They’re gonna link your account to your identity and then your data will be worth a lot more in a sale. Fuck that shit
Time to use the Redact app, folks!
Unsurprisingly the people who have had to deal with Reddit’s leadership for years don’t trust them. Shocking. That said I could see a lot of Redditors still buying in, just out of fear that they might miss out on the next big “get-rich-quick” opportunity.
I initially thought I might participate in the IPO. I’m still not over what /u/spez did last year but I justified it the same way I ever bet AGAINST my favorite sports teams. That way if they lose there would is still an upside. I don’t think Reddit will be a great investment. But if they are, hey, at least there’s some money in my pocket.
This would have been my first IPO. And what made me finally decide against participating was the recognition that buying into an IPO, unlike regular stock trading, is actually putting money directly into the company’s pockets.
Fuck that; fuck them; and especially fuck /u/spez.
I read a pretty brutal analysis by a financial expert on some business magazine site. My biggest takeaways were:
- new shares get 1 vote per share, existing shareholders 10 per share
- under the rules they are doing the ipo they can skip providing solid numbers for the last years, and are unbound by board opinion on how much money can go into executive compensation and golden parachute packages.
Now I’m not an investor at all but this rings so many grift alarm bells I don’t understand why anyone would buy that shit. Seems like a completely dubious investment set up to pay out spez and then collapse.
Seems like a completely dubious investment set up to pay out spez and then collapse.
Are they trying to hide this intention?
Rather take your money to the casino kids. I think the reddit IPO will crash and burn. Not only because spez is a total fucking tool destroying the platform. But the reddit model will be tough to be a booming profitable business. All they really have is add revenue and users will start seeing through the smoke and mirrors no matter how hard they try to disguise them as normal posts. We have already seen this type of manoeuvre is not easy with Twitter.
“You’re all landed gentry! But hey, send some money to me by buying a little stock okay?”
Yeah spez, kindly go fuck yourself.
All it takes is people going elsewhere and they are worth nothing. Reddit isn’t like Twitter, where it’s all about you. I came here, have the same conversations, and haven’t even noticed I’m not on Reddit any longer.
I used to be pretty big into Reddit. I haven’t been back in almost a year except a couple of google search results. I do notice a difference though. There is less diversity in expressed thoughts here. I don’t miss the doomscrolling though, I can run out of new content here and I like that.
Also because there is less content its more meaningful. There’s a lot of fluff and garbage on Reddit just so people can get karma.
I have, I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed that I’m no longer screaming out in a sea of people and being ignored or ridiculed. We’re in a smaller pond here and the waters are much clearer
That’s it, it’s just the userbase size. I still unfortunately have to type ‘Reddit’ after any question I throw at a search engine but that is on the useless search engines and not indicative of Reddit being a great platform.
Eh, I bought 100 shares.
I figured:
a) I have the money.
b) I don’t get IPO offers that often.
c) Buy what you hate.https://slate.com/business/2005/12/buy-stocks-in-companies-you-hate.html
Once I have the shares at $34, I’ll put in an order to sell at $69. Nice!
My expectation is that a lot of people will at the least buy in at the start due to the amount of publicity, then sell off after the initial rush.
There might be an early short squeeze that could make this pay off. I predict that this one will be very unpredictable.
$34 a share is just a cash grab I think, it’s gonna gonna tank immediately I believe but we will see what happens!
Seems like just another opportunity to take a bunch of money from the poors while promising them riches.
Reddit doesn’t function like a real business (i.e. most of the work is unpaid volunteers, users and especially mods). There’s no genuine site-wide code of ethics beyond what will actually get them criminal charges. The written rules don’t matter - many moderators are unpaid bullies who permaban if their feelings are hurt and ignore questionable content they agree with. That system of banning users based on opinion kills discussion of “unapproved” views and sorts people into forums where their favorite opinions (and often outright hatreds) are popular. Loathe a particular race/gender/political ideology etc? Just find a subreddit where the mods agree and you’ll be fine saying some truly terrible stuff. Read the bloodthirsty posts on r/worldnews and tell me if the site-wide rules on not promoting violence or racism apply. For these reasons and more I don’t think anyone should be buying into their IPO because they aren’t a reliable business.
I don’t know if Lemmy is different because I’ve been here for less than a month, but at least here it feels like you can have different opinions and the worst that happens is you eat downvotes. Plus a lot of the really unethical takes are usually checked pretty hard in my (limited) experience by the users, which doesn’t happen when the only other voices are basically guaranteed to agree with you (a la most of Reddit).
The rest of this is just my Reddit survivor tale so if you don’t care stop here. I got invited to the IPO on the same week I got a 3-day site-wide ban after appealing a subreddit permaban for a fairly popular comment that the US should stop funding Israel and give the money to Ukraine (on a post about how the US is having trouble finding money for Ukraine). In those words, no hate speech or racism etc. When I asked why I was banned I got a 4-word insult as the only communication back. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it sure felt like I was being deliberately censored/punished for high-ish profile “dangerous” anti-Israeli opinion. May not be the case, but it was my first site-wide ban ever for a comment that broke no written rules.
My Reddit account is 13 years old and in 2023 I think I made about 100k karma, primarily with comments about history, education, and in one case a post about how awesome sperm whales are. My experience mirrors what I’ve read happens to others enough that Reddit has lost my participation (I’ve only posted 2x in the last 3 months, down from a few times daily) and my faith. I only go back to check on specialist communities (video game tips etc) and almost never participate anymore. Frankly I hope it either changes to allow for discussion or dies.
I was targeted by someone pathetic whose feelings were hurt (knowing me, it was a remark about how MAGA folks are idiotic hypocrites). They dug through my post history, and reported a comment I’d made months before about how someone needed a slap in the head. They reported it, and I was banned for “promoting violence”.
It wasn’t a permaban, but as far as I was concerned, it may as well have been. My account had been active for years, and I’d never been banned before. I felt let down that the mods had been fooled by such a stupid, obvious trick. Fortunately, a few weeks later, spez pissed everyone off and a lot of people left anyway.
Plus, I have the knowledge that I annoyed some troll SO MUCH that they read through months of my comments looking for something to report. Heh heh heh.
The fact that reddit cares is mostly used for harassment told me all I needed to know about how they’re handling their community.
You know there are sites that let you search user posts right?
Most people I think see through this, they’re just trying to bring in some bag holders to inflate the share price while they cash out.
Yeah I don’t think mods and “power users” that stayed after last year are necessarily against reddit succeeding, just not willing to buy in at a 6.5bil valuation for a company that can’t turn a profit and lost 90+ mil last year and 700+ cumulative. The CEO got 193 mil last year it’s clear where their priorities are. And after the bad will they gained last year burning mods and third party apps it’s not a big surprise many are watching with a big ol’ bucket of popcorn.
They kicked myself and my entire mod team from r/Canning because we held a vote and our users asked us to shut the community down in protest of their 3rd party app policies.
Then recently they emailed and messaged me telling me I could get in on the ground floor of buying shares.
That’s going to be a big resounding “no” from me there u/spez.
I got the offer too even though I left in June. 2 million karma, 11 year user. F SPEZ.
Ha they sent me the same message, and while I was not booted as a mod, I led the protest effort in a few subs that I modded in and helped out over in Save3rdPartyApps. I didn’t delete my account, just went silent after resigning when other mods got cold feet as soon as it started to get real.
Any canning related communities you can recommend now that you are over here?
My experience modding r/Canning burnt me out on online canning forums. There is a ton of unsafe information out there, and so I just got out of online canning discussions altogether.
There was a Lemmy instance out there that was intended to revolve around self sufficiency that offered me moderation rights to their canning forum, but that instance didn’t really take off, nobody ever posted to their canning community, and the instance went offline several months ago.
I still can — but I don’t participate in any online canning communities, so I’m not sure what’s trustworthy out there right now.
Fair enough, I can understand that. Happy canning either way!
Thanks!
Are you saying that they… canned you?
Sorry I couldn’t resist.
You’re not the first to have noted that — but it remains funny, so we’re good 🤣.
They emailed me too. Guess I was a power user, because I wasn’t a mod!
I ignored it. It’s especially egregious because I’m Canadian, and I think it’s for Americans only.
Since they killed third-party apps, I think I’ve gotten more emails from them than the number of times I’ve signed in. Haven’t even posted a single comment since RIF died.
RIP RIF
Canadian here as well, and no — we can’t participate. Not that it hasn’t stopped them from contacting me several times anyway.
Unfortunately, even if this IPO crashes and burns the real villains in this story are going to make it out with millions in their pockets.
I didn’t know too much about canning before the drama last summer (except that it’s hard physical kitchen labor I’d rather not do), but when I read what was going on it was clear you guys were really holding the line against the continual bombardment of the sub with truly unsafe “hacks” and “shortcuts” and “it never hurt me and I’ve been doing it for years” posts. I am absolutely convinced there are a non-zero number of people who are alive because you stopped them from this stupidity, and the painstaking, precise work you put into sourcing your statements and linking the science was quite impressive even to this total non-canner.
And then Reddit admin put their scabs in anyway.
Which is to say that Reddit admin is made of fools. I split in solidarity when the API changes kicked the accessibility users off (the third party app devs were the ONLY folks who cared enough in almost two decades to make Reddit usable for anyone needing accessibility) but afterward, reading about what they did to gut harm reduction in various subs like r/canning just convinced me that I was right to consider them literally conscienceless and take my posting elsewhere.
Their loss. In so many ways. Glad you’re here on Lemmy too.
Canning can be zen — with a bit of practice it’s not that difficult, and it’s often easy to find someone who is willing to help out. I’m often canning with friends or family — and it’s often as easy as throwing the right ingredients into a pot, bringing them to a boil, ladling it into prepared jars, and letting them sit in the pot.
As we built up the community, dealing with the “tide of crap” did get easier for us as moderators — we had a good core community of regular users who would quickly flag things that were dangerous, and with an automod rule to auto-remove posts with 5 such reports meant that we were often able to moderate posts of concern while they were private. But it took work to build up the community to the point where it was self-policing. I’m hoping that resiliency we tried to build up has continued to keep the community safe.
Glad to be here on Lemmy as well. Online discussion boards have been my bread and butter since the grand old BBS days of the mid-80s.
They must have an insane definition of power user, because I got one too and I’m absolutely not a power user. Maybe longtime active users got the email as well?
for a company that can’t turn a profit and lost 90+ mil last year and 700+ cumulative. The CEO got 193 mil last year
A private company doesn’t really need to turn a profit…
Even publicly traded companies just need to do it because it effects shareholder price.
With tax shenanigans, it’s often better for a private company to never turn a profit.
If profit was important, they could have just paid the CEO 100 million and turned a 3 million profit.
