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But I've been curious for the last week -- why isn't Reddit profitable anymore? Did something change about ads since 2015 (likely) ? Did their cloud costs go

• mlyle 3y ago
  Reddit was weakly profitable but now has done a ton of hiring in hopes of building a huge business and chasing the IPO money train. They have 2000 employees now. They had fewer than 200 in 2015.
  • chubot 3y ago
    That's kind of what I suspected ... it seems like a self-inflicted problem, a consequence of the VC model and "enshittification" This makes Wikipedia seem prescient. It also has basically all user-contributed content, and user moderation You can point out a lot of its flaws, for sure, but at the end of the day, the product actually works Reddit for me is barely functional, I still used old.reddit.com Of course that was the intention all along -- to drive users to mobile -- which is just sad. Destroying value on purpose
    • KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
      The whole thing can be summed up as such: Reddit has continued to expand its business and increase costs while failing to innovate in any meaningful way. In a bubble, the business is ultimately a failure and it deserves to die. It's just sad given the quality of the content is so high in contrast to the platform and the lack of an outstanding of alternative for people to congregate around, as Reddit once was for digg users.
    • opportune 3y ago
      Wikipedia enshittified too, to a lesser extent, but still they have made their begging more and more aggressive over time.
      • chubot 3y ago
        I would say Wikipedia has been overly aggressive in their fundraising But it hasn't enshittified I would be really happy if Reddit ended up like Wikipedia. You can argue that Wikipedia could make better use of their funds (you can always argue that), but look at what Reddit did with their funds They basically dug a big hole and are ruining the product to get out of it. I'd rather Wikipedia have extra cash than be in the hole, and desperate