The gloomy sentiment around Reddit Inc. has failed to dissipate after its shares fell 50% from a February high, with volatile technology stocks under pressure.
The gloomy sentiment around Reddit Inc. has failed to dissipate after its shares fell 50% from a February high, with volatile technology stocks under pressure.
I’m not sure why anyone would ever buy Reddit stock. There is no money to be made in Reddit. They failed to make any money before they went public, and they’re failing to make any money now.
They tried the whole NFT thing, failed. They’re trying to sell the data to AI companies but once that’s sold they can’t sell any more of it because the benefit of Reddit data was historical data unpolluted by AI, but new Reddit data is polluted by ChatGPT posts and is therefore worth less.
It’s not even about banning people, it’s about the fact that Reddit was never a sustainable business model from the start, at least not in the traditional capitalist sense where you’re actively trying to make a profit to please shareholders.
The only benefit to owning Reddit stock is if you have voting shares and can manipulate the algorithm to benefit you in some way. Suppress some voices, amplify others to back what you want to do etc. but you need money to burn in order to achieve that because you aren’t going to be making money directly by owning Reddit stock and manipulating public opinion takes time.
If they’d been stalwart about banning automation and keeping original, legit human content pure, they probably could have used it as a fountain of fresh data for AI, for polling, for engagement farming, and for promotion.
The site was still growing even despite the admin induced atrophy. But they just couldn’t resist killing the Golden Goose.