What are people’s thoughts on how Reddit is coming out of this so far? How bad have things been for Reddit? Do we know how much their traffic has dropped and would a drip in traffic even hurry them that much. Why don’t we see talk of a new blackout at the end of the month?

  • LvxferreM
    8•1 year ago

    Reddit Inc. itself lost really hard.

    For Reddit Inc., the winning conditions are to get share prices up to the roof, so when the IPO happens the current shareholders leave with their pockets full of money. However, everything that is happening shows:

    • That Reddit does not have multiple stable sources of income. The only main source of income will still be advertisement money.
    • That advertisement money will run dry, as users are leaving the platform or outright boycotting it.

    Both increase the risk and decrease the expected profit. Nobody is insane to invest in a company like this.

    For the community it depends on your goals.

    I count the situation as a big win; alternatives became more viable, Reddit as a platform will become less and less relevant, and the scummy company will lose lots of money.

    If however you expected Reddit to play nice with its userbase (e.g. reverting API price changes), then count it as a loss.

    • grahamsz
      1•1 year ago

      I’m also struck by the incongruity that reddit makes something like 12c/user/month but their fair-actual-cost of the API calls needed to service that user are in the $2-3 range.

      I suspect that’s a lie and that the API prices are profiteering, but that isn’t exactly inspiring me to invest in them :D