Reddit seeks to launch IPO in March

Fuck Reddit. Scumbags.

RIP Aaron.

RIP Aaron indeed. May his fighting spirit be the anchor point for any community that's succeeding Reddit.
- Aaron's actions have inspired maia arson crimew.
Amen.

When can we start shorting the stock? /s

If you really want to sabotage, just upload lots of videos to subreddits that you can't advertise on.
- so use Reddit for exclusively porn? way ahead of you
- brb time to launch my porn career!
Hmmm, let's see.

Failing company rooted in a more traditional framework they're trying to break out of

Said company has no idea what they're doing and keep doing ridiculous things to "break out of" traditional framework

Keeps doing things no user/customer asked for

Said company has no real effective long-term game-plan and keeps changing tack because of bad previous choices

There's a good chance the company could go completely bust because of lack of good business plan and solid leadership

Redditors: Reddit is the new GameStop!! DRS!! MOASS!!!
- Keeps doing things no user/customer asked for
  
  I'm pretty sure the advertisers - their real customers - asked them to show more ads.
- Dont forget the booooots sooo mannny boooots how the hell are there such low effort bots everywhere on that site
- Blatantly wrong
Prob didnt need the /s
It takes a few weeks for options to become available, but they will.

If you have a shit ton of money you can buy shorts directly.
- Why do ya need tons of money for shorts? I can buy some $15 shorts at Walmart just easily.

Well we have 6 weeks to prepare for the next mass exodus lads and lassies

i.e. Have a backup account on a small instance ready for when the big ones get ddos'd
- Do one better, run your own instance
Why should the IPO change anything at this point? It's not like it'll have any immediate effects on the website.
- It's not the IPO that will cause the exodus. Its the first actions that Reddit takes to appease shareholders that will cause people to leave

Founded in 2005 by web developer Steve Huffman and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Reddit became best known for its niche discussion groups and its users voting "up" or "down" on the content posted by other members.

I appreciate this extremely sly shade at Steve Huffman.

He's not an entreprenuer because he didn't do dick between leaving Reddit and coming back to Reddit whereas Ohanian had a few other companies in his back pocket.

I mean, Ohanian sucks, too, but this sentence is just Reuters kicking dirt in Steve Huffman's smarmy little bitch face and I'm fucking here for it.

And Huffman’s programming skills weren’t even that great because they quickly brought in Aaron Schwartz to make it all work, yet they always conveniently leave him off of the founders’ list.
- This is literally the story of almost every successful tech venture. Even in the company I work for, the CEO was a former salesperson while the dev who started it all was still a dev after 20 years. He singlehandedly created the entire product catalog but no one outside of the company knows his name. The CEO's name is all over everything, including a "book" he "wrote".
  
  There's always a low profile nerd somewhere in the background who is absolutely key to the whole operation but they rarely get cred.
- Huffman was fucking pissed about how good Alien Blue and Apollo were. He bought and absolutely fucking ruined AB and when he couldn’t buy Apollo (he tried) he crushed it under his boot heel.

Oh good, some breathing room to finish Voyager's new onboarding flow

Onboarding flow? Are they making like a fediverse tutorial or something?
- I've been adding signup support and making login a bit nicer too. Some screenshots
I’m on voyager now. Thank you. :)

My shortcut is still called wefwef but I know what I’m using haha, I’m just lazy.

I love the app and you made my transition from Apollo so easy. I would probably be wandering around in the dark with no content if you hadn’t pulled this off. So again, thank you.
Voyager?
- It's a Lemmy client. One of many. :)
  
  https://github.com/aeharding/voyager#readme
- It was after Deep Space 9

Goodness I hope the gamestop nerds find a way to absolutely destroy this. If there is any chance of a scheme working, I will invest.

Time to buy shorts. Or puts. Or kangaroos. Whatever.

I don't know a fucking thing about stonks.
- Perfect, you'll fit right in
- It will launch, spike up a little that day, then drop pretty hard for a month or so, getting down to about 60% of its launch price, before slowly gaining back up to around 80% of its launch price after several months.
- It's winter here. I'm gonna buy pants.
I had to go and check wsb to see what the chatter was on this. Looks like they share the same sentiments tbh

Edit: Looks like they could use some Lemmy enlightenment tbh

Founded in 2005 by web developer Steve Huffman and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Reddit became best known for its niche discussion groups and its users voting "up" or "down" on the content posted by other members.

Disgraceful, disgusting, lying scum. Say his name: Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz actually didn’t found Reddit. He built a similar company that wasn’t gaining traction, and as both of them were under y-comb and Reddit secretly seeded fake accounts, Swartz and y-comb decided to merge into Reddit. Swartz was sort of their first and hardworking employee instead of a co-founder.
- Reddit doesn't exist without him period full stop. His didn't get traction and theirs didn't work.
  
  Not the same thing.

Seems like a terrible investment, I can’t see what they can possibly do to add value. Everybody who wants to use Reddit is already on it and anything they do to try and milk it will just lose them users.

I've had the impression for a long time that Reddit could stand to lose a large part of its users in order to be more profitiable. The nerds getting into long winded "ackchually" "debates" are making the site worse for the meme scrollers and they are also not the type to click on ads. They're not trying to attract more users, they want to maximise revenue from the existing pool. I don't think it's a coincidence Reddit has been slowly moving away from "discussion board" and towards image and short video (like the other three big platforms) because that's where the money's at.

My prediction is that shortly after the IPO we'll see .old go away, and a further sterilizing of subreddits ability to forge unique identities. The only question I have is how do they expect to attract sufficient moderators, buuuut they haven't had trouble after the API debacle so maybe there are more people willing to provide free labor than I assume!
- The only question I have is how do they expect to attract sufficient moderators
  
  I mean YouTube comment sections were known for years to be an unmoderated nightmare of just people saying the absolute dumbest shit.
  
  YouTube was and still is the most popular video site.
  
  I think reddit has just stopped caring about the real content of the comments since, like you said, they've pretty much pivoted to images and video. Expect the comments section to be further eroded as well, in the name of needing less moderation. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit do an "AI" push where the "AI" is mostly just replacing moderators with what amounts to a more advanced automod.

Cool. That'll be a fun trainwreck to watch.

Ooh, I can finally short!

Contrary to many in here, I don't think this will cause another exodus from reddit. those who might be concerned by this have already left or reduced their time on the platform

If Facebook hasn't had a mas exodus, neither will Reddit.

Facebooks death is slow and ongoing, and I'm pretty sure Reddit's will be too.
- I don't know where you are getting your numbers. maybe it's your selection bias, but facebook's userbase keeps groing, and even if its getting less teenager engagement, those teenagers are flocking to Meta's other platform Instagram.
- If you move from facebook to instagram or threads why move at all?

I’d expect another big exodus around then.

Yes. Best thing we can do is be ready (from a tech perspective) and welcoming (from a human perspective). They'll come or they won't.

Compared to summer, Lemmy now has thousands more users, hundreds of active communities (no where near Reddit yet on niche subjects), actual made-on-lemmy content in a bunch of places, and a bunch of apps that mostly have the bugs worked out. It's probably fair more appealing now to join than it was in summer.

We still have roadblocks: general confusion about federation (the email analogy seems to be working best), difficulty properly explaining how to sign up, a harder time finding communities, and it's impossible to migrate between instances without starting fresh.
- no where near Reddit yet on niche subjects
  
  I'm always saddened by how not-active some of those subjects are. For example: Even many large games struggle to have dedicated, active communities on Lemmy (assuming I'm not terrible at finding them, which is sadly also possible). Even some of the largest games have only completely dead communities here. A huge draw of Reddit for me was to be able to talk about the games I play with other people who do too. And mostly, the games I'd love to talk about aren't in the top 10 most played games list.
  
  Now I could try to (re)vitalize those communities I would love to see around, and I have done so shortly after the exodus (on my previous account that died with the instance it was on). However, there's only so much talking into the void I can do until it gets boring.
  
  I also feel like that might be a big issue for people coming over. After I manage to explain to my friends how federation works, they ask me to help them find the [topic of their interest] community, and all I can show them is a community with 10 threads, all over 3 months old and with 0 comments. Sadly it shouldn't surprise anyone they're not sticking around after that.
- User migration is now possible in Lemmy 0.19:
  
  Users can now export their data (community follows, blocklists, profile settings), and import it again on another instance. This can be used for account migrations and also as a form of backup. The export format is designed to remain unchanged for a long time. You can make regular exports, and if the instance becomes unavailable, register a new account and import the data. This way you can continue using Lemmy seamlessly.
  
  Source: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-12-15_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.19.0_-_Instance_blocking,_Scaled_sort,_and_Federation_Queue
- All those toxic Redditors coming here... I hope we can manage to significantly beef up the mod tools before then.
- I find Kbin's Collections feature a good fix for federation confusion. Honestly I think it should be the default type of view when browsing communities, you need to abstract the average user from federation as much as possible and leave browsing by instance as an advance option for those that want to engage with federation in detail
- I still feel like if we want to grow faster organically we need to natively support more "discovery functions". Just things that you can toggle off like for example a recommendation screen and stuff. The algorithm for it we can make and adapt open source so no one is scared we collect data.
  
  We're running into the Linux Vs Windows problem, where you can technically do more stuff and have more control over you account on Lemmy, but you need to be familiar with the fediverse before joining, just to Unterstand how to use Lemmy. That's a big problem for any potential new user.
- Confusion about federation is not helped by federation not working recently due to a few notable Lemmy bugs (which are now fixed). Hopefully anyone new coming over doesn't encounter any new major bugs.
If a user didn’t exodus for the popular subs last time, I don’t see why they would this time.
- Some of those popular subs were reopened with a new mod team that falls in line. Spez was too busy stuffing his ears with ad money instead of listening to his stakeholders

I've never bought options before, but I'm in for 10grand and shorting the shit out of this.

If you're serious, just remember the old saying "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you or I can remain solvent"
- Oh I learned this the hard way
I don't really care about Reddit but this is probably a bad idea
Usually they don't allow options on new stocks until after the cutoff period. Unless your broker allows naked shorting.
- Probably not through some online broker, but OTC with an actual trading desk you can short just about anything. In the end it's just a contract.
Proof or ban

Oh wait, I forgot we aren't on wallstreet
- We need a Lemmy version of WSB
I think what may buoy them is the fact that you must append “Reddit” to searches, however, ChatGPT, DuckDuckGo, and Kagi are giving them a run for their money
TLDR how do?
- Short version: don't
  
  Long version: doooooooooont fuck with options. Knowing that reddit is going to tank is not enough of an edge for you to be able to make winning trades
Not financial advice, but there's been a few times I wanted to short something (I didn't in the end) but one thing to watch out for after an IPO is the date insiders are allowed to start selling stock. It's often 6 months or so after the IPO and can cause share price to drop.

So if a company jumps in value post IPO, there might be an opportunity to short it at some point, with the options expiring a period of time after the insider sell off date.

I imagine I'm going to do some paper trades on reddit on this and see what happens. I'm rooting for them to do poorly. Fuck u/Spez

Edit: And to clarify, I mean buy puts on something. I'd never short something directly.

I'm curious how they will tank their worth by then, as is tradition.

Wouldn't be surprised to see lemmy activity spike in March. Probably not as big as during the API debacle, but still.

Easiest short of my life.

... And so it begins...

... And so it ~~begins~~ continues ...
- This cannot continue.

Buying puts on that bitch on day 1.

Is it even worth anything to investors anymore at this point? Huffman kind of destroyed any faith anyone had in Reddit, seems like it's just going to slowly turn into an ad distribution service to scam people who don't know any better lol

Well yeah, but that's worth a lot.
I've said myself that reddit's biggest assets were it's passionate userbase and it's trove of commentary. But I remember reading a comment, years ago now, that reddit's biggest asset was it's profile data. They know what communities you visited, and which you were most passionate about. They know what specific topics and keywords got you involved in a conversation. They know the content that you upvote and that you downvote. They know roughly where you live, what times you're online. They probably have a decent idea of your job and how much you earn. They data is worth something to data brokers, and it wouldn't surprise me if they start selling it after the IPO.
There's always some value to vultures (and vulture capital) that want to pick over the pieces. It might even still have meaningful value as an ongoing social media platform. But the expected IPO value has dropped heavily in the past few years, and is likely to keep dropping. This really isn't because of anything at Reddit, but of the financial markets in general.

The big question is how will investors feel about the potential for returns, i.e. revenues. I expect to see (well, read about) a whole lot of enshittification over there. Much more data mining, ads, freemium features, etc.

I hope the STONKS Apes are ready...

They will short the fuck out of it. There is literally no way this company can make money without making the product so much worse they will really start bleeding the users they need for revenue. It will explode on launch week and crash two or three weeks later.
- Long short, long volatility until it flatlines. Basically free money. Their product is users and their data. If they upset the ecosystem users leave and decrease valuations... leads to layoffs and cost saving measures. Rinse and repeat until sufficiently dead.

Can someone tell me what IPO is, and act like I'm not an idiot XD

An IPO is an initial public offering. It is when shares of the company are being sold for the first time. This allows a company to (potentially) raise an enormous amount of money to expand their business.

When people buy and sell stocks or you see stock prices being reported on this is more or less a secondary market, people or investment firms trading stocks amongst themselves. The company doesn't get any money when a stock trades hands in this fashion.

An IPO is different. The company is selling little pieces of ownership and the money from those sales go into their coffers. To raise the most funds the company wants to convince potential buyers that the company is valuable and is now or will soon be profitable (and will pay a dividend out for each share owned). This assessment of value (called valuation) is often complex and can take a long, long time.

Reddit's recent effective shutdown of third party apps to force mobile users onto the Reddit mobile app was almost certainly an effort to get a better valuation. It shows potential buyers of shares that the content on Reddit can only be accessed on mobile devices via an app that the company would get the ad revenue from.

All the kerfuffle and shakeups at Reddit have been leading up to the big day, the IPO. The big news scoop is that that date has been set for March.
- This is super informative without being condescending, wonderful job
  
  I hope you have a great day!
- It also is used as a cash cow by many startups where the IPO will get them nice bonuses, large amounts of valuable stock that they can then sell.
  
  This is honestly what I expect from asshole apex as well
- Thanks a lot, this is a great explanation! You should be a teacher
They're going to start selling shares of the company on public markets

Hope we see some more migration. Lemmy is miniscule in comparison, with 60,000 active users by last count across all instances.

Heck, even /r/mildyinteresting has 220,000 users and that isn't even the main subreddit, it's a misspelled version of /r/mildlyinteresting.

/r/videos used to be a default and supposedly has millions of subscribers, but when I was still on reddit you'd regularly see content with 100 upvotes reach the top of the subreddit and maybe 10 comments. Often this was on bot reposts.

Their numbers should be take with a huge grain of salt.
I think it's fine. Lemmy was actually nicer with less users. Now it grew a bit and all the trolls also came along. If it becomes huge, it will probably lose most of its charm.

Bigger is actually not better sometimes I think.

I'm happy right now with it. But sure, mostly memes and Linux stuff which I like, so...
Also Reddit has been around for over a decade and lemmy has existed for about 4 years. It's hard to compare the two in that regard.

The offering would also test the willingness of some Reddit users to back the company's stock market debut. Many investors posting on the platform have helped fuel dozens of "meme" stock rallies in the last three years.

Whatever nonsense the're implying here is twisted and awefull. Like they owe it to the platform?

How are futures doing on MemeEconomy?

Over here on Lemmy, Star Trek memes are doing fine, so that bodes well for our future stonks.
- No idea, my account over there got soft-locked more than a year ago, moved here when Apollo stopped letting me lurk.
  
  Surey those communities moved over aswell? Cant imagine its more then bots and my dad nowadays.

Good luck Mr. Gorsky

Grabbing popcorn, I'm ready to be entertained by their failure. :)

Lots of people will buy the stock because $$$. Reddit site will get worse and worse as they cater to shareholders.

When can I buy puts?

They're still trying to do that?!

Isn't this just a business article?

about a tech company

What if Musk buys the front page of the internet. There are some interesting Pro's and Cons Edit: interesting doesn't mean good

What would you consider to be a "pro" here?
- Reddit going under?
He can buy in but he can't buy all of Reddit. According to the article the IPO will only be for 10% of the company. If he goes in, that's only going to drive up the price.