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Reddit’s golden geese foul up its IPO plans
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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I don't know, the actual tone of the article leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. The basic point seems to be that reddit should become more like a business and stop giving so much of itself to users and mods. In essence, it is exactly the mindset of this writer that got us to where we are.
This writer fails to understand the exact same thing that spez fails to understand: the only reason that Reddit grew, the only reason that Reddit is valuable, is because for the last 15 years it has not operated as a business. Reddit could never become a successful one because in order to do that, all of the community power, customizon, and the inherent human element has to be stripped away and replaced with elements that turn profit.
The only way to make Reddit profitable is for the users to (stealing a line from a blog post a few months ago) "stop talking to each other and start buying shit", i.e. stop having genuine interaction with each other and start being dragged in front of other corporations that paid good money for the user' eyeballs. And the moment that happens, Reddit stops being Reddit.
This was a folly from day one. Spez thinks he owns a cow he can milk for years and years. Really, he just owns a pig, that he's convinced himself will provide bacon forever once he takes the knife to it.
The funny thing is, Reddit might have had a chance to become profitable. If spez implemented a reasonable pricing scheme for the API (even charging two or three times what they'd expect to make from a user using the first party app--magnitudes lower than the proposed pricing), and if they made a few other adjustments, it might be profitable. They already had the advantage of not having to pay for moderation, which was huge.
I think the pig is getting away though--he might not even get that first round of bacon.
You're not alone, I too am angry at the writer, she doesn't understand anything of what's going on and why, most importantly.
But there's a positive in my opinion, the fact that the protest ended up on Reuters and that's huge, if that doesn't make investors aware I don't know what else could.