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I have trouble taking people seriously who don’t understand basic economic constraints. The company loses about $170m/year. Without VC money it would have eithe

I have trouble taking people seriously who don’t understand basic economic constraints. The company loses about $170m/year. Without VC money it would have either been dead, sold, or a shadow of what it is.

Tuna-Fish 3y ago
> or a shadow of what it is. To be clear, this would have been an improvement. Reddit absolutely does not need the headcount it has. It provides no value to either users or to the company. It should have never grown above 50 people.
- _hypx 3y ago
  50 is probably too few. Because it has an international reach, something closer to 200 people is probably necessary. Of course, having 2,000 workers is far too many.
  - mwint 3y ago
    It’s user-content and user-moderated. Why does the international bit matter? (Honest question)
    - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      Selling ads scales with n where n is your number of salespeople. Edit: content moderation scales similarly, but you can maybe contract most of that out.
    - cjs_ac 3y ago
      Amongst the UK-oriented subreddits, there is a phenomenon called the Forbidden Meatball Problem. There is a dish associated with the West Country of England that you can't discuss on Reddit because Americans don't know that its name can mean something other than a homophobic slur. The moderators of those subreddits have raised the issue of banning people for discussing food and received no adequate response. Reddit enforces its own moderation policies on subreddits, regardless of the wishes of the moderators or communities, which can only be done effectively if the company has awareness of more social and cultural issues than the ones in Silicon Valley.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > Forbidden Meatball Problem I'll have to remember that one. My other similar example is the same word, but used in the sense of cigarette and combined with Irish idioms for "fun" ('craic' pronounced crack) and "borrowing or begging" ('bumming'). I'll let people make their own jokes.
weaksauce 3y ago
why are you reducing the reddit situation to one number instead of the nuance that should be? reddit bought up dubstep for a number that must be north of the 20million that dubstep raised. reddit increased headcount to 2000 when it certainly doesn't need it. reddit could have charged the api at a reasonable fee, a fee that was passed directly to consumers, serve ads to the api, require reddit gold to use or whatever that would have been more amicable than what happened.
addandsubtract 3y ago
It's only losing $170m/year due to the way it's being run. Remove the bad investments, empower the community, turn it into a non-profit and you've got a sustainable business.
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  Next you say they should move to a 4-day workweek. Non-profit is a non-starter for the same reason; some admittedly dumb people with a lot of money (for one reason or another) want that money to become even more money come hell or high water.
neuronic 3y ago
If it loses $170m a year without any real hope of turning that around very soon then this "business" should die, and it should die quickly because it is a money burning machine and not a business. We are seeing a contraction in the spending of magic dream money and the the process of pruning shitty businesses like reddit or Twitter is economically healthy.

Tuna-Fish 3y ago

> or a shadow of what it is. To be clear, this would have been an improvement. Reddit absolutely does not need the headcount it has. It provides no value to either users or to the company. It should have never grown above 50 people.

_hypx 3y ago
50 is probably too few. Because it has an international reach, something closer to 200 people is probably necessary. Of course, having 2,000 workers is far too many.
- mwint 3y ago
  It’s user-content and user-moderated. Why does the international bit matter? (Honest question)
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    Selling ads scales with n where n is your number of salespeople. Edit: content moderation scales similarly, but you can maybe contract most of that out.
  - cjs_ac 3y ago
    Amongst the UK-oriented subreddits, there is a phenomenon called the Forbidden Meatball Problem. There is a dish associated with the West Country of England that you can't discuss on Reddit because Americans don't know that its name can mean something other than a homophobic slur. The moderators of those subreddits have raised the issue of banning people for discussing food and received no adequate response. Reddit enforces its own moderation policies on subreddits, regardless of the wishes of the moderators or communities, which can only be done effectively if the company has awareness of more social and cultural issues than the ones in Silicon Valley.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > Forbidden Meatball Problem I'll have to remember that one. My other similar example is the same word, but used in the sense of cigarette and combined with Irish idioms for "fun" ('craic' pronounced crack) and "borrowing or begging" ('bumming'). I'll let people make their own jokes.

weaksauce 3y ago

why are you reducing the reddit situation to one number instead of the nuance that should be? reddit bought up dubstep for a number that must be north of the 20million that dubstep raised. reddit increased headcount to 2000 when it certainly doesn't need it. reddit could have charged the api at a reasonable fee, a fee that was passed directly to consumers, serve ads to the api, require reddit gold to use or whatever that would have been more amicable than what happened.

addandsubtract 3y ago

It's only losing $170m/year due to the way it's being run. Remove the bad investments, empower the community, turn it into a non-profit and you've got a sustainable business.

gymbeaux 3y ago
Next you say they should move to a 4-day workweek. Non-profit is a non-starter for the same reason; some admittedly dumb people with a lot of money (for one reason or another) want that money to become even more money come hell or high water.

neuronic 3y ago

If it loses $170m a year without any real hope of turning that around very soon then this "business" should die, and it should die quickly because it is a money burning machine and not a business. We are seeing a contraction in the spending of magic dream money and the the process of pruning shitty businesses like reddit or Twitter is economically healthy.