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Reddit was a co-op between a few groups of people. General low effort content scrollers Power users and mods who appreciate creating and contributing to make

Reddit was a co-op between a few groups of people. General low effort content scrollers Power users and mods who appreciate creating and contributing to make a community Advertising interests The deal was, the ad seeking was for the mainstream strollers, and the contributing power users and mods could opt out of the bs. The community builders get a nice environment for their community, the scrollers get content, and the ad people get to shiw thejir ads. I always thought spez understood this. Its why the api existed. Its why old.reddit.com existed. It was the commercial machine's compromise to the content generators in exchange for the moderating and commenting. But he seems to have forgot. I wonder why? Without the compromise the whole thing falls apart. Reddit becomes digg.

mostlysimilar 3y ago
This is also more or less my mental model of how Reddit operated. I thought their leadership understood this too. The only thing that makes sense to me is they've run the numbers and have decided the meme-consumption / infinite scroll users are more than enough to keep the lights on, and they believe they'll save money by kicking their power users off the platform.
- euroderf 3y ago
  This sounds like a case study for biz school in the 2030s.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    yeah but what's the lesson? they may tell everyone to piss off and still maintain profitability, or even increase it, since the advertisers like what's happening and the people who are angry aren't angry enough to offset profits. 2030 B-school lesson is: fuck the user, get paid, c.r.e.a.m.
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      One lesson might be "We're mostly text and TikTok is video, therefore not directly competitive" might be wrong when evaluating how long Reddit will retain passive scrolling users.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> But he seems to have forgot. I wonder why? Most likely scenario is spez’s boss wanted better numbers to maximize price at IPO. I think they decided to cash out when things were very frothy in 2021, and they missed the window. It will be interesting to see if they even get to $10B. I would bet on less than $5B. According to Wikipedia: >In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a funding round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg, and Jared Leto.[13] Their investment valued the company at $500 million at the time.[14][15] In July 2017, Reddit raised $200 million for a $1.8 billion valuation, with Advance Publications remaining the majority stakeholder.[16] In February 2019, a $300 million funding round led by Tencent brought the company's valuation to $3 billion.[17] In August 2021, a $700 million funding round led by Fidelity Investments raised that valuation to over $10 billion.[18] The company then reportedly filed for an IPO in December 2021 with a valuation of $15 billion.[19][20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit
- codalan 3y ago
  Its value seems to be rapidly declining. I was on lemmy.world and lemmy.ca yesterday and was a little shocked at how many people migrated over there. I don't see how this looks good to any potential investors pre-IPO. The fact that lemmy (the software) exists makes one question how much of a moat Reddit really has.
  - hexnuts 3y ago
    The problem I have with lemmy.world is I have yet to be able to login.
    - 4d66ba06 3y ago
      I had to reset my password once for it to work. I wonder if my initial password was too long.
    - stjohnswarts 3y ago
      use kbin, they share stuff and I had zero problems getting a kbin account
mrguyorama 3y ago
>But he seems to have forgot. I wonder why? Because as long as the public buys whatever he's selling, he still leaves rich. Nothing about reddit going forward actually has to be successful or functional as long as normal people buy the stock, people who don't know reddit, don't use it, don't understand it, don't CARE about it, etc.
gardnr 3y ago
Reddit can automate the content generation with ml. They have the perfect dataset to continue generating successful posts and comments into the future. They have seeded conversations in the past. Spez is confident he no longer requires a core community of humans; humans that have feelings and stage protests.
- llampx 3y ago
  Investors don't take kindly to being duped. Elizabeth Holmes can tell you more.
- Macha 3y ago
  The ad industry calls this kind of auto-generated content for ad placement "MFA" or "Made for Advertising". And they hate it. Ad platforms spend time categorising this content so they can either exclude it from all their users or just exclude it from those users who don't specifically opt into it. Like many other metrics in the industry (viewability, brand safety, etc.) it's actually the largest brands who are the biggest spenders and the ones you'd think from outside would be the most ruthless about "money in, results out", that care about this stuff the most. The ones that don't are the no-name dropshippers or those "You won't believe this story about X" content mills, but those ones also are willing to pay the least for their ads.
- malermeister 3y ago
  Wonder if that'll work as well as autopilot...
- bfuller 3y ago
  sounds out there, but I completely agree.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  I would love for advertisers paying a lot of money for bots pushing some bytes around. Budgetary capture as a spam filter technique.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
Finite vs. infinite iterated prisoners' dilemma? Going by the various takes and stories I read over the last few days, I imagine the deal you describe worked because it was indefinite; however, IPO is not only putting pressure to juice up financial metrics - it's also setting an end date for the deal. Once the company goes public, the leadership can, like investors, just cash out and let the whole thing sink. Even if this was always the plan, as long as the "exit" was a non-specific "at some point in the future", everyone could kind of forget about it. Putting a specific timeframe on it completely changes everyone's perceptions - like with iterated prisoners' dilemma, even if the end is still far away, the game changes its nature the very moment that specific timeframe is set.
93po 3y ago
> Reddit becomes digg. I don't think spez cares if this happens. 95% of the content people see on reddit is mindless garbage that is either a repost or from tiktok/some other site. I believe spez is confident that 95% of content will continue on just fine even if every single moderator quit at the same time. Automoderator setups are already very well fine tuned. You'd lose the more curated subreddits, sure. But that's such a tiny amount of traffic compared to propaganda news posts, animal photos, and tiktok videos.
- throwaway292939 3y ago
  spez will care, because, well who uses digg?
perrohunter 3y ago
Didn't Digg had precisely a power-user problem on v3 thus the creation of v4 and it's unraveling? I'm seeing the same pattern here, users tripping on power and trying to host the platform hostage
cyanydeez 3y ago
M-m-m-oney

mostlysimilar 3y ago

This is also more or less my mental model of how Reddit operated. I thought their leadership understood this too. The only thing that makes sense to me is they've run the numbers and have decided the meme-consumption / infinite scroll users are more than enough to keep the lights on, and they believe they'll save money by kicking their power users off the platform.

euroderf 3y ago
This sounds like a case study for biz school in the 2030s.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  yeah but what's the lesson? they may tell everyone to piss off and still maintain profitability, or even increase it, since the advertisers like what's happening and the people who are angry aren't angry enough to offset profits. 2030 B-school lesson is: fuck the user, get paid, c.r.e.a.m.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    One lesson might be "We're mostly text and TikTok is video, therefore not directly competitive" might be wrong when evaluating how long Reddit will retain passive scrolling users.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> But he seems to have forgot. I wonder why? Most likely scenario is spez’s boss wanted better numbers to maximize price at IPO. I think they decided to cash out when things were very frothy in 2021, and they missed the window. It will be interesting to see if they even get to $10B. I would bet on less than $5B. According to Wikipedia: >In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a funding round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg, and Jared Leto.[13] Their investment valued the company at $500 million at the time.[14][15] In July 2017, Reddit raised $200 million for a $1.8 billion valuation, with Advance Publications remaining the majority stakeholder.[16] In February 2019, a $300 million funding round led by Tencent brought the company's valuation to $3 billion.[17] In August 2021, a $700 million funding round led by Fidelity Investments raised that valuation to over $10 billion.[18] The company then reportedly filed for an IPO in December 2021 with a valuation of $15 billion.[19][20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit

codalan 3y ago
Its value seems to be rapidly declining. I was on lemmy.world and lemmy.ca yesterday and was a little shocked at how many people migrated over there. I don't see how this looks good to any potential investors pre-IPO. The fact that lemmy (the software) exists makes one question how much of a moat Reddit really has.
- hexnuts 3y ago
  The problem I have with lemmy.world is I have yet to be able to login.
  - 4d66ba06 3y ago
    I had to reset my password once for it to work. I wonder if my initial password was too long.
  - stjohnswarts 3y ago
    use kbin, they share stuff and I had zero problems getting a kbin account

mrguyorama 3y ago

>But he seems to have forgot. I wonder why? Because as long as the public buys whatever he's selling, he still leaves rich. Nothing about reddit going forward actually has to be successful or functional as long as normal people buy the stock, people who don't know reddit, don't use it, don't understand it, don't CARE about it, etc.

gardnr 3y ago

Reddit can automate the content generation with ml. They have the perfect dataset to continue generating successful posts and comments into the future. They have seeded conversations in the past. Spez is confident he no longer requires a core community of humans; humans that have feelings and stage protests.

llampx 3y ago
Investors don't take kindly to being duped. Elizabeth Holmes can tell you more.
Macha 3y ago
The ad industry calls this kind of auto-generated content for ad placement "MFA" or "Made for Advertising". And they hate it. Ad platforms spend time categorising this content so they can either exclude it from all their users or just exclude it from those users who don't specifically opt into it. Like many other metrics in the industry (viewability, brand safety, etc.) it's actually the largest brands who are the biggest spenders and the ones you'd think from outside would be the most ruthless about "money in, results out", that care about this stuff the most. The ones that don't are the no-name dropshippers or those "You won't believe this story about X" content mills, but those ones also are willing to pay the least for their ads.
malermeister 3y ago
Wonder if that'll work as well as autopilot...
bfuller 3y ago
sounds out there, but I completely agree.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
I would love for advertisers paying a lot of money for bots pushing some bytes around. Budgetary capture as a spam filter technique.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

Finite vs. infinite iterated prisoners' dilemma? Going by the various takes and stories I read over the last few days, I imagine the deal you describe worked because it was indefinite; however, IPO is not only putting pressure to juice up financial metrics - it's also setting an end date for the deal. Once the company goes public, the leadership can, like investors, just cash out and let the whole thing sink. Even if this was always the plan, as long as the "exit" was a non-specific "at some point in the future", everyone could kind of forget about it. Putting a specific timeframe on it completely changes everyone's perceptions - like with iterated prisoners' dilemma, even if the end is still far away, the game changes its nature the very moment that specific timeframe is set.

93po 3y ago

> Reddit becomes digg. I don't think spez cares if this happens. 95% of the content people see on reddit is mindless garbage that is either a repost or from tiktok/some other site. I believe spez is confident that 95% of content will continue on just fine even if every single moderator quit at the same time. Automoderator setups are already very well fine tuned. You'd lose the more curated subreddits, sure. But that's such a tiny amount of traffic compared to propaganda news posts, animal photos, and tiktok videos.

throwaway292939 3y ago
spez will care, because, well who uses digg?

perrohunter 3y ago

Didn't Digg had precisely a power-user problem on v3 thus the creation of v4 and it's unraveling? I'm seeing the same pattern here, users tripping on power and trying to host the platform hostage

cyanydeez 3y ago

M-m-m-oney