1000 in Tesla or something more tangible.
mightyquacks 5y ago
Reddit used to be amazing Now it's like a red flag in your resume if you worked for reddit Then they made a whole mess on the homepage. This is what happens when you hire mediocre engineers. Its like junior engineers who cant write code. Reddit mobile is not bad, but stop trying to make me install it. There are people who only wants to use web. But your web engineers are garbage their ads is incredibly bad. there are dark patterns everywhere. Now they're even trying to mess up the old.redit.com The site always crashes. It's like the early founders did a really good job, and the vultures who could barely pass as a PM or as an engineer took over. I mean if they wanted to save this site, they would prob have to lay off all the fat and start rehiring. I was excited for reddit back in the day, i thought they had a shot of saving the internet. now they're trying to get into everything, and can barely execute So the trillion dollar question is, what's next to replace reddit
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  It sounds like you're mad at explicit decisions made by product owners, like the content on the frontpage or dark patterns that push mobile app usage. I guarantee none of the rank and file engineers are responsible for those decisions, and they almost certainly detest them just as much as you. The problem is if they don't implement them then they don't get a paycheck and can't put food on the table. It's silly to paint them with blame.
  - teaearlgraycold 5y ago
    They’re all Bay Area engineers. So switching jobs is an inconvenience with a raise on the other side. The changes aren’t their ideas but it’s not like they can’t refuse. They can just work anywhere else. They probably don’t care.
    - bogota 5y ago
      I mean… browse through HN for the day. According to its users you shouldn’t work at any company that pays well because they are all evil. At a certain point you just don’t care what people are writing on forums.
snwfog 5y ago
In case you dislike the "new" Reddit interface, check out https://rdddeck.com https://rdddeck.com, it uses a tweetdeck-like compact layout thats optimized for desktop.
- vesche 5y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/
- wilsonnb3 5y ago
  teddit.net is also very nice
johnisgood 5y ago
Excuse me for my ignorance, but what does it mean for Reddit and its users?
DantesKite 5y ago
The larger subreddits have problems, but Reddit has done a remarkable job of collecting people with niche interests into one area. I wouldn't discount their success and future success (as much as I'd like to). What's odd is they haven't stopped growing. It's just been linear user growth. They could literally do nothing and the site would still grow. It's closer to Wikipedia than a social network in some respects. And by that standard, we should try to judge it. I look forward to the next forum site as much as the next person. But I don't know what it would look like. If anyone does, I definitely urge you to build it if you can. Substack has every incentive to build a community. Discord as well. So there's definitely opportunities, but from where I sit, I don't have any insight as to what you could do to beat this behemoth.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Small ones have problems too (like raids and low amount of mods). They don’t stop growing because they ate all the small forums.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Reddit is my go to place for local news. There is so little coverage of local news outside big cities. The coffee-house atmosphere of the local sub I’d very refreshing and informative. Sadly, many of the bigger subs have less and less quality. There’s a post I remember from about 2010 that blew my mind in the /r/philosophy subreddit. Now /r/philosophy is all crap, and I can’t event find that article.
  - BbzzbB 5y ago
    I don't know about r/philosophy, but if it's grown too large to be usable, as many do, look for subsets of philosophy (by genre, philosopher, etc). I'm sure there are more niche subs with decent communities.
    - 5y ago
ggm 5y ago
500 million users, 100,000 communities. Since I don't pay to use it, presumably the value proposition lies in the small cohort who do pay for ephemeral karma and style additions, value added services, and of course the advertising BI which fuels the internet at large. Since I am not paying, and I am not bidding for shares, I must be the product. This is merely a statement of my value (1/500,000,000th) to them as a BI source. on $6nm value: $1200 per user, $60,000 per community. Thats not annual, presuambly at a sane ROI its some sub-multiple of that as extracted/notional value, but I lack the fu to say what that is. I have to say, I don't feel worth $1200 in reddit views. Gosh, I wonder if selling my read impressions is a breach of GDRP and/or CCPA
14 5y ago
There has been some recent changes to reddit and it is becoming aggressively annoying. Trying to make me look back on my top posts and comments and flashy buttons on the top. They are aiming for that dopamine hit by showing you your top posts so you can reminisce in all the likes you got that day. On top of that they have a banner across the bottom you can close but it forever comes back nagging you to verify your account. The whole reason I do kind of use reddit is because I am anonymous to others and can speak freely. I can create burner accounts and say one thing and never go back to it. It feels very facebooky with the big push for engagement happening right now but I guess this public offering is why the big push.
andymoe 5y ago
If they don’t do a direct listing maybe they’ll let some old timers get in on the IPO like Airbnb did for hosts. Lurking for 16 years has to count for something right? :)
raytube 5y ago
I land on Reddit, and never quite figure out how conversations and threading work. Always feels broken to me from a usability standpoint.
- raytube 5y ago
  That's right, downvote my user experience why don't you.
nunez 5y ago
Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content, but it’s a firehose that is very difficult to curate and keep up with. Reddit is democratizing in a sense, like riding the NYC subway. An even wilder bet: Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse (as a news outlet of sorts, on steroids) and even potentially minimize the need for Google Search. Anecdotally, a VERY LARGE percentage of my Google searches end in “site:reddit.com” these days. Reddit posts, especially from smaller subs, tend to be higher quality and don’t have ulterior motives (ad revenue). If Reddit’s Lucene cluster were better, between that and SO, I’d use Google a handful of times a week. Maybe this IPO can help fund that. If the ad revenue from the whale subs allow me to continue learning about interior design, supply chain logistics, the inner workings of car sales, finance and tax strategies if I become high net worth, and more, I’m here for it.
- pibechorro 5y ago
  Reddit has been steadily going to shit. They became incredibly trigger happy censoring anything and anyone outside of the echo chamber there. I still visit it, but I am short on them.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  > Twitter has very high quality content Can you give me an example? I have zero followers/following on Twitter and just use Tweetdeck so I'd like to know what I should be looking for.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    @foone is always a good bet, if you are interested in old technology.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
xenihn 5y ago
I'm done with reddit once old.reddit.com is gone. Guessing it won't be around much longer after the IPO.
jesprenj 5y ago
1) A nice clickbait title. 2) Just some general grammar problems that appear in many languages, including English. I thought that reddit's source code (files) would be published and free again. By the way, reddit used to be open source: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit Too bad.
siruncledrew 5y ago
Reddit has definitely had noticeable changes over the past 5+ years as they’ve gone through further VC rounds of funding that demand more ROI-centric changes. I can’t imagine the ways it will change as a public company once numbers are public to scrutiny and the shareholder makeup shifts. It seems the intrinsic problem with platforms like Reddit (at least from what’s been witnessed over the last 8 years) is that they will inevitably “hit a wall” in a way that will become incompatible with shareholder interests. By that I mean at some point that hockey-stick growth is going to inevitably taper off and reach terminal velocity before declining as the platform reaches unsustainability. Then, Reddit is going to have to throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks to please investors, or grow by acquisition, which is like a Tylenol level solution. I just don’t see how an advertising and virtual badges driven social platform is ever going to be compatible with the expectations of running a public company to produce returns like in some other industry or sector.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Good, reddit is a stagnant control-freak dinosaur that has monopolized forums and needs to be disrupted.
ausbah 5y ago
I'll go against the tide here and say Reddit I still think Reddit is great! sure I don't think the big subs, greater emphasis on monitization, and some of the other big changes they've made over the past few years are great - but I still love the smaller subs I participate in, and the I think the new UI quite nicer than the old one
fairity 5y ago
I wonder how the original founders of Reddit feel about selling out so early. They sold to Conde Naste for $20m. Now, it's worth 1000x more. I'm sure there are ways to rationalize it as a good decision -- i.e. $10m is a life changing sum of money. But, I wonder if, as a general rule, it's better to only sell half your stake to avoid upside regret.
busymom0 5y ago
I can see this as a bad thing in the following way: 1. They will most likely start making their API unusable similar to what Twitter did. Their Chat is already not available via the API and they are no longer open sourced. 2. They will most likely start banning porn or make it very hard to access (though Twitter seems to still allow porn accounts so maybe I am wrong here?). 3. MORE dark patterns in design. Their website is already super slow, tons of white space requiring extra scrolling (so more ads), needs extra clicks and too many ads which look like posts. Their site on mobile is useless and keeps asking to open in app. Ad blocker and 3rd party app solves this which gives them more incentive to break the API. 4. More censorship of anything remotely offensive.
garbagetime 5y ago
That website is pure pain. Even the niche subreddits I used to enjoy are now repulsive.
yessirwhatever 5y ago
Well that explains their inexplicably stupid and horrible attempt to increase the number of their users. From the crappy new design to the fucking insistent push to use their app.
kristjank 5y ago
I can't imagine this change making Reddit any better. Things have been going downhill ever since Swartz's unfortunate demise. Maybe it will take some of the control away from the chinese investors, but that's about it. Problems like powermodding, censorship and curated approach to their public image (r/undelete). Whatever is needed to please the investors and advertisers.
koilke 5y ago
Could not help but understanding the title as Reddit (adj) files (noun) to go public.
- donkarma 5y ago
  I also thought this, glad I wasn't the only one
thinkingemote 5y ago
Would this be the first public porn platform? A flippant remark, but Reddit is a not insignificant facilitator of pornography alongside many great safe for work subreddits and we will probably see them trying to stop this before or after going public. That or changing the terms of use for users to be 18 from the current 13.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Would this be the first public porn platform? Not even close. > Reddit is a huge publisher of pornography No, they aren't. Section 230 says so.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    I changed the phrase to "not insignificant facilitator of pornography" to be more relative. What a publisher is, today, is a bit muddy imo.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  Plenty of hardcore pornography on Twitter, and not just legal one, which got me wondering why their app is getting a pass on IOS when Tumbler didn't. At least Facebook does not permit any form of pornography.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    And mastercard doesn't require them to get a photo id of their users.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Reddit is very old, with old unpaid moderators that moderate arbitrarily and a user base that has now been trained to devolve everything to their lowest common denominator which is politics. There are few niches that are useful as aggregators, but moderating those subreddits must be exhausting (e.g. covid19). Looks like they really need to be disrupted but i guess investors don't think there s enough money in building another forum. And they may probably be right. What is a reason to invest in reddit's future?
streamofdigits 5y ago
The main data point from the success of reddit is that quality interactions in large scale online platforms require an interest based user interface. Other than that it is almost guaranteed now that its buggy (feels like its held together with tape) and ad-ladden overall experience will be locked-in and get worse (like it happened with facebook) People might want to hedge their bets and look into open source lemmy and federated versions of the reddit concept https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
- danuker 5y ago
  I use the old UI, which is lean, fast even on my old laptop, and not buggy. Fortunately I still have a setting for my account to do so. I would stop using it without this setting.
GvS 5y ago
I can't use current Reddit without Reddit Enhancement Suite - https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
Good luck explaining to shareholders that the most popular subreddits are occasionally held hostage by extreme left activists abusing their power by shutting down the subreddits as a political statement.
lvl100 5y ago
Reddit is more than 3/4 of my time on internet. It’s got more eye share than anything outside of Google landing page.
spinach 5y ago
Reddit has become so heavy-handed with censorship, especially towards feminism, I stopped using it a long time ago. Reddit is a great example of how awful the internet is for woman. Porn subs can have content that is female only, but subs for women and lesbians have to include men who think they're women and feminist subs get banned. The biggest lesbian sub is so overrun by men it's a joke.
- asquabventured 5y ago
  Honest question, do you feel like the lgb community has been hijacked by the t? As an outsider it sure appears that way and seems like there is some low boiling resentment brewing
jpe-210 5y ago
So long as they keep the API available for apps like Apollo then I'm fine. Honestly that's the only way I browse Reddit now, but I can't help but feel weird when the only way to enjoy a site is to use something else entirely to view its content.
anonu 5y ago
There's maybe one positive comment thread in here and all the rest are thoughtfully negative to borderline "hater", wishing for Reddits demise for some obscure reason. I think we've seen this pattern play out. The HN crowd is really not the right crowd to source opinions when it comes to business matters. And you can see it in the comments, it's mostly about how the UI sucks, the app is slow, the dark patterns, etc... The reality being missed is there's a ton of value being created in the forums regardless, and MAUs are up like crazy. The bad UI and ads don't seem like they're getting in the way of that.
- sexy_seedbox 5y ago
  > The HN crowd is really not the right crowd to source opinions when it comes to business matters. Yep, there could've been so many HN Bitcoin bill/millionaires, but being so logical, many HN folks here are grumpy buttcoiners.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Freskis 5y ago
  You are spot-on about the HackerNews tech criticisms being irrelevant. But I think the points about Reddit being toxic to advertisers because of the hate/porn/gore/mysogny are correct. It just takes one bad story and advertisers will flee the platform. There has been no mainstream examinination and investigation of what Reddit is. Once it starts, it's all over.
  - the_doctah 5y ago
    Have you been on Reddit lately? They purged all that crap and aggressively censor the entire platform now. The censorship has increased tenfold in the last couple of years.
    - Freskis 5y ago
      One of the top stories on Reddit right now is about Nancy Pelosi, and one of the top comments is calling for her death. No moderation, only praise for the murder comment. It just takes one newspaper to highlight that and it's over for Reddit as an advertising platform. And it can't be stopped because the moderation is local.
PickledHotdog 5y ago
Wonder what this might mean for third party apps that don't display Reddit's (overt) advertisements I need BaconReader to stay alive
julbook 5y ago
I'll try to get a piece of this one as it is a great platform to watch diverse content. There's a lot of subreddits ranging from shitposts to high-value content that is available within the site's reach.
sebow 5y ago
A censorious echo-chamber going public, what else is new?I just find it funny how people migrated from FB/Twitter to a somewhat more usable website and reddit is anything else besides garbage. Ironically enough, the vast majority of people never used the website pre-2014, so they don't have anything or comparison besides "it's a different community-building website, therefore it's better". It's not: their website on mobile is cancer, forcing people to install an app is not an argument, censorship(!= moderation, though i'm sure people will start pointing out how it's privately owned) is probably higher than even on places like FB when you compare the last few years(mainly because FB in the west has been somewhat watched), and the core principle of system on which the website functions is polarizing, even more than FB/Twitter.You add on top of that the scandals of (quite literally) 'corruption' between community moderators, staff, etc and the socially-obedient karma system, you end up with a gamified social network, except it's worse because everyone wants to comfortably stay in their own bubble. Then again this same downstream phenomenon started applying to HN, you already see the cracks, and bullshit is more and more frequent here, a place where people know you can't avoid talking politics as the discussion length increases, knew to remain civil and discuss even the touchy subjects, detached.
65 5y ago
I'm a big fan of their monetization strategy. Instead of relying on advanced advertising tracking they use micro-transactions to buy digital goods. It's a lot cleaner and doesn't ruin the experience of using the site.
boringg 5y ago
What happens to all the work from the moderators once they realize they are working for a public traded company for free? Doesn't this break peoples willingness to build those communities once they realize their hard worked time is getting squeezed to investor dollars? I understand it was a private company beforehand but now it must really feel bad to know how much people are making off your goodwill. Totally effed up model. FWIW I actually like reddit for the specific communities but tough to see how it isn't going to get further diluted and mods are increasingly going to be less interested is my take - further eroding its value proposition.
- villasv 5y ago
  Moderators have always been working for "free" (or for their own reasons, there are monetized subs). The fact that Reddit is public or private doesn't change a thing. Why would working for free for a privately owned company would be easier on the mind? Do you prefer to be explored by a few wealthy individuals rather than the whole open market?
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    I think a lot of moderators don't realize they're working for a multi billion dollar company atm. It's much harder to hide that when you can google reddit's stock price.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I think a substantial number of powermods are either paid by some influence agency, or they do it for free because they're activists who believe they're fighting for a righteous cause.
rexreed 5y ago
I am a fan of reddit, but I'm not a fan of what public markets do to companies. I want to be optimistic, but I'm realistic -- the sort of content that gets posted in many subreddits isn't often the sort of content lives long when faced with public market scrutiny. Then again I guess Twitter has become rife with that sort of content too. Maybe I should be cautiously optimistic.
quiet_cool 5y ago
reddit is probably the trashiest social media site around today(for it's size).
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Reddit has come some ways as far as mainstream acceptance etc but man if I will die on the hill that it only survived/became "successful" because of the legendary Digg slip up and exodus. It was on its deathbed before that happened. I know there are enough of us out there that remember this and tire of the having to remind of the history. And it's nothing more than a large collection of forums basically. With all the mod challenges, UI/UX hurdles etc that come with that. Happy for it to exist/find it useful for niche communities etc but with freaking Alexis Ohanian would stop waltzing around like he had any genius foresight or any insight into anything social/web.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Also for any of you non-lame-lurkers out there that never log in and insist on using old.reddit instead of setting prefs to use the old look, all the crap that is the default on the homepage of reddit, /r/popular etc whatever, you never have to see at all and can enjoy your niche subreddits without any exposure. I haven't looked at any of the main top level reddits/memes/incels/funny/pics in like 5 years
- the_doctah 5y ago
  I'd use preferences if my accounts didn't keep getting banned from the ever-increasing censorship.
hnburnsy 5y ago
At least on Reddit, for now, you can sort by New and your setting sticks.
dobs_bob 5y ago
Shouldn't they get rid the white supremacy subreddits first?
barfingclouds 5y ago
God dammit
rbt0424 5y ago
https://socialupvote.com https://socialupvote.com

541 points by stevemk14ebr 5y ago

karmasimida 5y ago

How would they make money with such toxic audience/traffic?

jstx1 5y ago
I don't think the toxicity plays into profitability that much; if anything it might even help. Facebook is doing great financially.

jyu 5y ago

If you thought site performance is bad now, wait a few quarters when there are grey beard investors pressuring leadership to wring out the last shekels from this carcass.

Havoc 5y ago

Who wants to invest in something that is one user revolt away from being digg on an endless list of edgy topics

multifasciatus 5y ago

What does it mean to confidentially file for an IPO? Is this a common process before filing an S-1?

gregorymichael 5y ago
It is. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/25/heres-why-more-companies-are-filing-confidential-ipo-paperwork/?sh=72ce8c496e68 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/25/here...
financetechbro 5y ago
It means that the company has started the review process with the SEC. The company is going to go back and forth with the agency to make sure their filings, audits, disclosures, etc. are up to par before the company files publicly in a few months. Once the filing is public the company will wait for 15 days before launching their roadshow. And yes, this is how the process works with every company
- _sword 5y ago
  This is accurate. They have lead left for their syndicate selected if they’re going the traditional underwriter route. They’ll pick all the banks for their syndicate with help from their advisors, and then teach sell side research about the company and use this as a trial period for fielding questions while everyone is under NDA’s before the public flip. Once the roadshow is launched it’ll be something between 1-2 weeks before pricing, though that’s been compressed towards ~1 week since everyone is doing digital meetings now vs in person.
  - financetechbro 5y ago
    Exactly ^

SQueeeeeL 5y ago

At least Reddit had it's massive downward spiral years ago, no one can blame their current website layout on this.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
Don't worry, we're next.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Strongly agree. Those who are skeptical and have recently joined HN just need to rewind, read a few threads from 2015, let alone 2010. The quality of discussion, the disagreements, the back and forth, the deep respect for each other - all those are eroding away on HN, albeit slowly. Still there is good discussion, especially on deep technical topics (e.g. Semiconductors). It may not be the fault of HN - today's internet is full of toxicity and pretty much everything is politicized. I naturally like to play devil's advocate and it is basically impossible on HN without getting flagged or worse - called names and get insults thrown at you. I would love to get Dang's perspective but it would be difficult for him to say anything.
  - ggm 5y ago
    I'm not dang (or spartacus) but I want to say, I think the logic here is fallacious. Quality may or may not be going down, overall I tend to think not, its distortions of size effects, not absolute decline. But more specifically there is no nexus between the decline, or behaviour, and a desire to IPO and realize profit. Not all things co-relate, they can be contemporaneous and un-related. Whatever Dan has, and he has a lot of "it" -it includes tolerance and forbearance, and an ability not to buy into the paranoia at large. I don't think he'd be part of an IPO decision logic which went "yea it's boring: lets profit and run" -there might be a "profit" and there might be a consequential "run" and there might be "its boring" but I don't personally see them as causally connected.
  - belval 5y ago
    Mandatory guideline quote: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. The actual quote has a bunch of links that I worth looking at. People were echo'ing your comment 7 years ago.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

How is Reddit IPO'ing after they were bought by Conde Nast? I've never really looked into it. It's an interesting thing that they managed to get un-acquired somehow. In fact, there are so many questions. Does YC get a payday out of this, or was their stock acquired during the acquisition? 2% of $5B is $100M, so it's a lot of money at stake.

riffic 5y ago
they were spun off a while ago https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/reddit-just-raised-a-new-round-that-values-the-company-at-1-8-billion/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/reddit-just-raised-a-new-r...
- shmatt 5y ago
  * keep the old.Reddit.com design for everyone * spend 9 figures for a redesign The choice was obvious
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I don't think a lot Gen Z don't like the old.reddit.com because it looks kind of old fashioned vs say react "modern" pages and they're afraid of lookign old-fashioned. However, that is what keeps me coming back along with relative anonymity and content on topics that I like.
    - trophycase 5y ago
      information density is too low. Why would I spend 2.5x time scrolling through www.reddit.com/r/fantasyfootball when I can read all the important headlines faster at old.reddit.com ... the redesign also loads fewer posts at a time so you constantly wait for a spinner to fetch new content
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Mobile apps solved that problem. The redesign made desktop problems.

nine_k 5y ago

A strange choice of time, to me. With such intense market volatility, it's easy to both leave money on the table by setting the IPO price too low, or to have trouble selling stock by by setting it too high. OTOH the freshly printed money look for returns, so the stock market is more likely to be bullish even in relatively near term; maybe they are trying to catch this trend?

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Market volatility doesn't seem to be extraordinarily high right now: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/VIX:INDEXCBOE?safe=off&sxsrf=ALeKk00LsbUuspWz08dDNjzptL18zgufFA:1584728838112&ei=Bgt1XobcAYeFytMP29-ZuAE&btnG=Search&oq=amazon&gs_l=finance-immersive.1.0.81l3.801.1693.0.2905.7.7.0.0.0.0.203.667.2j2j1.5.0....0...1c.1.64.finance-immersive..2.5.665.0...0.-e7S7KZnG4c&window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/VIX:INDEXCBOE?safe=off&...
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Market predictability is at an extreme low. Rug pulls are happening on a regular basis, and spy is regularly being propped up by a few random, overvalued stocks.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    It's being propped up by the Fed, which just announced their QE decision for the next 3 months or so today. That gives plenty time for an IPO.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    I actually don't know what "market predictability" means. Like, the market is never predictable, right? That's why most money managers don't consistently make big profits. Is this a notion that can be quantified? Can you cite some evidence for what you've said? Anyway, the person I was responding to said volatility and that is the metric I cited.
    - 5y ago

satellite2 5y ago

Now it makes sense why they implemented all those user hostile strategies recently. To grow the user count. Hopefully, they'll be able to remove it after they go public.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
they're never removing any of that
- satellite2 5y ago
  They made a comment on that?
  - ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
    not the parent commenter, but my sense is the argument is that all-the-more-so as a public company, user/engagement growth will be king, so the notion that dark patterns and growth hacks will go away is wishful thinking at best.
    - varenc 5y ago
      Agreed. The pressure to push numbers before an IPO will be even stronger after. Especially as control of the company/board shifts more towards returns focused shareholders.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Investors will demand the golden goose be slain, as per usual.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Short term profits instead of investing to build something truly great...
gruez 5y ago

lucasverra 5y ago

Are they declaring themselves a web3 company ?

zen_of_prog 5y ago
Nice, I hadn't heard of that [1]! I'm pretty indifferent towards owning a Blockchained micro-share of a publicly listed company, but I'd be very interested if reddit were to end up user-owned akin to the Packers [1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/web3-explained-crypto-nfts-bored-apes.html https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/web3-explained-crypto-n...
1270018080 5y ago
It's a company with experienced software engineers and a real product, very unlikely.
worker767424 5y ago
They actually tried in the Yishan days. Someone was working on JS blockchain vaguely meant to be something like but not really an ICO. It was bizarre.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ferdowsi 5y ago

Congratulations folks! I'll say that Reddit has become one of my favorite sites to visit occasionally and I feel they've earned their success. I honestly feel it is a positive factor in my life, for the little I use it. There's really excellent content to be had, like well moderated educational content at subreddits like r/AskHistorians and r/COVID. I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I also like that they've kept discussions text oriented, instead of allowing for embedded tweets, images, or videos to clog up comment threads (I like this about HN, as well). They might renege on this in the future, but I like the distinctly 2000s feel to discussions.

rtkwe 5y ago
I hope they have enough to point to from other instances to show that it's a bad idea.
Rendello 5y ago
Reddit already has embedded GIF comments, ie. https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/wut/ggsmzhy/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/w...
- colordrops 5y ago
  <embedded gif of Vader screaming nooooooooooooooo>
AussieWog93 5y ago
>I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I wish that was my experience too. Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. It's great for things I'm not interested in, though, as it's a quick way to get genuine information on what is considered a good brand of bike shorts or hair curling products.
- naiwenwt 5y ago

post_break 5y ago

Will they be banning porn like tumblr? I know they removed it from "All" and then I believe they hid it in other ways. Just wondering when the Digg 4.0 / Tumblr will happen to Reddit. So far it's been a slow burn but I'm waiting for the great purge to bring down the house. It always seems to happen around an IPO.

Trasmatta 5y ago
The day they shut down old.reddit.com will be the day the site dies for me. I feel like it's inevitable that it will happen at some point.
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  Yup, agreed. I might use it on mobile, but on desktop "new" Reddit is such a massive degrade that i can't put up with it.
  - modeless 5y ago
    I use old reddit on mobile too. It's legitimately a better experience (just make sure to turn off the font size boosting feature of mobile Chrome which interacts poorly with the layout).
    - a5aAqU 5y ago
      There is also https://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/
    - lijogdfljk 5y ago
      Oh i should amend, i say mobile because i use a mobile app on my phone (not the official one!), so the crap UI doesn't affect me on my phone.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I like the looks and functionality of the new reddit but it s just dog slow compared to using old reddit and RES

paxys 5y ago

Content aside, Reddit is possibly the worst performing large commercial website I have ever seen. Like half of all page loads and requests end with “something went wrong”. Search has been unusable from day 1, and somehow getting worse. Their new video player makes me want to throw my computer across the room. I have been using it on and off for a decade now and I can’t think of one aspect of the site (whether in terms of performance, reliability, UI, usability, features) that hasn’t degraded in quality. Happy about the IPO, but PLEASE invest in some engineering and infrastructure work. (Edit: weird that this comment was sitting at the top of the page for an hour and then suddenly moved to the very bottom. Someone on the HN team must really like Reddit.)

fortylove 5y ago
The page loads ending in failure has not been my experience at all. Search is not great though, agreed.
kactus 5y ago
The redesign and video player issues finally convinced me to stop using Reddit and delete my account after 10 years, last year. Haven’t looked back.
thundergolfer 5y ago
I use Reddit daily, and for the last ~week their UI has added multiple things to click and be taken to my 'Reddit recap', which I think is supposed to be like Spotify's 'your year in review' feature. Reddit's product managers very much want me to check out my 'Reddit Recap'. Well I've navigated to my recap about 30 times now in the last week, from multiple links, in app and desktop, and it's still totally broken. On desktop now, it doesn't show anything except a "retry" button which is incorrectly stuck to the left side of my screen (CSS fail). I can understand things being broken, but its really bad form to funnel a user to a prominent feature, have that feature be broken, and then have a broken and terrible error state. I do wonder what kind of engineering team bungles a big feature release like this.
- sergiotapia 5y ago

binwiederhier 5y ago

My first reaction was "Oh no, here comes the the paywalls and the ads and all that". I sincerely hope that my initial reaction is wrong here, but the constant desire to please investors is unlikely to have a positive impact on the communities, no?

Shadonototra 5y ago

i love reddit i hate the CDN they use, it's slow af, you notice a lot on the gifts hosted on the reddit hostname

fourstar 5y ago

It's a shame that none of the subreddit creators that helped their success (made subreddits and grew/foster them) never were rewarded.

pyronik19 5y ago

They better get rid of the scores of woke power mods pushing users off onto alternate platforms.

kuhl 5y ago
At the very least delete u/maxwellhill
brailsafe 5y ago
I believe they codified their intention to keep doing exactly thta, into their terms of service.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

It's sad what Reddit has become and I only believe IPO-ing will accelerate that demise.

dmart 5y ago
Yes, despite how Reddit has gotten worse over the years, it will be a huge loss for the web once it finally fully jumps the shark. Already it’s pretty much the last place to find real human opinions in a sea of content marketing garbage.
- disconcision 5y ago
  yes, i only visit reddit directly a 1-2 times a day now as opposed to 100+ from maybe 2010-2017, but i still often append 'reddit' to certain searches with great effect.

plasticsoprano 5y ago

Reddit has me on some sort of ban that causes accounts to be permanently suspended within 24 hours of account creation regardless of what I do with that account, even if it's just make it and leave it alone. Also, anyone that comes to my home and connects to my wifi and then their reddit account will find their account permanently suspended within 24 hours. I've reached out to them multiple times to see what is happening and what can be done about it but get a boilerplate "your ban will be upheld" message from them with a link to the content rules so I can "prevent future bans". I had over 40k useless internet points on that site before the ban and an 11 year old account but they refuse to help. Oh well.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Have your ISP cycle/release->renew your IP address. Don’t attempt to sign in to any of the previous accounts from the new IP. Should avoid their anti evil team’s tooling as long as you’re not causing trouble.
- plasticsoprano 5y ago
  That's a whole other can of worms. I assumed that and asked ATT to do so and got the phone support equivalent of blank stares. I miss the old cable modem days where you could change the MAC address of the primary device attached to the ethernet port and force a new IP but not so with this Fiber ONT they gave me.
  - modeless 5y ago
    VPN. I've been pleased with Mullvad.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  This but also don't use any email previously associated with any account cause they will go and blacklist your new IP too.
  - kgwxd 5y ago

yalogin 5y ago

This is not good. The only reason I am still using Reddit is because of the old.reddit.com interface. Feels like an IPO will make them retire it at some point.

wussboy 5y ago
I’d actually welcome that. I spend exactly 15 minutes a day on it, and getting rid of the old site would be just enough to cut the cord forever.
the_duke 5y ago
There are a few alternative front ends tha uphold the spirit of the old UI. Both web based and mobile apps. But they might of course try to shut them down as well.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Part of the problem is that different front ends encourage different types and levels of discourse. Being able to chose to use a different front end only solves part of the problem.
Duralias 5y ago
If they retired old.reddit then the only time I would browse reddit would be when I use my phone, which I only do when I have no computer to interact with or before bed. If they then do the logical thing and block third party apps then I will just stop using reddit completely, because using the official app just isn't worth it.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  Right there with you. There are a LOT of us. This is ostensibly why they've allowed old.reddit.com to live for so long despite almost no development and maintenance anymore. This IPO will probably be the catalyst for some "house cleaning." I imagine old.reddit.com is not long for this world.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago

bryans 5y ago

Reddit is operating on the shakiest house of cards, and their investors are being swindled, along with their advertisers. For one of many examples, they're grossly inflating viewership numbers on Reddit Live by injecting the top broadcast into the front page of 25,000 users every ~30 seconds -- largely against their will[1] or without knowledge[2] -- and then selling those as "video views" to record labels, Adobe, League Of Legends and others. The administrators and moderators have repeatedly lied about this to the community, going as far as claiming they "don't even have the ability to manipulate the top broadcast mechanism," and yet they have a list of streamers who receive special treatment, along with the paid ads (which are not marked as ads, and instead offered as "user content.") A year ago, they even implemented a follow mechanism so that streamers' fans could get push notifications when they went live. But when the admins decided to make manual manipulation of the top broadcast mechanism a priority, they removed the notifications for Reddit Live altogether because it was too easy for the Reddit community to upvote "riff raff" into the top spot. They changed their story about why bringing back notifications "was impossible, but we're working on it" a dozen times or more. In reality, they just need certain broadcasts to receive the most views to generate the most money through their awarding system. On top of hundreds of lies at this point, they've been actively banning anyone who discusses this. They ban streamers who ask questions about how the ranking mechanism works, including an autistic streamer with a large following on the site, simply for making note of how certain streamers get special treatment. They even banned a user for making a notifications replacement and discussing why they made it. In fact, if you get banned from the r/pan subreddit for asking any of these questions (which happens often), you have to be careful about the content you interact with on Reddit as a whole. Since they forcefully inject the Reddit Live top broadcast into every desktop page view (and most mobile ones) without actually labeling it as r/pan content, if you click on that broadcast and vote or make a comment, they ban you from the site. It's completely out of control, and that's how every level of the site operates these days. The influxes of cash and IPO hyping paint a rosy picture, but peeling back just one layer of the Reddit onion quickly reveals a company which is flailing, and desperately grasping at anything that will help maintain the charade until crossing the IPO finish line. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rejfsa/what_in_the_f_is_rpan_and_why_does_it_say_its_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rejfsa/what_in_the_f_i... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rcvi52/according_to_the_reddit_recap_ive_contributed_15k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/rcvi52/according_to_th...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stareblinkstare 5y ago

Congratulations to Aaron Swartz and the team.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Copernicron 5y ago

So Reddit is going to get even worse than it already is? Ugh, no thanks.

imgabe 5y ago

Man, what a ride Reddit must have been. I wonder if any of the original team are still there, or if they still have any equity. One of the first useful things I ever programmed was a Greasemonkey script to collapse comment threads on Reddit before they had the ability to do that. They implemented the collapse feature a few weeks or months later and made it useless. I still like the way my script worked better though, it left the top comment visible. I wish I hadn't deleted my original Reddit account. It would probably be one of the older ones around by now. I saw yesterday that gilding in /r/AskReddit have paid for 868 years of server time. It seems like they might be able to make a vanity payment model instead of just advertising. That would be nice. If they made the old.reddit.com interface available by subscribing to Reddit Gold only, they might make a fortune off of just that...

eljimmy 5y ago

I can’t help but think this is the end for that site. It started off with a very old school minimalist designed forum vibe and has been devolving into dark patterns and advertisements as of late. I guess good things can’t stay free forever and the bills need to be paid somehow. Wish they went to a donation model like Wikipedia instead.

cyberge99 5y ago
I found reddit from the great digg.com exodus. They didn’t learn.
- agiacalone 5y ago
  Slashdot did the same thing even before digg. I miss those days sometimes.
- donio 5y ago
  The fact that old.reddit.com continues to be available suggests that they did.
  - metamet 5y ago
    To this point, I would probably stop using the desktop version of the site if they nixed old.reddit.com.
    - ramphastidae 5y ago
      I’m a fan of teddit.net
    - geuis 5y ago
      Same. I only use old mode for both mobile and desktop. It’s super annoying that about once a week they drop me back into their utterly awful mobile web experience. Then have to go back to settings and choose request desktop site yet again. Most recently they’ve switched image galleries to using their new desktop design, so simply trying to view images often pops up this new and totally incompatible experience. Earlier today the left/right nav icons stopped working so I just gave up on trying to view those images.

CamelCaseName 5y ago

Half the comments in here boil down to "I would stop using Reddit if they discontinued old.reddit.com" and it really rubs me the wrong way. It's like saying "Facebook will die if they start charging users to post to their wall". Like, okay, sure. But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it. In fact, I don't think Reddit has a history of deprecating anything! Freaking. .compact is still around from god knows when! https://www.reddit.com/r/all.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/all.compact

forgotmyoldname 5y ago
> But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it. Let’s be honest. Every company says this. Some actually try to stand by their statement. Public companies very often wipe those statements from existence because some MBA found a way to increase profits 27% this quarter (who cares if it the company borders on bankrupt in 2 years) or some intern found a way to double clicks. If someone demonstrates that old Reddit results in fewer ad views, shutting it down is a matter of when and not if.
Rebelgecko 5y ago
Reddit also used to say "We won't use your email address for anything except password resets", and we all know how that went. They've basically stopped adding new features to the old UI, so a lot of account settings require you to go to the new UI if you want to change them (and of course the most annoying settings typically default to "on" when the toggle is added). The markdown handling has also changed. That's why on old Reddit you'll sometimes see broken URLs with superfluous escape characters.
cbozeman 5y ago
[flagged]
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  > every subreddit are rabid radical liberals who won't tolerate the slightest dissent from the party line. > I'm glad he's dead - he'd probably kill himself again if he could see what's been done to the site. Woof, there's one echo chamber and then there's this...

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Ouch, this could mean big changes for the site. Once they come under investor scrutiny the wild wild west activity will likely get banned.

doodlebugging 5y ago

I just logged in to my oldest Reddit account. It was opened in 2006. I have kept it around just to be able to read some of the posts I made over the years. I'll delete those now, close the account, and move along. I have had so much fun but I think the time is right for a change.

swyx 5y ago

never thought i would see the day. I guess congrats to YCombinator’s first golden child? They were first cohort of YC I believe? really happy for them, for a long while they were languishing with no growth whatsoever. Their monetization strategy is still really unclear/unproven but clearly some investors saw enough to go ahead and bet big. good for them.

ipsin 5y ago

So does an IPO make their dark patterns ("download the app or we will annoy you forever") better or worse? It's either money for continued operations or the pressure to milk active users for cash.

bagels 5y ago
Unlikely to be better. Same or worse.

JamesAdir 5y ago

Reddit in the last 2-3 years was ruined by itself. The homepage became more and more polarized and I'm sure it's by tweaking the algorithm to create more traffic and clicks. The killing of Secret Santa and Reddit gifts showed that the company doesn't care about the community at all, but it's focused on maximizing revenue for the future IPO. Really sad about this as the site was being able to stay out of the toxic environment of the social media giants for a long time.

randmeerkat 5y ago

I keep wondering, why hasn’t someone made a new Reddit that’s pretty much just the old Reddit? It seems like there’s a ton of demand for it. Disrupt what Reddit has become by creating what it used to be.

gpm 5y ago
lemmy.ml is an example of this, and I'm pretty sure that it's far from the first. The hard part is attracting a crowd, network effects are real.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  The font colors require some adjusting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
moreira 5y ago
Because network effects. Even if you clone Reddit you still need to convince people to come use your clone, that’s where the actual hard work is. And “ton of demand”, there isn’t really. Just some loud critics, but nowhere near a big enough mass to make a difference. Just as Mastodon will never beat Twitter, despite fixing a lot of its shortcomings.
brailsafe 5y ago
Because there's nothing intrinsically good or novel about it any longer. It's not the tech, it's just that people are there already.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nunez 5y ago
voat.co tried. when the last reddit exodus happened in 2017, the site crashed all of the time. you need A LOTTTTTTTTTT of resources to run reddit, and reddit 10x’ed the “unified forum with image and video hosting” problem.

henning 5y ago

The Reddit of 2006 where tutorials on generating HTML in Lisp rocket to the top of the homepage is long gone. I can't imagine investing in an ad company that is fueled by clickbait and outrage the way Reddit is. Plus, some percentage of the userbase will always run aggressive ad blockers and be impossible to effectvely monetize. However, my brain works very differently from other people's, so I could be wrong.

emodendroket 5y ago
It's not really gone though. There are plenty of subreddits you can subscribe to if that's your interest. Or there are others to subscribe to for almost any interest you may have.
INTPenis 5y ago
Those tutorials can still rocket to the top of YOUR homepage. That's the power of reddit. That everyone can craft their own experience by subscribing to subreddits. So subscribe to the lisp subreddit and you'll see the content you want.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  This concept is not long for this world. I've been a daily user for for than a decade. * [Your default sort and filter list no longer only contains content you are subscribed to.](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/m1pb9u/comment/gqgh821/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/m1pb9u/comment/gqgh82...) * They continually "improve" the default (and Hot, New, Top, and Rising) sort and filter algorithm(s). Every day it contains less relevant content for you, and more content peppered with ads and outrage. All of these options are slowly morphing into the same sort and filter set. * They are aggressively shutting down interesting communities which don't fit their advertiser profile, and using the above algorithms to ensure no one ever sees them. These include, for example, discussion of covid or vaccines from a critical perspective; assisted suicide; Donald Trump; guns; trans controversies; etc. * They are aggressively policing language. There is a growing list of words which, if used, will earn the user a ban. * They stopped work on old.reddit.com, which gave users more transparent control over sort and filter. I predict they will kill it soon. * They currently allow API access for third party aps. These aps don't serve ads and can employ their own sorting and filtering. I predict open APIs will be shut down, just like all the other major platforms have done. Long story short, Reddit is going to turn into Facebook. They've made that intention clear. It's only a matter of time before they demand Facebook-like verification for users.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

What's Reddit need access to public capital for? Of course they want to make some individuals rich, but other than that?

nowherebeen 5y ago
Moreover, who would buy that stock? What is the growth prospect of an Internet forum that has been around for 10 years. Not even advertisers use it because it so bad at targeting. I would rather put $1000 in Tesla or something more tangible.

mightyquacks 5y ago

Reddit used to be amazing Now it's like a red flag in your resume if you worked for reddit Then they made a whole mess on the homepage. This is what happens when you hire mediocre engineers. Its like junior engineers who cant write code. Reddit mobile is not bad, but stop trying to make me install it. There are people who only wants to use web. But your web engineers are garbage their ads is incredibly bad. there are dark patterns everywhere. Now they're even trying to mess up the old.redit.com The site always crashes. It's like the early founders did a really good job, and the vultures who could barely pass as a PM or as an engineer took over. I mean if they wanted to save this site, they would prob have to lay off all the fat and start rehiring. I was excited for reddit back in the day, i thought they had a shot of saving the internet. now they're trying to get into everything, and can barely execute So the trillion dollar question is, what's next to replace reddit

qbasic_forever 5y ago
It sounds like you're mad at explicit decisions made by product owners, like the content on the frontpage or dark patterns that push mobile app usage. I guarantee none of the rank and file engineers are responsible for those decisions, and they almost certainly detest them just as much as you. The problem is if they don't implement them then they don't get a paycheck and can't put food on the table. It's silly to paint them with blame.
- teaearlgraycold 5y ago
  They’re all Bay Area engineers. So switching jobs is an inconvenience with a raise on the other side. The changes aren’t their ideas but it’s not like they can’t refuse. They can just work anywhere else. They probably don’t care.
  - bogota 5y ago
    I mean… browse through HN for the day. According to its users you shouldn’t work at any company that pays well because they are all evil. At a certain point you just don’t care what people are writing on forums.

snwfog 5y ago

In case you dislike the "new" Reddit interface, check out https://rdddeck.com https://rdddeck.com, it uses a tweetdeck-like compact layout thats optimized for desktop.

vesche 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/
wilsonnb3 5y ago
teddit.net is also very nice

johnisgood 5y ago

Excuse me for my ignorance, but what does it mean for Reddit and its users?

DantesKite 5y ago

The larger subreddits have problems, but Reddit has done a remarkable job of collecting people with niche interests into one area. I wouldn't discount their success and future success (as much as I'd like to). What's odd is they haven't stopped growing. It's just been linear user growth. They could literally do nothing and the site would still grow. It's closer to Wikipedia than a social network in some respects. And by that standard, we should try to judge it. I look forward to the next forum site as much as the next person. But I don't know what it would look like. If anyone does, I definitely urge you to build it if you can. Substack has every incentive to build a community. Discord as well. So there's definitely opportunities, but from where I sit, I don't have any insight as to what you could do to beat this behemoth.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
GhettoComputers 5y ago
Small ones have problems too (like raids and low amount of mods). They don’t stop growing because they ate all the small forums.
pyuser583 5y ago
Reddit is my go to place for local news. There is so little coverage of local news outside big cities. The coffee-house atmosphere of the local sub I’d very refreshing and informative. Sadly, many of the bigger subs have less and less quality. There’s a post I remember from about 2010 that blew my mind in the /r/philosophy subreddit. Now /r/philosophy is all crap, and I can’t event find that article.
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  I don't know about r/philosophy, but if it's grown too large to be usable, as many do, look for subsets of philosophy (by genre, philosopher, etc). I'm sure there are more niche subs with decent communities.
  - 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

500 million users, 100,000 communities. Since I don't pay to use it, presumably the value proposition lies in the small cohort who do pay for ephemeral karma and style additions, value added services, and of course the advertising BI which fuels the internet at large. Since I am not paying, and I am not bidding for shares, I must be the product. This is merely a statement of my value (1/500,000,000th) to them as a BI source. on $6nm value: $1200 per user, $60,000 per community. Thats not annual, presuambly at a sane ROI its some sub-multiple of that as extracted/notional value, but I lack the fu to say what that is. I have to say, I don't feel worth $1200 in reddit views. Gosh, I wonder if selling my read impressions is a breach of GDRP and/or CCPA

14 5y ago

There has been some recent changes to reddit and it is becoming aggressively annoying. Trying to make me look back on my top posts and comments and flashy buttons on the top. They are aiming for that dopamine hit by showing you your top posts so you can reminisce in all the likes you got that day. On top of that they have a banner across the bottom you can close but it forever comes back nagging you to verify your account. The whole reason I do kind of use reddit is because I am anonymous to others and can speak freely. I can create burner accounts and say one thing and never go back to it. It feels very facebooky with the big push for engagement happening right now but I guess this public offering is why the big push.

andymoe 5y ago

If they don’t do a direct listing maybe they’ll let some old timers get in on the IPO like Airbnb did for hosts. Lurking for 16 years has to count for something right? :)

raytube 5y ago

I land on Reddit, and never quite figure out how conversations and threading work. Always feels broken to me from a usability standpoint.

raytube 5y ago
That's right, downvote my user experience why don't you.

nunez 5y ago

Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content, but it’s a firehose that is very difficult to curate and keep up with. Reddit is democratizing in a sense, like riding the NYC subway. An even wilder bet: Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse (as a news outlet of sorts, on steroids) and even potentially minimize the need for Google Search. Anecdotally, a VERY LARGE percentage of my Google searches end in “site:reddit.com” these days. Reddit posts, especially from smaller subs, tend to be higher quality and don’t have ulterior motives (ad revenue). If Reddit’s Lucene cluster were better, between that and SO, I’d use Google a handful of times a week. Maybe this IPO can help fund that. If the ad revenue from the whale subs allow me to continue learning about interior design, supply chain logistics, the inner workings of car sales, finance and tax strategies if I become high net worth, and more, I’m here for it.

pibechorro 5y ago
Reddit has been steadily going to shit. They became incredibly trigger happy censoring anything and anyone outside of the echo chamber there. I still visit it, but I am short on them.
sombremesa 5y ago
> Twitter has very high quality content Can you give me an example? I have zero followers/following on Twitter and just use Tweetdeck so I'd like to know what I should be looking for.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  @foone is always a good bet, if you are interested in old technology.
  - theshrike79 5y ago

xenihn 5y ago

I'm done with reddit once old.reddit.com is gone. Guessing it won't be around much longer after the IPO.

jesprenj 5y ago

1) A nice clickbait title. 2) Just some general grammar problems that appear in many languages, including English. I thought that reddit's source code (files) would be published and free again. By the way, reddit used to be open source: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit Too bad.

siruncledrew 5y ago

Reddit has definitely had noticeable changes over the past 5+ years as they’ve gone through further VC rounds of funding that demand more ROI-centric changes. I can’t imagine the ways it will change as a public company once numbers are public to scrutiny and the shareholder makeup shifts. It seems the intrinsic problem with platforms like Reddit (at least from what’s been witnessed over the last 8 years) is that they will inevitably “hit a wall” in a way that will become incompatible with shareholder interests. By that I mean at some point that hockey-stick growth is going to inevitably taper off and reach terminal velocity before declining as the platform reaches unsustainability. Then, Reddit is going to have to throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks to please investors, or grow by acquisition, which is like a Tylenol level solution. I just don’t see how an advertising and virtual badges driven social platform is ever going to be compatible with the expectations of running a public company to produce returns like in some other industry or sector.

colordrops 5y ago
Good, reddit is a stagnant control-freak dinosaur that has monopolized forums and needs to be disrupted.

ausbah 5y ago

I'll go against the tide here and say Reddit I still think Reddit is great! sure I don't think the big subs, greater emphasis on monitization, and some of the other big changes they've made over the past few years are great - but I still love the smaller subs I participate in, and the I think the new UI quite nicer than the old one

fairity 5y ago

I wonder how the original founders of Reddit feel about selling out so early. They sold to Conde Naste for $20m. Now, it's worth 1000x more. I'm sure there are ways to rationalize it as a good decision -- i.e. $10m is a life changing sum of money. But, I wonder if, as a general rule, it's better to only sell half your stake to avoid upside regret.

busymom0 5y ago

I can see this as a bad thing in the following way: 1. They will most likely start making their API unusable similar to what Twitter did. Their Chat is already not available via the API and they are no longer open sourced. 2. They will most likely start banning porn or make it very hard to access (though Twitter seems to still allow porn accounts so maybe I am wrong here?). 3. MORE dark patterns in design. Their website is already super slow, tons of white space requiring extra scrolling (so more ads), needs extra clicks and too many ads which look like posts. Their site on mobile is useless and keeps asking to open in app. Ad blocker and 3rd party app solves this which gives them more incentive to break the API. 4. More censorship of anything remotely offensive.

garbagetime 5y ago

That website is pure pain. Even the niche subreddits I used to enjoy are now repulsive.

yessirwhatever 5y ago

Well that explains their inexplicably stupid and horrible attempt to increase the number of their users. From the crappy new design to the fucking insistent push to use their app.

kristjank 5y ago

I can't imagine this change making Reddit any better. Things have been going downhill ever since Swartz's unfortunate demise. Maybe it will take some of the control away from the chinese investors, but that's about it. Problems like powermodding, censorship and curated approach to their public image (r/undelete). Whatever is needed to please the investors and advertisers.

koilke 5y ago

Could not help but understanding the title as Reddit (adj) files (noun) to go public.

donkarma 5y ago
I also thought this, glad I wasn't the only one

thinkingemote 5y ago

Would this be the first public porn platform? A flippant remark, but Reddit is a not insignificant facilitator of pornography alongside many great safe for work subreddits and we will probably see them trying to stop this before or after going public. That or changing the terms of use for users to be 18 from the current 13.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Would this be the first public porn platform? Not even close. > Reddit is a huge publisher of pornography No, they aren't. Section 230 says so.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  I changed the phrase to "not insignificant facilitator of pornography" to be more relative. What a publisher is, today, is a bit muddy imo.
throw_m239339 5y ago
Plenty of hardcore pornography on Twitter, and not just legal one, which got me wondering why their app is getting a pass on IOS when Tumbler didn't. At least Facebook does not permit any form of pornography.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  And mastercard doesn't require them to get a photo id of their users.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Reddit is very old, with old unpaid moderators that moderate arbitrarily and a user base that has now been trained to devolve everything to their lowest common denominator which is politics. There are few niches that are useful as aggregators, but moderating those subreddits must be exhausting (e.g. covid19). Looks like they really need to be disrupted but i guess investors don't think there s enough money in building another forum. And they may probably be right. What is a reason to invest in reddit's future?

streamofdigits 5y ago

The main data point from the success of reddit is that quality interactions in large scale online platforms require an interest based user interface. Other than that it is almost guaranteed now that its buggy (feels like its held together with tape) and ad-ladden overall experience will be locked-in and get worse (like it happened with facebook) People might want to hedge their bets and look into open source lemmy and federated versions of the reddit concept https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

danuker 5y ago
I use the old UI, which is lean, fast even on my old laptop, and not buggy. Fortunately I still have a setting for my account to do so. I would stop using it without this setting.

GvS 5y ago

I can't use current Reddit without Reddit Enhancement Suite - https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

Good luck explaining to shareholders that the most popular subreddits are occasionally held hostage by extreme left activists abusing their power by shutting down the subreddits as a political statement.

lvl100 5y ago

Reddit is more than 3/4 of my time on internet. It’s got more eye share than anything outside of Google landing page.

spinach 5y ago

Reddit has become so heavy-handed with censorship, especially towards feminism, I stopped using it a long time ago. Reddit is a great example of how awful the internet is for woman. Porn subs can have content that is female only, but subs for women and lesbians have to include men who think they're women and feminist subs get banned. The biggest lesbian sub is so overrun by men it's a joke.

asquabventured 5y ago
Honest question, do you feel like the lgb community has been hijacked by the t? As an outsider it sure appears that way and seems like there is some low boiling resentment brewing

jpe-210 5y ago

So long as they keep the API available for apps like Apollo then I'm fine. Honestly that's the only way I browse Reddit now, but I can't help but feel weird when the only way to enjoy a site is to use something else entirely to view its content.

anonu 5y ago

There's maybe one positive comment thread in here and all the rest are thoughtfully negative to borderline "hater", wishing for Reddits demise for some obscure reason. I think we've seen this pattern play out. The HN crowd is really not the right crowd to source opinions when it comes to business matters. And you can see it in the comments, it's mostly about how the UI sucks, the app is slow, the dark patterns, etc... The reality being missed is there's a ton of value being created in the forums regardless, and MAUs are up like crazy. The bad UI and ads don't seem like they're getting in the way of that.

sexy_seedbox 5y ago
> The HN crowd is really not the right crowd to source opinions when it comes to business matters. Yep, there could've been so many HN Bitcoin bill/millionaires, but being so logical, many HN folks here are grumpy buttcoiners.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Freskis 5y ago
You are spot-on about the HackerNews tech criticisms being irrelevant. But I think the points about Reddit being toxic to advertisers because of the hate/porn/gore/mysogny are correct. It just takes one bad story and advertisers will flee the platform. There has been no mainstream examinination and investigation of what Reddit is. Once it starts, it's all over.
- the_doctah 5y ago
  Have you been on Reddit lately? They purged all that crap and aggressively censor the entire platform now. The censorship has increased tenfold in the last couple of years.
  - Freskis 5y ago
    One of the top stories on Reddit right now is about Nancy Pelosi, and one of the top comments is calling for her death. No moderation, only praise for the murder comment. It just takes one newspaper to highlight that and it's over for Reddit as an advertising platform. And it can't be stopped because the moderation is local.

PickledHotdog 5y ago

Wonder what this might mean for third party apps that don't display Reddit's (overt) advertisements I need BaconReader to stay alive

julbook 5y ago

I'll try to get a piece of this one as it is a great platform to watch diverse content. There's a lot of subreddits ranging from shitposts to high-value content that is available within the site's reach.

sebow 5y ago

A censorious echo-chamber going public, what else is new?I just find it funny how people migrated from FB/Twitter to a somewhat more usable website and reddit is anything else besides garbage. Ironically enough, the vast majority of people never used the website pre-2014, so they don't have anything or comparison besides "it's a different community-building website, therefore it's better". It's not: their website on mobile is cancer, forcing people to install an app is not an argument, censorship(!= moderation, though i'm sure people will start pointing out how it's privately owned) is probably higher than even on places like FB when you compare the last few years(mainly because FB in the west has been somewhat watched), and the core principle of system on which the website functions is polarizing, even more than FB/Twitter.You add on top of that the scandals of (quite literally) 'corruption' between community moderators, staff, etc and the socially-obedient karma system, you end up with a gamified social network, except it's worse because everyone wants to comfortably stay in their own bubble. Then again this same downstream phenomenon started applying to HN, you already see the cracks, and bullshit is more and more frequent here, a place where people know you can't avoid talking politics as the discussion length increases, knew to remain civil and discuss even the touchy subjects, detached.

65 5y ago

I'm a big fan of their monetization strategy. Instead of relying on advanced advertising tracking they use micro-transactions to buy digital goods. It's a lot cleaner and doesn't ruin the experience of using the site.

boringg 5y ago

What happens to all the work from the moderators once they realize they are working for a public traded company for free? Doesn't this break peoples willingness to build those communities once they realize their hard worked time is getting squeezed to investor dollars? I understand it was a private company beforehand but now it must really feel bad to know how much people are making off your goodwill. Totally effed up model. FWIW I actually like reddit for the specific communities but tough to see how it isn't going to get further diluted and mods are increasingly going to be less interested is my take - further eroding its value proposition.

villasv 5y ago
Moderators have always been working for "free" (or for their own reasons, there are monetized subs). The fact that Reddit is public or private doesn't change a thing. Why would working for free for a privately owned company would be easier on the mind? Do you prefer to be explored by a few wealthy individuals rather than the whole open market?
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I think a lot of moderators don't realize they're working for a multi billion dollar company atm. It's much harder to hide that when you can google reddit's stock price.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I think a substantial number of powermods are either paid by some influence agency, or they do it for free because they're activists who believe they're fighting for a righteous cause.

rexreed 5y ago

I am a fan of reddit, but I'm not a fan of what public markets do to companies. I want to be optimistic, but I'm realistic -- the sort of content that gets posted in many subreddits isn't often the sort of content lives long when faced with public market scrutiny. Then again I guess Twitter has become rife with that sort of content too. Maybe I should be cautiously optimistic.

quiet_cool 5y ago

reddit is probably the trashiest social media site around today(for it's size).

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Reddit has come some ways as far as mainstream acceptance etc but man if I will die on the hill that it only survived/became "successful" because of the legendary Digg slip up and exodus. It was on its deathbed before that happened. I know there are enough of us out there that remember this and tire of the having to remind of the history. And it's nothing more than a large collection of forums basically. With all the mod challenges, UI/UX hurdles etc that come with that. Happy for it to exist/find it useful for niche communities etc but with freaking Alexis Ohanian would stop waltzing around like he had any genius foresight or any insight into anything social/web.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Also for any of you non-lame-lurkers out there that never log in and insist on using old.reddit instead of setting prefs to use the old look, all the crap that is the default on the homepage of reddit, /r/popular etc whatever, you never have to see at all and can enjoy your niche subreddits without any exposure. I haven't looked at any of the main top level reddits/memes/incels/funny/pics in like 5 years

the_doctah 5y ago
I'd use preferences if my accounts didn't keep getting banned from the ever-increasing censorship.

hnburnsy 5y ago

At least on Reddit, for now, you can sort by New and your setting sticks.

dobs_bob 5y ago

Shouldn't they get rid the white supremacy subreddits first?

barfingclouds 5y ago

God dammit

rbt0424 5y ago

https://socialupvote.com https://socialupvote.com