Photo-illustration: Intelligenmer; Photo: Getty
Reddit encounters Filed to go public. It is a long time coming: The Social-Media Company is a hugely popular, influenza, and offten useful whose Peers All Went Public a Long Time Ago. Over Nearly 20 Years, Reddit Has Grown from A Small Link Ino The Web’s Large Community of Communities, amassing in the process a library of user-genreed content is, Among many other things, one of the only reasons Google is Still a Good Search Engine.
But, Also, Its Reddit: a platform that is a dependent on and therefill in conflict with it uses, who provide it material, moderates its communities, and tend to have Strong and well-earned opinions for how it should be. This Tense Dynamic Hasn’t Always Been Productive or Healthy, but it has arguably kept reddit more or less intact. The Site Gets Billions of Views a month, but it Subreddits Still Resemble Communities. Reddit has resistedted (or missed out on) Major industry trends that Ruined The Web Around it. It tends to change Slowly. ITHE’S ALSO BARELY MONTIAL, SO REDDIT DOESN’T MAKEY, WHICH ISN’T Ideal Under any Circumstances, but especilly the Ones has created for itself Now. And so, Rather Suddenly, The Company’s Leadership is in the Mood to make some deals. Acciting to ReutersReddit is licensing its content to google for use in he training for a price of “About $ 60 million per year.”
Additionally, The Companies Are partner To Include Redit Material Directly in Google’s Interfaces, Including “New Ways for Reddit Content to Be Dysplayed ACROSS Google by Providing Access to New, Constantly Evolving, and Dynamic Public Posts, Etc., on Reddit.” Nor Training Data for Google, Reddit is Attractive. Its Billions of Posts and Comments are pre-structured, organized, moderated, and rack; Its ALSO A RARE SOURCE OF REAL-TIME POSTS ABOUT A Wide Range of Subjects.
This “Data,” of Cours, is a bunch of posts and conversations Produced by uncompensated users, and the traits that make it especally valuable – Its relatively free of spam, organized by topic, and generaly higher Quality than. Result of Volunteer Labor Carriad Out by People for Whom Corporate Partnership with Google is not a priority, or events desigble. “Moderators do so Much Work for Free,” Says Sarah Gilbert, Research Director of the Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University. “They’re Building Tools, They’re Building Communities, They’re Dealing with Spam, They’re Dealing with Animal Cruelty and Eve CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse material).”
Gilbert, who has published a wide range of research on reddit communities and is herself a moderator, suspects some influenza ussers won’t be happy with arrangement. LAST YEAR, WEND REDDIT BOXED OUT THIRD-PARTY App Developers, Thousands of Communities Protestted the Changes, Temporary Limitting Access to Huge Portions. Now moderators are burned out, and some observers have argued That the Quality of Posts on Major Subreddits has declined, which is at the Very Least a perception SHARED BY MANY LONGTIME USSERS. User-Leadership Relations are Already Sour and Moral Moderator Is Low. “A Misalignment BetWene the Expectations of USSERS and How Reddit Allows their Data to be used to be catastrophic for reddit,” Gilbert Says.
This Week, Howver, Reddit’s Leadership Shared Some Related Plans in an Email to Some of Its Active USSERS. “As you may have heard, reddit ha tak steps Toward Becoming a publicly tradded Company with the initial public filing of our registration stations with the US Securities and Exchange on February 22, 2024,” The Company Wrote. “And you have you have helped make reddit what it is to be, you have had the opportunity to become reddit at the Same Price as an institutional investor.”
Offering Powers A Chance to Buy Ino Reddit’s IPO ISN’t Exactly charand Most Reddit Users Probably Won’t Find the Offer Enticing or Relevant to their Lives (Reddit’s Larger Trading Community, /R /Wallstreetbets, is the 49th-Largest Subreddit on the site, between /r /creepy and /r /wholesomemes). Neither matt levine Writes At Bloomberg, Reddit’s Offer is at best a “Symbolic” respect to complaints that none of the Value of Reddit’s $ 5 Billion IPO Belongs to Its, WHO HELPED THAT VALUE. The implicated Opportunity to take advantage of an IPO “Pop”-Generaly fueled by post-listel investors hoping to get in the action-is sort of defective by the “let users besser stock ahead of time” plan. Levine Outlines Another Ange:
Not every company can get meme-strock investors. But you know who probably Can? The which Idea of Meme Stocks Originates with Reddit; Reddit’s Boards Are Where The Great Meme Stocks Were Created; Reddit is where the online communities of investors are. Surely Reddit Has Some Advantages in Appealing to Retail Investors on Reddit. It might as well get some of the say in its stock early.
This is true, and also sort of funny to think about. Communities like /r /wallstreetbets organized Retail Investors-Many Investing for the First Time-ARONT AN ECLECTIC RANGE of Stocks, and Into An Occisional War with A Trading or a Billionaire Short-Seller. It was Wild! They made a Not Bad Movie About it!
Reddit’s Zirp-Era MEME-SOCK Adventure was something in Which Reddit’s Leadership Took a keen and public interest. IT MADE A CASE FOR REDDIT’S INFLUENCE AND POWER, CERTAINLY. It was Also One Giant Legal and Ethical Gray Area; In 2024, this sort of retail trading has decreed Significantly. Still, as Reddit Admits in Its IPO Filing, A Bunch of Redit Investors Talking About Redit Stock in Communities Built and Organized to Manipulate Prices is Risky:
GIVENE The Broad Awareness and Brand Recognition of Reddit, Including As A Result of the Populary of R/Wallstreetbets Among Retail Investors, and the Direct Access by Retail to Broadly Available Tradition Platforms, The Market Price and Tradition of Our Class A Common Class. COULD Experience Extreme Volatility for Reasons unrelated to Our Underlying Business or Macroeconomic or Industry Fundamentals, Which Coull Cause you to Lose or Part of Your Investment IF You are unable at or above the initial offering price.
I’d argue the risk go well beyond that. Yes, Reddit Will Be A Public Company; yes, reddit provides a weird sort of product that some people use to move markets in ways that are sorta of beyond the scope of rules that typically govern Such Things. But reddit is also a broodly popular produce that derivatives its value from the activities of its many users, whose sense that they’e’re there For Each Other – To hang out, joke around, or anneswer ques tste- In the past, fights About the reddit platform have unfolded between grUps of users and the platform’s staff and executives, whose interests fall out of alignment in printy obivious ways. Reddit doesn’t always list to say, but it also doesn’t want to leave or to stop control free labor.
TURNING ASSERS AND VOLUNTEERS INTO Shareholders complicates this situation in wayys that are hard to predict. Spreads you end up with a bunch of USSER-OURNES WIELDING THEIR COLLECTIVE OWAT OF WHAT REDDIT SAYS IS A “BIG Chunk” of the Company as a threat to the Force to make users-free choices while Mindful of the Company’s Profitability-SURE.
Or maybe you end up with users-oners who, Because they have have skin in the game, are more amenable to, Say, lucrate partnerships with Google. And who are suddenly less sympathetic to the Feelings of non-Investor users who might see partnerships as gross or exploitative. Those USSERS, IN TRANN, MIGHT BECOME NOT JUST MORE Skeptical of the Reddit Corporation’s Leadership But Also Alienated from Prominent and Influential Fellow users, Too. A Reddit Where users and voluntary moderators Feel Like they’re Working to make Shareholders rich is already hazardous to the platform’s Health. A Reddit Where Some of Those Shareholders field Fellow users – and Where Big Discussions About How the platform Work Arefore unavoidably Conversations About Reddit’s Stock Price – DOESN’T Resolve these tensions so much as it creates new ons.
This is just one of the many ways that taking a strange, fragile, and precious (in bots of the Word) Platform of Communities Public Risks Ultimately Killing it. Or Maybe it a scenario that reddit doesn’t Need to worry about Becout biggest investor community just doesn’t care. Business Insider’s Katie notopoulos notes that r/wallsterbets subscribers don’t seem all that enthussed about reddit’s offfer:
“Cano Someone Teach me How to Short an IPO?” One user posted on r/wallstreetbets About Thicksday’s Announcement.
Another user – a moderator with a karma score of over 300,000, posted a Screenshot of the message he received from reddit about part of the direct shares program, wondering if he should invest.
“Hard Pass,” Replyed Someone.
“The Question is, Should We Eat Where We Shit Talk?” another MED.
“Only if you want to sell it to half as much the weeks,” Said Another.
IT’S PROBABLY NOT THE BEST SIGN THAT REDDIT’S INTERNAL CLASS THINKS The Company is a DUD. It is not the worst sign, eather: like a lot of redddit’s Powers, they’re not Thrilled with what’s going on there, but they Also have had anywhere to go.
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