I can't believe they gave the job to such a clueless and arrogant leader. At this rate, it's not a matter of if, but when Reddit is going to crash and burn like Digg did.
Most likely reddit is holding out till the IPO. Getting a new CEO beforehand would cause some chaos. Stability is what saves valuation. Reddit's recent instability is what is messing with its worth.
Then reddit can blame everything on their scapegoat: spez. The old CEO gets a nice severance package for acting like the villain reddit needs till all the new changes are in place. Even if the CEO was not the only one making these decisions.
The new CEO will remove a few of the harsh changes reddit recently made; but not all of them. The people then rejoice as the new CEO is "nicer" than spez and the evil villain is gone.
It's not like reddit can ever go back to the way it was; it wasn't making enough money to please its stakeholders. The preceding sentence is why the fediverse is so important.
I can't believe Steve Huffman (u/spez) is acting like this before an IPO. An IPO usually means a board of directors. Usually, the CEO reports directly to the board of directors and serves until they decide they need a new CEO. Forget third-party apps for a second, Fidelity has further slashed the estimated worth Reddit. Users are protesting against the site's leadership. Porn bombing has brands concerned about advertising on Reddit; see https://techstory.in/advertisers-grapple-with-rising-brand-safety-concerns-as-reddit-protests-escalate-into-porn-bombing-campaigns/ He's tarnished Reddit's image. The sooner they do an IPO, the better as Huffman will become the artist formerly known as CEO.
I wish more people weren't waiting until June 30 to tentatively make a decision or leave. I have a feeling many of them aren't leaving if they haven't already.
I made my decision to leave as soon as I saw how the app devs were treated. Been back only to edit all my comments to state what I think about spez & co. I’ve simply been waiting to add my little weight to the end of month exodus.
I decided to leave when I saw how they removed entire moderator from subreddits. Abhorrent behaviour and completely unhinged. I was modding at r/steam for 7 years. Is this how you treat dedicated people to your platform? This shattered the relationship between users and Reddit admins to me. I only removed my account yesterday until they finally hit nail in the coffin with going forward to kill off third parties. I never really used Apollo TBH, but it’s the intent behind what they do that matters to me. Haha.
I wish I had had the time to fully switch sooner. But my life has been nuts, so I'm now scrambling between calls to get into the swing here.
Which is all just to say, some folks live crazy busy lives and can't switch as soon as others.
But also when I was initially going to switch, I was reading that kbin and Lemmy were getting overwhelming traffic, so I wanted to wait for that wave to calm down and ensure the hosts were able to keep up/recover
I was one of those people; the man reason being the lack of the less popular subreddits (magazines/communities?) on here. Some of my most visited spots on Reddit just don’t exist here. If I’m being honest, I don’t wanna make and mod them either. I’d partake in them, but running one isn’t in the cards. I just don’t have the time. I think those less popular subreddits are the ones that will hurt the most leaving behind.
Why would we expect people to leave? Look at how many people stayed on Twitter and are still there. People can get used to a lot of bad stuff in exchange for doom-scrolling dopamine.
I wonder if there are a lot of people, average users, that just aren’t in the know, and will only realize the third party apps are gone when they’re physically gone.
If they decapitated the management (not literally...well...no this is not constructive) and made the API cheap as balls, you might retain the existing users and pull half that are leaving back.
There's not 5B in advertising opportunity there. Any company that wanted to get out in front of their customers is already in there talking to them for free.
They wanted to put me behind a paywall, I wouldn’t have mind to be treated like a cheap hoe. Why you valuing me at 10b, baby, I just wanna be rent free…
"Tomorrow is when the real shit hits the fan." I don't know about that. I think it'll take a while and there will be several stages. Tomorrow the power users leave, and moderators might either do a lot less or disappear completely.
Then would be a rise in bots (i saw an AITA post i thought might be bot generated as i couldnt possibly think how "OP" could be anything but an asshole) and spammers, people voting might help keep some of that at bay while the users who browse by hot might still get what they want. Then there would likely be migrations of users.
I think people who go to subs like funny and AITA could still be there for a while, but i think the content will degrade and some subs i think have taken permanent hits in viewership. 4 months ago i could think of some where i'd consider advertising a product to a niche, but there's zero chance i'd be parting with money today.
I think the effects of this will be large and far reaching, but those looking to cash out are still steaming ahead for their IPO payday, and whatever happens from there will be the new owners concern. It'd be different if i thought they wanted to IPO and still hold a large share of the company, but everything im seeing leads me to believe thats not the case.
We can already see lemmy.world has grown 15% or 8k users in half a day. If that's representative, the coming days will be worse for reddit than the blackout and protest period.
That was what I meant, that for reddit the shit hits the fan today for real, as in the consequences of their decision will hit harder when they are actually implemented.
I’m not expecting people to leave in droves, but I imagine that as the quality of content, moderation, and overall tone declines a lot of people will gradually lose interest and stop visiting.
Dude really could have done this right and not essentially tell us in the “leak” that “oh we’re not losing money so it’s fine” - what a complete tool. I learned he doesn’t give a shit about us. Haha.
That’s down 7.36% from the $16.6 million mark at April’s closure and altogether a slide of 45.4% since its investment in August 2021. The updated share value suggests a $5.5 billion valuation for Reddit.
I'll probably go back occasionally to delete comments now and then. Desktop only. Until I get bored or sick of it and delete my account. I don't have any of real worth, just doing my part. I've avoided the auto delete tools, as I've heard of plenty of issues.
I still find it funny the number of Redditors who keep claiming that the protest was useless and "all mods are bad". They seem to legitimately think Reddit is doing better than ever, somehow.
I wanna see the current or former patrons of r/WallStreet short Reddit to oblivion on the IPO. Spez should realize that if you piss off a large group, they can hit back when you’re most vulnerable.
They did this May 31st. I know the API was announced in April but the main details were early June, and the real shit show began around June 8th I think. And this is definitely before advertisers started reconsidering where they spend their money. So we haven't even seen the effects of the dumpster fire yet. There's probably more devaluation yet to come.
These financial institutions and the valuations are complete nonsense.
"I am going to give you $1 million dollars in exchange for 20% of your company, that means your company is worth $5 million dollars"
Then they go to IPO and its a massive pump and dump where I am sure they just harvest money from investors.
And considering how many subreddits announced they were moving to discord, that doesn't entirely fit.
In a lot of ways this probably means nothing. The Fidelity valuation was at best an informed guess and it's now an informed guess. Though it matters a lot if you are considering taking Reddit public, since many other players will look at what they did and try to do something similar because they don't want to look like they aren't paying attention.