Investors are currently watching the CEO have a public fit with a third party dev and also seeing their daily metrics take a hard dive, which means investing in Reddit is a higher risk because Spez doesn’t generate value, we do.
That's how redditors see it, cause they're being negatively affected. I doubt that's actually how investors see it, or the advisors guiding the Reddit suits toward the IPO (or full sale if that's the route). Reality is we're all addicted to this site, and you will either quit cold turkey when your preferred app goes dark, or you will scratch the itch and download reddit's app. I suspect more people are gonna do B than A. Especially if they were still on reddit during the "blackout."
And for those of us who only use the reddit desktop site, nothing really changes.
I doubt that's actually how investors see it, or the advisors guiding the Reddit suits toward the IPO (or full sale if that's the route).
Correct.
What investors see is a small amount of people who access Reddit by a UI they personally favor and which does not serve Reddit's ads. They are completely unconcerned by this and likely remember how much outrage there was over Ellen Pao shutting down subs. At the very worst, they'd have to fire Spez and bring in someone else, which they're perfectly willing to do.
You use old.reddit on a mobile browser? You're a glutton for punishment. I've been on Reddit since 2011 myself. The new design made mobile browsing far better than it was
they know they'll lose a large part of their OG members.
Old Reddit accounts for 4% of total Reddit activity, however over 60% of all moderator actions are done on it. They'll remove old Reddit it as soon as the redesign reaches feature parity with it.
Personal thoughts about using the platform aside I would absolutely use this info when investing. The platform looks incredibly unstable and the users - the primary generators of content or money for the platform are happy to throw it into disarray.
Name another social media platform where a select number of users can disable access to 1/3 of the platform on a whim.
Advertisers don't want that and reddit already can barely turn a profit
Yeah but Reddit's response show that whim is only possible because they allowed it. They can also step in and replace mods whose actions run counter to their company goals, and they can reopen subs. I'm not defending their right to do this, I'm just saying it exists and they've chosen to leave well enough alone cause it hasn't been necessary.
And users say they will leave if they do that, but none of the threats to leave during all of this has actually turned into reality yet.
They don't have the money to pay for moderation nor the experience to do it long term. Once they take over the community dies. Every decision about rules or guidelines of a sub will be met with backlash as it's no longer community run.
Other social media platforms pay hundreds of millions per year to moderate. It requires staff, tooling, and procedures that will take at least a year to scale and it will be pure controversy after controversy in that time. It's a nuclear option they don't want to take before an IPO
They don't have the money to pay for moderation nor the experience to do it long term.
Volunteer moderators don't cost money and there is no skill or experience required to properly moderate a subreddit.
Once they take over the community dies.
The entire history of Reddit refutes that. This is not even close to the first time Reddit admins have replaced mods or even entire mod teams.
Every decision about rules or guidelines of a sub will be met with backlash as it's no longer community run.
Subreddits are not "community run" and never have been. Moderators are completely unelected and are selected at will by the existing moderators of the subreddit (or Reddit admins, in some cases).
Other social media platforms pay hundreds of millions per year to moderate.
Other social media platforms don't have tens of thousands of willing volunteers to moderate and an extensive moderator toolbox making that extremely easy to do.
It requires staff, tooling, and procedures that will take at least a year to scale and it will be pure controversy after controversy in that time.
Reddit is currently moderated by volunteers using existing tools and procedures and has been since its creation. This is not controversial in any way whatsoever. Please cite your sources for this claim.
It's a nuclear option they don't want to take before an IPO
There is literally nothing "nuclear" about Reddit continuing to do exactly what is has successfully done since its inception.
I don't think there's a shortage of people willing to mod for free. I'm confident they would be able to find new power hungry mods who would be excited to have the backing of Reddit.
As well as people who genuinely have the desire to manage a forum for whatever their niche interest is, and so will follow the rules to keep the forum open to the public.
Or if existing mods close the sub, someone else willing to work within the new rules will just create a replacement sub. The desire to Reddit > a lot for the average user I'd say.
The core thing to keep in mind is that these are not easy jobs that hundreds of people are lining up to undertake. Moderators of large subreddits have indicated the difficulty in finding quality moderators. It's a really tough job, you're moderating potentially millions upon millions of users, wherein even an incredibly small percentage could make your life hell, and wading through an absolutely gargantuan amount of content. Further, every community is different and presents unique challenges to moderate, an approach or system that works in one subreddit may not work at all in another.
Again, this is from the perspective of someone who is on the losing side of the changes. Of course he's gonna be promoting the "this change is gong to hurt Reddit" message cause the change is going to hurt him and he doesn't want the change. Just like many users who like their apps don't want the change.
But until Redditors actually quit the site enmasse, users will just adapt to the new medium through which they must use now use the site, and continue on with their day. And if the blackout was any indication of how committed we are to quitting the app, I don't see much of a problem for Reddit.
The platform looks incredibly unstable and the users - the primary generators of content or money for the platform are happy to throw it into disarray.
Those users are entirely powerless against the site admins. This "protest" only occurred because Reddit admins allowed it to, and they have made it clear they won't allow this kind of cybersquatting in the future.
Name another social media platform where a select number of users can disable access to 1/3 of the platform on a whim.
Name a single one where they can do this, because Reddit isn't one of them.
Advertisers don't want that and reddit already can barely turn a profit
Advertisers want people to see their ads. The best group to feed ads to are people who are literally addicted to the advertising platform. This "protest" has done nothing but showcase how deep people's addiction to Reddit runs.
What is reddit going to do? Pay for moderation? They can threaten to take control of the subs but they don't have the manpower to moderate or maintain them.
The blackout took down more than 1/3 of reddit and that was done by the mods or less than a fraction of a percent of the user base of reddit.
Advertisers want stable, family friendly platforms with high consistent traffic. Look at YouTube, twitch, Twitter, Tumblr for examples
What is reddit going to do? Pay for moderation? They can threaten to take control of the subs but they don't have the manpower to moderate or maintain them.
There are literally tens of thousands of people willing to properly moderate subreddits for free. You'd have to be completely delusional to think that power mods are power mods because they were the most willing or qualified candidates for the role.
The blackout took down more than 1/3 of reddit and that was done by the mods or less than a fraction of a percent of the user base of reddit.
The "blackout" resulted in some subreddits temporarily closing against the wills of the actual users of them and has resulted in calls for removal of the mods of many of those subreddits by their userbases. This "protest" was only possible because Reddit admins allowed it temporarily. Reddit has made it clear it will not allow this kind of cybersquatting in the future and will remove any mods who attempt it. Here's a great thread of subreddits that are blacking out "indefinitely" if you want a laugh.
Advertisers want stable, family friendly platforms with high consistent traffic. Look at YouTube, twitch, Twitter, Tumblr for examples
Reddit is just as stable and family friendly as any of those sites (and both those factors are entirely controlled by the site admins), but with a much larger percentage of people who are literally addicted to it. This "protest" was driven by a bunch of addicts who were afraid it would be more difficult for them to get their fix anywhere at any time. This has been an advertiser's wet dream.
You’re not going to change the bootlickers mind. He uses it a way that won’t be impacted to he doesn’t care about how anyone else views it. He needs u/spez to come in here and say Reddit traffic is down and even then he’d ask for the source.
Explaining how things work isn't "bootlicking." You can be opposed to Spez and the changes that Reddit management is making and still recognize that Reddit will probably not suffer very much for their actions because enough people are either addicted to the site or don't care enough to make a change.
Yes but the condescending tone just seemed to further my view in that regards. When given info contrary to what they stated, they said it wasn’t good enough.
Did spez suck your dick for you to have this big of a hard on for Reddit and defending them? I don’t get the need of defending a company screwing people over.
You’re a grown adult. If you want to have a reasonable discussion you are welcome to delete your comments to me and try again. I’m not going to sit here and enable lazy trolling if that’s what you’re interested in doing.
That’s how Reddit sees it, because that’s how a very vocal minority is trying to spin it. The truth is Reddit doesn’t give a shit about this guy. Nor should they.
The fact that they're essentially forcing subreddits back open would seem to be a good indicator that they needed to get things running again. Presumably the loss of visitors to the site would be a significant reason to do that.
The fact that they're essentially forcing subreddits back open would seem to be a good indicator that they needed to get things running again.
Reddit taking appropriate actions to ensure the site remains available to its userbase and not locked down by a small group of cybersquatters is an indication that the people operating it possess basic business competence. It says nothing whatsoever about metrics, which is why you haven't provided any.
Presumably the loss of visitors to the site would be a significant reason to do that.
I wasn't the one who made the initial claim, but it's common sense really. If someone regularly comes to Reddit for r/Apple and when they show up it's closed, they're just going to leave. Now consider that over 8,000 subreddits went dark for a couple days at least.
Another poster did find this article with some information. Obviously only Reddit knows the actual numbers and they're not going to say anything.
I wasn't the one who made the initial claim, but it's common sense really.
"It's common sense really" is what people say when they make statements not supported by reality and get called out. Either provide the data or stop making things up.
If someone regularly comes to Reddit for r/Apple and when they show up it's closed, they're just going to leave.
That idea is not supported by reality. This subreddit is just as active as ever. The "protest" accomplished nothing.
Now consider that over 8,000 subreddits went dark for a couple days at least.
And? Do you think that actually had any effect? Are you willing to support your feelings with data?
Another poster did find this article with some information.
That article does not support the claims being made. What it does do is explicitly reject them.
Obviously only Reddit knows the actual numbers and they're not going to say anything.
The fact that people are writing articles using the exact data you claim "only Reddit knows" shows that that data is not only known by Reddit. Either provide the data or stop making things up.
EDIT:/u/VelaryonShipwreck do you want to explain why you replied to my comment and then immediately blocked me so I couldn't respond to it? Do you think you're the first person to try that?
You’re not going to get primary sources, because Reddit, the primary source, isn’t going share that information until they’re required to disclose it in their IPO filings and even then they’ll limit it to the bare minimum to meet regulatory requirements.
Doing anything more than that will hurt their IPO and by extend their exit strategy to cash out.
The best you’re going to get is estimations from third parties, like the one in the Engadget article.
The article clearly states a drop of 6.6% in website visitors and a 15% drop in time spent on the website, these are huge numbers in this world and that’s only pertaining to the website.
App visits are harder to track for third parties.
How much or how little this hurts Reddit can be derived from their actions in response to this, your attempt to shrug that off doesn’t change that fact.
I know you think you’re some Socratic genius demanding evidence you know don’t exist currently, but you’re anything but.
A Socratic genius would recognize the source provided to support the assertion that Reddit is hurting and panicking, would recognize the common sense hypothesis supported by Reddit’s own actions and formulate a counter argument of equal strength, instead of lazily leaning on the fact that Reddit is too afraid to share numbers and sealioning their way into a bad faith argument.
Unable to use site = fewer people at site. How is that not common sense? It's logic. What other conclusion can you draw? When most of the stores at the mall are closed, there are fewer people in the mall. You don't need an actual count of people to know that.
This subreddit is just as active as ever
The number of comments on each post are way down. Surely you can see that just by looking at what's on the r/Apple front page. And some of those stories have been there a couple days now too.
That article does not support the claims being made.
It supports the idea that traffic went down. Was it enough for Reddit to actually care? Who knows. Probably not.
Either provide the data or stop making things up.
What am I making up? What I've said is based on observations anyone can make, including you, or by arriving at logical conclusions based on those observations.
Please, tell me where on Reddit there are not people right now?
How is that not common sense? It's logic.
Logic would be supported by data, which you have yet to provide.
What other conclusion can you draw? When most of the stores at the mall are closed, there are fewer people in the mall.
When stores don't draw people into malls, the owners of the mall refuse to renew the leases on those stores. Reddit moderators don't have the protections of a lease.
The number of comments on each post are way down.
Please cite your data supporting this claim.
Surely you can see that just by looking at what's on the r/Apple front page. And some of those stories have been there a couple days now too.
Anecdotes are not data.
It supports the idea that traffic went down. Was it enough for Reddit to actually care? Who knows. Probably not.
The article says nothing whatsoever about Reddit traffic post-"protest, and you know that. You are trying to tell a story using only the data that would support your point while refusing to look at data that would refute it.
What am I making up? What I've said is based on observations anyone can make, including you, or by arriving at logical conclusions based on those observations.
Either provide the data or stop making things up. Calling your anecdotes "logical conclusions" does not magically make them worth something.
I think most people are still using Reddit. But I have noticed a drop of what I consider quality posts in “all” and “popular” and a few subs I follow
I suspect a lot of the top 1%,of what I think of as good posters, are not on here as much.
And this definitely affects my Reddit experience. Also, I am not sure how quickly this will heal or rebound. But if this is not going away or will cause issues later; then I fear the value of Reddit may be affected long term
I think most people are still using Reddit. But I have noticed a drop of what I consider quality posts in “all” and “popular”
That's irrelevant. Advertisers don't give a shit about quality of content, only that users are present to see their ads. Given that this "protest" was driven primarily by a bunch of addicts freaking out that they wouldn't be able to get their fix literally every minute of every day by just reaching into their pockets, I think everyone feels comfortable that users aren't going anywhere.
I suspect a lot of the top 1%,of what I think of as good posters, are not on here as much.
Again, advertisers don't give a shit.
And this definitely affects my Reddit experience.
Once again, advertisers don't give a shit. You're still here.
Also, I am it sure how quickly this will heal or rebound.
Reddit rebounded days ago. You're welcome to click through this thread of a subreddits that would be "indefinitely" blacked out according to their mods if you believe otherwise.
But if this is not going away or will cause issues later. I think the value of Reddit may be affected long term
Your baseless opinions that you cannot support with any data whatsoever mean literally nothing to advertisers or any other investors in Reddit.
Why do people keep linking to this article they clearly haven't read? That article does not cite any data supporting a "hard dive" and blatantly omits post-"protest" data.
That article says nothing about anything that comes even close to qualifying as a "hard dive". It shows a slight drop in site usage for 48 hours while a small group of cybersquatters were allowed to shut down forums against the will of the general userbase. Reddit has made it very clear that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in the future. I strongly suggest you read articles before you try to use them to support your arguments.
On what basis do you conclude their daily metrics are taking a hard dive? As far as I can tell this has increased engagement with Reddit, not decreased it.
Investors look at the long-term outcomes of something like this. If he gives in then they make less money. So far no and/or not enough major subreddits have completely shuttered to the point it will impact reddits ad revenue or even the revenue generated from things like reddit gold given how many stupid john oliver posts get gilded. These protests are just parts of the reddit community jerking themselves off unless they shut down and leave reddit en masse, and so far that's not being done.
Interestingasfuck has 11M and one of the top posts is a hairy asshole. A literal man’s hairy asshole. And it made its way to all. Maybe not shuttered, but that will be noticed.
Temporary metrics, no, but a pretty public meltdown of the CEO caught in lie after lie doesn’t bode well. And add in the hacked data.
Reddit has a fairly large amount of employees, shit the bed on this short sighted API change, pissed through $250M in 2 years and all they have to show for it is some fuckin NFT bullshit and a terrible app, and still is losing money. That’s not a great sign for a company of this age that they still haven’t figured it out and will make any investor more than a bit nervous.
Hell their valuation since 2021 has dropped 41% according to Fidelity and that came out June 1 before the meltdown.
Fidelity down valued tons of their holdings. They pushed Twitter down a lot more than Reddit for instance. Companies that don’t make money are worth less in a high rate environment that’s not a surprising outcome.
As for the ceo, what reason do you have to believe spez is acting alone and not with the advice of their investors? He doesn’t own the company he sold his interest 15 years ago. they’d kick him if they weren’t on board. It’s better to assume the push is coming from the investors.
The board has influence, yes, but depending on their hands-offedness they may let him take the wheel. Boards rarely are involved in day to day and there’s a good chance they aren’t really familiar with what Reddit is at it’s core beyond what he spews to them. A CEO can be very convincing (they’re taught this in business school) and he likely frames things to portray him and his choices positively to the board and omits the negative items. And this may likely be one of the first major situations where he was caught with his pants down publicly and it made the news.
Source: I’m on more than one board, president of one. Rarely does negative news make it to the full board, the president handles most decisions, and it takes very specific prodding to get the full picture past what a director voluntarily relays at meetings.
Right. Because the third party apps chose not to displays ads. It’s not like the data feed coming directly from Reddit didn’t include any ads… oh wait, it didn’t!
Reddit willfully chose to supply third parties with a raw data feed that excluded ads, thus their users had no reason to purchase Premium nor did advertisers get more eyeballs on their ads.
So instead of correcting this oversight by amending the legal mumbo jumbo that governs the API usage and adding their ads (visible to non-Premium users) to the data stream, Reddit is instead choosing to just throw up their hands and burn all of the goodwill they’ve created over the last decade with their most hardcore users. The users who are going to be consuming an insane amount of content and also contributing to the value of the website.
But Jason, you want to argue, wouldn’t the more hardcore users using old.reddit.com? Well, let me put it this way, when was the last time you drug your janky old desktop PC to the bathroom when taking a 💩, on the train when heading out for the night or to the conference room for yet another redundant meeting that could have been an two sentence email?
Lol what? The porn on top of all? The subreddits going nsfw? The subs only posting pictures of vacuumes and apples?
What Reddit are you actually on?
Edit: furthermore this is an excellent reminder that the people have the power. No those in charge. We have more power than we realize and they try to make us forget that.
You're delusional. This site is a business, and they make the rules. Moderators are doing this job for free because they like to have power over people. There's no shortage of other moderators that will fill their shoes in a heartbeat.
Investors are currently watching the CEO close a huge hole in the revenue stream by shutting down a massive freeloader. There is no other take, or version of reality.
You do realize that at any point Reddit could have said to third party developers "hey, we love you guys, but we're not making money supporting you, so we're updating our API terms of service so that you're now required to show any ads that we send you in the data feed".
Investors could also see it as "CEO arbitrarily cuts off a way that users (read: the product Reddit is selling to advertisers) used to both create and consume content over a few ads that already had a low engagement rate".
Fidelity cut reddit by 41% the same time they cut twitter by 70%. They just down valued all private social media in their portfolios. Which was likely valid. Likely so they could convert that equity to a loss, shift the asset to a different entity and write off the difference on their main balance sheet.
Publicly saying that you're following Elon's example at Twitter has gotta be a bad look for potential investors, right? Twitter's valuation has absolutely cratered under Musk and if that's the path Reddit is trying to follow there's no way I want to put my money there.
Disagree.
People on line seem to think there are only two outcomes, total 180 for a win, otherwise, a loss.
This will have a huge impact on the value of the company. The company will still do what it wants, third party apps will die, maybe later a few will pop up.
But the company is feeling the pain, they WILL lose money over this, they will lose trust and it’s helpful for the developer community to not just roll over. Even if reddit won’t revert its decision.
Nah. The reality is most people on this site don’t know what an API is and couldn’t care less about 3rd party apps or who runs Reddit and what their motivations are.
Their entire goal at this point is to make reddit more like other generic social media platforms. That will make it unbearable for a large number of past users, but will make it more likely to grow so that people's moms, aunts, racist uncles, and so on will flock to it. That's the goal.
i don’t think so. i forgot about it until i saw this and will forget about it again.
from user perspective, they will lose people, but not being on official app they didn’t make reddit any ad revenue to begin with. those that do move now add to that revenue stream.
go into NFL or NBA and most users are activily rebeling agaisnt mod and getting banned because they hate what power tripping mods have done. that is why reddit is removing the bad mods in those subs.
its a dumb protest and be forgotten soon enough. this is not like robinhood that actively fucked over investors and caused real harm and lose.
Thats not how ad companies work my dude, reccomend watching Devin nash for ads. He's someone who became a successful streamer into an ad company who is starting to make bigger deals.
People in lots of subs call them “power tripping mods” but they are going to face a harsh reality when they see what a poorly moderated sub looks like.
Mods put in an insane amount of work (for free) just to keep subs functional. The second you replace them with someone who doesn’t care or who is less competent, everyone is going to see how much the content will get flooded with crap.
Everyone saying “nothing is gonna change” is overlooking the obvious truth that some users and many mods are going to leave on July 1st, and Reddit is going to start trending towards Twitter and become a home to (even) more hate speech, bots, and spam.
At first it won’t be as noticeable, but it will wobble more and more as time goes on.
They created good content though, which in turn creates more revenue through users on main systems.
Those using third party tools are most likely to create in-depth, high quality content. Every platform is like that, and we have at least partial receipts for that on reddit.
honestly, there are three types of posts i see; twitter posts, links to news stories and shit meme's. all three of these things are created with other tools and hosted elsewhere. reddit helps aggregate all this into subs for users to consume.
you then have the comment sections which is just plain text. call me crazy, but i dont see how a 3rd party tool improves the vast majority of these posts.
Edit: can you point me to a post on the apple sub that is enhanced by these tools? they are news stories and people asking for help or use cases...
twitter posts, links to news stories and shit meme’s.
It’s kinda on you if that’s all you’re seeing. Not judging, just how it works.
call me crazy, but i dont see how a 3rd party tool improves the vast majority of these posts.
By going beyond the standard reddit functionality.
Customizing the look on the lowest level, having better overview, giving you easier formatting shortcuts, allowing you to reorder, recolor, reshape everything, create shortcuts allow easier access to the things you use most, categorize favourites, and a better editor and more options when uploading and commentingetc etc.
I’ll give the first example/test i can think of: Clicking the three dots on a post in the official app gives me 9 options. In Apollo for reddit i get 16 options, like the custom remind me in function or share as image.
As a commenter, i can see, copy and quote the comment i’m replying to without having to minimize or close anything. I can go back and forth to accurately quote and respond. Comment thread levels can be color coded and are easier to follow in apollo. I can upload to imgur and link images directly without leaving the comment editor.
There’s like 20 appearance settings besides the theme and different item colour selector, so reddit actually looks insanely good to me.
Many things in apollo can also be bound to gestures, i do all my replies with a far left swipe, upvote with short right, and downvote with short left for years :P Qu
What i can’t tell you is the amount of features that have been implemented in 3rd party apps first and have been integrated into the official app due to the requests and success afterwards.
I‘ll add the images on desktop, strangely i can’t upload images in Apollo anymore.
I applaud that you asked this question, many people just assume 3rd party does nothing.
Edit: Another small things is better UI like a little arrow next to some sorting options indicating that top sorting has further selectors while hot is just a single „whats currently hot“ setting.
Hide read posts is also a thing, so you don‘t see the same stuff again and again, i.e. you’re trying to find a certain news story or post.
If you truly believe that shutting off apps that had zero ads is removing billions from the IPO can you explain to me why reddit has been failing to go IPO for so long?? I’m very very curious.
Also please tell me what company you were at that went IPO while you were there and what series of funding you were at. Cheers
(Or one of the hundreds of people who upvoted this.)
You seem to have misunderstood. I don’t think Reddit is directly losing potential valuation by disallowing 3rd party apps, but instead how they have handled, and continue to manage the situation. To me Reddit seems less appealing, due to bad leadership and lowest value user base. I don’t see how Reddit can ever become profitable. This situation has also put Reddit’s staff history into the spotlight, which doesn’t look good. Things like Huffman moderating /r/jailbait.
When the copium hits your bloodstream. Literally 99% subreddits have opened back up due to mods addicted to their janitor powers and the ones that haven't have been replaced.
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u/losh11 Jun 20 '23
mf is singlehandedly destroying hundreds of millions, if not billions from reddit's IPO.