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How long until the adults at Conde Nast step in and stop the madness? This whole thing is: 1. Doing long term damage to search position for Reddit content. Res
by indymike 3y ago
How long until the adults at Conde Nast step in and stop the madness? This whole thing is:
1. Doing long term damage to search position for Reddit content. Results, short and long term reduction in SEO generated traffic, fewer ad clicks, lower revenue, and a loss in valuation. Also, paying to get traffic will cut into margin, further reducing valuation.
2. Causing users to delete their accounts, lowering active user counts, and cutting Reddit's valuation.
3. Forcing people doing work for free to stop, meaning that Reddit will have to spend money to either hire or recruit and train more free moderators, resulting in increased operating costs, thus reducing profit margins, resulting in a lower valuation.
4. If it is true that management at Reddit is undeleting deleted users and accounts, they may be creating a situation where they claim they have more users than they do. Because this is the result of management's actions, it could be viewed negatively by regulators and law enforcement.
What is going on needs to be stopped. It's insane.
- Merad 3y agoEven if Condé Nast has any influence over the situation, do you really think the "adults" there know anything about the situation beyond the status reports they're getting from Reddit leadership?
- gkoberger 3y agoI don't know how much sway Conde Nast has. Reddit spun out in 2011, and since then has raised about $1.25bn (!!) dollars. So I doubt Conde Nast has much say, if any, at this point.... and while I dislike everything spez is doing, I imagine he has the full backing of investors looking to IPO soon.
- jonny_eh 3y agoWhoever invested the $1.25B has the say now. Hence this drama.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y agoBut do these people realize what is actually happening? And to think it all started because of API pricing increase...
- jonny_eh 3y agoHas the WSJ reported on it yet?
- mymythisisthis 3y agoManager of an investment fund is told to invest in social media, so they do so. Put a bit of money into each one. Market's aren't rational.
- 6510 3y agoMaybe they just want to burn it to the ground.
- vlunkr 3y agoThey are probably realizing that it's not the cash cow they wanted.
- funciton 3y ago$300 million of that was raised against a $3 billion valuation, and another $700 million against a $10 billion valuation. All in all fairly little dilution for Conde Nast / Advance Publications.
- isomorphic 3y agoArs Technica still puts this blurb at the end of their Reddit-related articles: > "Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/the-reddit-protests-are-winding-down-so-whats-next/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/the-reddit-protests-... (That article is a day old now, and I still don't think it includes everything that's happened late this week.)
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoLargest, but not controlling. They have one Board member. The others are J.D. Power (David Habiger), Joy (Porter Gale) and Y Combinator (Mike Seibel), among others. They can't "step in and stop the madness."
- smashah 3y agoProbably wont happen unless people start threatening to cancel their wired/etc. subscriptions
- dingusdew 3y agoIt's capitalism, baby! Also Conde Nast hasn't owned reddit for a while, they became an independent subsidiary of Conde Nast's parent company Advance Publications.
- shmatt 3y agoIt’s a dinosaur company with a dinosaur board. Other than the CEO of YC every other single member of the board is some aging boomer who has probably never used Reddit 2 days in a row I feel bad for spez at this point. We obviously are seeing what he deems as the boards request of him. We have no idea what he really feels about everything going on
- jonny_eh 3y agoThat is a very generous interpretation of his actions.
- shmatt 3y agoHe’s (at this point) a non large shareholder CEO. His income is highly dependent on the board not firing him every single day. It’s not a great situation to be in
- ohgodplsno 3y agoPoor miserable spez taking in multiple millions every year in salary. He'll die without that income! Such a terrible situation to be, to simply be a millionaire. Do you realize how tone deaf that sounds?
- teg4n_ 3y agoIsn’t he already a millionaire? I doubt he’s living paycheck to paycheck.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jonny_eh 3y ago> It’s not a great situation to be in I'll give it a shot!
- skinnymuch 3y agoSaying spez is such a victim here seems quite wrong.
- hgsgm 3y agoReddit is an independent subsidiary of Advanced Publications, a holding company. There are no adults in the "running the business" room. There is a BoD though. But everyone invested is crazy rich and doesn't have time to waste micromanaging a $5-$50M investment.
- princevegeta89 3y agoIt's being a lot of fun watching the Reddit shitshow these days, I keep wondering how low they can stoop to and they keep surprising me every day :)
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoInteresting that Reddit seems to forget it really made it after Digg's disastrous web 2.0 launch. They're hell-bent on getting everyone onto new Reddit (Reddit 2.0). Hopefully this is the move that kills Reddit, and we get something even better to take its place.
- res0nat0r 3y agoIt's just upset nerds on the internet review bombing the app because they're raging at their issue of the week, it's not really more complex than that IMO.
- spiffytech 3y agoThere are two possibilities that I can see: 1) Spez is right, this is a tempest in a teapot that hasn't (yet) had a big impact on traffic, and won't once they seize control of the rebelling subreddits. A vocal minority cares of the public about the impact on the community, but stakeholders realize the business will be fine. 2) Spez is wrong, and is comfortable misrepresenting the situation to the public at minimum. Maybe he misrepresents it to internal stakeholders too. The situation will appear under control right up until the moment the wheels fly off. Could be a little of column A, a little of column B.
- x86x87 3y agoWe saw that he's a fucking liar when dealing with Apollo. Credibility is now zero. Zero.
- mock-possum 3y agoYeah whether he’s ‘right’ is kind of immaterial - he’s shown himself to be untrustworthy, and that’s enough for me. I don’t deal with liars, they’re not worth my time.
- saltminer 3y agoHaving modded a phpBB forum with <1k active users in the late 00s/early 10s, I used to have some sympathy for bearing the burden of being the world's biggest forum admin, but that all vanished when he started defaming the Apollo dev by spreading blackmail rumors. That's some Alex Jones-tier hyperbole, completely unbecoming of anyone in a position of leadership (and should be concerning to any reddit shareholders from a liability perspective).
- x86x87 3y agoreddit shareholders and reddit employees
- the_only_law 3y ago> That's some Alex Jones-tier hyperbole, completely unbecoming of anyone in a position of leadership What sort of naive idealism is this? People in power will exercise that power however they see fit as long as they believe they can get away with it. With Reddit of course it’s even easier as there’s no real stake/serious consequences (or at least the owners seem to believe there’s not). People don’t get leadership positions because of their superior ethics and morals.
- dotnet00 3y agoWith how hard they're doubling down, I'm beginning to wonder if their financial situation is just so bad that they have no other option than to keep doubling down and hope the IPO works out.
- bawolff 3y ago> If it is true that management at Reddit is undeleting deleted users and accounts, they may be creating a situation where they claim they have more users than they do. Because this is the result of management's actions, it could be viewed negatively by regulators and law enforcement. Woah. Ianal but that sounds like a gdpr nightmere. Are they doing it to european accounts too?
- jethro_tell 3y agoAlso, it would need to be disclosed before the IPO, you can't be undeleting users and counting them as active users.
- faangsticle 3y agoIf they're undeleting anything they're going to get fucked by EU privacy regulations. I hope they are.
- Havoc 3y ago>4. If it is true that management at Reddit is undeleting deleted users and accounts, Haven't heard about accounts, but the HN thread about comments being undeleted had multiple HN comments confirming that their own comments they had scrubbed had been reverted
- koboll 3y ago>How long until the adults at Conde Nast step in and stop the madness? The company is bleeding cash. There's a good case to be made that this is the only way to make it stop bleeding cash. So either this needs to work, or the company will die anyway.