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The lead in to this post says > None of the people that spent hours of their lives lovingly contributing to Subreddits, or performing the vital-but-thankless r

by abeppu 3y ago

The lead in to this post says > None of the people that spent hours of their lives lovingly contributing to Subreddits, or performing the vital-but-thankless role of moderation, will make a profit off of Reddit's public listing .. and then mentions Sam Altman's investment. His announcement in fall of 2014 specifically said: > First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. https://blog.samaltman.com/reddit https://blog.samaltman.com/reddit So _are_ there people who were highly involved reddit community members in 2014 who will get a payday? Or did they already have a chance to cash out some time ago, and only some fraction held on until now? Or did that 10% contribution to "people in the reddit community" not happen at all?

interestica 3y ago
Maybe AI is facilitating a new "Commons" in that people will feel more of a right to take and reuse and consume things created by these sites with a better understanding that they collectively contributed to their creation.
- abeppu 3y ago
  ... except the "exorbitant" pricing on API access means that it's _not_ a commons that others can take from in a scalable way.
abeppu 3y ago
And in fairness, I can see why it might have been hard to give shares to the reddit community: - aren't there regulatory/legal problems with having a very large number of people owning equity in a company that's not public? - associating active reddit users with real people with addresses, accounts, etc would be real lift, and potentially alienating to users who have been operating under pseudonyms - establishing that you eventually get paid for activity seems like it creates a natural incentive for low-quality/high-volume (spam?) engagement, karma rings, etc. Rewarding only the people who _actually_ add value is messy
kranke155 3y ago
Yes, if you are a mod or an early user, you've received the option to buy early stock. I've received an e-mail from them, BUT I am not a US citizen so it was for nil. Here's their email "tl;dr – you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) email has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions. As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it’s happening. And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors. We’re offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!) Program Requirements While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit’s control. Bear with us here… To be eligible for the DSP, you must: Be a current U.S. resident; You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data. Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions. Be at least 18 years old; Provide your full legal name and an email address; Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE). When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility.
- abeppu 3y ago
  Wait, these are not the same. "you now (2024) have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors" is very different from in 2014 saying "the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community". Is there anyone who was a very active community participant prior to fall 2014, who as part of the series B got (was _given_) shares?
dangus 3y ago
The moderators and users of Reddit aren’t the people paying for the hosting and development of the service - a service which has never turned a profit. I think this idea that “moderators should be paid” or that users of Reddit deserve shares of the company just because the website wouldn’t be very useful without the users is such a stretch. That would be like saying that people who post classified ads in the newspaper should own the newspaper. After all, the newspaper would have far less revenue and value without classifieds.
- iamthirsty 3y ago
  > The moderators and users of Reddit aren’t the people paying for the hosting and development of the service - a service which has never turned a profit. Seems like Reddit not turning a profit is strictly Reddit's problem — not users or even really basic business model, but spending.
  - dangus 3y ago
    I agree with you, but the point stands that if Reddit can’t turn a profit their users aren’t really generating any lasting value. If I juice 20 oranges per hour and sell that orange juice for $5, you might say that I created $5 in value, but if minimum wage is $20 all I accomplished was losing $15. Similarly, Reddit moderators only generate business value if you assume the website costs less to maintain than it does in real life. If Reddit users and moderators would like to start a non-profit alternative they can go ahead and try that. It’s not like Reddit has been an especially spendy tech company, either, they’ve had well under 1000 employees until very recently. They’re the 15th most popular website in the world and their headcount is not particularly extreme.
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      Tangentially, this is a decent example for why minimum wage is actually a bad thing. There can be useful work available that is eliminated by the artificial price fixing.
      - 3y ago
pavel_lishin 3y ago
They're not giving it to us, they're letting us buy it.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  They want us to be the bag holders.
abeppu 3y ago
I'm not a heavy reddit user so please correct me if I got this wrong. - I think the "giving 10% shares" thing morphed into reddit creating its own crypto coin which was supposed to be backed by shares? https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/reddit-scoops-up-50m-series-b-from-sam-altman-a16z-sequoia-at-500m-valuation/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/reddit-scoops-up-50m-serie... - But a coin/gold system was retired last year, but I can find no mention of these being in any way related to shares by this point https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794403/reddit-gold-awards-coins-sunset https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794403/reddit-gold-awar... So I kinda think that the 10% shares thing was a nice idea which more or less got abandoned in favor of a "reward system" which got watered down and killed. Perhaps someone else has more background here. Naturally when I search I mostly get unrelated posts about other stock and crypto on subreddits, and reddit community people starting their own coin.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  The word "giving" is the thing that changed. Reddit plans to allow its power users to get in on the IPO, as in they'll have the opportunity to purchase an amount of shares at the IPO price. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on whether you think Reddit is worth $6.5 billion.
UncleOxidant 3y ago
I'm going with it was a nice sentiment that was never going to actually happen.

by abeppu 3y ago

interestica 3y ago

Maybe AI is facilitating a new "Commons" in that people will feel more of a right to take and reuse and consume things created by these sites with a better understanding that they collectively contributed to their creation.

abeppu 3y ago
... except the "exorbitant" pricing on API access means that it's _not_ a commons that others can take from in a scalable way.

abeppu 3y ago

And in fairness, I can see why it might have been hard to give shares to the reddit community: - aren't there regulatory/legal problems with having a very large number of people owning equity in a company that's not public? - associating active reddit users with real people with addresses, accounts, etc would be real lift, and potentially alienating to users who have been operating under pseudonyms - establishing that you eventually get paid for activity seems like it creates a natural incentive for low-quality/high-volume (spam?) engagement, karma rings, etc. Rewarding only the people who _actually_ add value is messy

kranke155 3y ago

Yes, if you are a mod or an early user, you've received the option to buy early stock. I've received an e-mail from them, BUT I am not a US citizen so it was for nil. Here's their email "tl;dr – you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) email has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions. As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it’s happening. And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors. We’re offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!) Program Requirements While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit’s control. Bear with us here… To be eligible for the DSP, you must: Be a current U.S. resident; You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data. Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions. Be at least 18 years old; Provide your full legal name and an email address; Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE). When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility.

abeppu 3y ago
Wait, these are not the same. "you now (2024) have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors" is very different from in 2014 saying "the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community". Is there anyone who was a very active community participant prior to fall 2014, who as part of the series B got (was _given_) shares?

dangus 3y ago

The moderators and users of Reddit aren’t the people paying for the hosting and development of the service - a service which has never turned a profit. I think this idea that “moderators should be paid” or that users of Reddit deserve shares of the company just because the website wouldn’t be very useful without the users is such a stretch. That would be like saying that people who post classified ads in the newspaper should own the newspaper. After all, the newspaper would have far less revenue and value without classifieds.

iamthirsty 3y ago
> The moderators and users of Reddit aren’t the people paying for the hosting and development of the service - a service which has never turned a profit. Seems like Reddit not turning a profit is strictly Reddit's problem — not users or even really basic business model, but spending.
- dangus 3y ago
  I agree with you, but the point stands that if Reddit can’t turn a profit their users aren’t really generating any lasting value. If I juice 20 oranges per hour and sell that orange juice for $5, you might say that I created $5 in value, but if minimum wage is $20 all I accomplished was losing $15. Similarly, Reddit moderators only generate business value if you assume the website costs less to maintain than it does in real life. If Reddit users and moderators would like to start a non-profit alternative they can go ahead and try that. It’s not like Reddit has been an especially spendy tech company, either, they’ve had well under 1000 employees until very recently. They’re the 15th most popular website in the world and their headcount is not particularly extreme.
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    Tangentially, this is a decent example for why minimum wage is actually a bad thing. There can be useful work available that is eliminated by the artificial price fixing.
    - 3y ago

pavel_lishin 3y ago

They're not giving it to us, they're letting us buy it.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
They want us to be the bag holders.

abeppu 3y ago

I'm not a heavy reddit user so please correct me if I got this wrong. - I think the "giving 10% shares" thing morphed into reddit creating its own crypto coin which was supposed to be backed by shares? https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/reddit-scoops-up-50m-series-b-from-sam-altman-a16z-sequoia-at-500m-valuation/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/reddit-scoops-up-50m-serie... - But a coin/gold system was retired last year, but I can find no mention of these being in any way related to shares by this point https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794403/reddit-gold-awards-coins-sunset https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794403/reddit-gold-awar... So I kinda think that the 10% shares thing was a nice idea which more or less got abandoned in favor of a "reward system" which got watered down and killed. Perhaps someone else has more background here. Naturally when I search I mostly get unrelated posts about other stock and crypto on subreddits, and reddit community people starting their own coin.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago
The word "giving" is the thing that changed. Reddit plans to allow its power users to get in on the IPO, as in they'll have the opportunity to purchase an amount of shares at the IPO price. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on whether you think Reddit is worth $6.5 billion.

UncleOxidant 3y ago

I'm going with it was a nice sentiment that was never going to actually happen.