https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/reddit-faces-new-reality-after-cashing-in-on-its-ipo/
In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit's market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.
"It's a free market!" he said.
For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a "fun and special, but sometimes crazy place" has appeared to pay off.
[...] The chief executive sold 500,000 of his shares in the IPO, cashing out a plump $17 million, and is due to receive additional equity awards as a result of listing the company above a $5 billion valuation. He also received an estimated $193 million pay package last year, mostly made up of equity awards, according to filings.
[...] "Reddit, more so than many social media platforms, has been a very community-based, non-commercial space and people know and love it for [this]," said Samuel Woolley, a propaganda expert and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
"I think the big question that should be on everyone's mind for Reddit is to what extent the IPO will change the very nature and fabric of the platform."
Related Stories
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is standing by Reddit's decision to block companies from scraping the site without an AI agreement.
Last week, 404 Media noticed that search engines that weren't Google were no longer listing recent Reddit posts in results. This was because Reddit updated its Robots Exclusion Protocol (txt file) to block bots from scraping the site. The file reads: "Reddit believes in an open Internet, but not the misuse of public content." Since the news broke, OpenAI announced SearchGPT, which can show recent Reddit results.
[...]
In an interview with The Verge today, Huffman stood by the changes that led to Google temporarily being the only search engine able to show recent discussions from Reddit. Reddit and Google signed an AI training deal in February said to be worth $60 million a year. It's unclear how much Reddit's OpenAI deal is worth.
[...]
Per The Verge, Huffman claimed that Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity haven't been negotiating. The three companies haven't commented on Huffman's interview."[It's been] a real pain in the ass to block these companies," Huffman told The Verge.
[...]
A Microsoft spokesperson told me last week that "Microsoft respects the robots.txt standard and we honor the directions provided by websites that do not want content on their pages to be used with our generative AI models."
[...]
Huffman also reportedly made reference to a June CNBC interview where Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, said: "I think that with respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the '90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, re-create with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That's been the understanding." Suleyman added that his comment didn't refer to certain types of web content, like news organizations."We've had Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity act as though all of the content on the internet is free for them to use. That's their real position," Huffman said.
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Reddit Faces New Reality After Cashing in on its IPO - 20240328
Reddit Aims for $6.4bn Valuation Ahead of Initial Public Offering - 20240313
Reddit Sells Training Data to Unnamed AI Company Ahead of IPO - 20240223
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(Score: 2, Touché) by HeadlineEditor on Friday March 29, @12:41PM (2 children)
those darn retail investors
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Friday March 29, @03:02PM
We are all deeply saddened and wish to express our support in this time of difficulty when you discover you are merely a multi millionaire instead of a billionaire. Life is sew unfair.
We all know this won't be easy, but we also know that you've got what it takes to get through this.
But . . . you got this! We're wishing you the most bestest of good luck! Sending our major good vibes your way.
We hope you are doing awesomely bodaciously good dude.
We're always here for you at 127.0.0.1 bro!
Universal health care is so complex that only 32 of 33 developed nations have found a way to make it work.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @03:32PM
Looks like I made the right call letting this "opportunity" pass me by... maybe if those darned retail investors drive the market cap down below $1B it might be time to think about an investment.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Revek on Friday March 29, @03:26PM (3 children)
Lemmy.world is not perfect but its good enough. If the ban hammer came down on me on reddit I wouldn't miss it much.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @03:38PM (2 children)
I've had a reddit account for over 10 years... checking... 11 years. I have created 4 sub-reddits, one of which has been active for over 9 years with over 12K subscribers (2 online at the moment...) I have over 100K comment karma...
And, like you, if it all suddenly went "poof" tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it. I don't mind it, it's an O.K. distraction from time to time, maybe 10 minutes a day on average with frequent 2 to 3 day skips of no reddit at all. I do use it more than Facebook, even though my "friends" are more easily connected on Facebook few of us take anything there very seriously, Facebook gets frequent 2 to 3 week skips by most of us. Then there's eX-Twatter, 2 to 3 year skips are the norm for me there, with an average of 10 minutes per year when I do use it.
How these platforms reach tens of billions in market cap is beyond me...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Friday March 29, @04:07PM (1 child)
It's somewhere between lottery / Mega Millions / Powerball stuff and Ponzi scheme.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @04:13PM
>Ponzi scheme.
Actually, since the stock market opened up to retail investors (day traders in their underwear, in particular), I think Ponzi scheme covers it for all of it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday March 29, @04:35PM (3 children)
I asked "Is it possible to short an IPO?"
I guess you cannot, because otherwise any investor would have.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @05:23PM (2 children)
Well, you could have shorted the minute after iPO...
Actually, it took a little run up for a few hours, good while it lasted I suppose... who do you think was selling then?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday March 29, @08:41PM (1 child)
The question is, would he have sold at, say, 10% of the IPO?
Because that's what I'll bet that toilet paper will drop to within a month.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @09:10PM
I'll buy at 2%, even a dead cat bounces for a while.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday March 29, @05:04PM (2 children)
I left reddit years ago because "le Hive Mind" was unbearable; but I still lurk it. It seems like some Penthouse forum type stuff has floated up to the front page after the IPO--one story in particular that sounded like a girl in distress, but then after a few follow-up posts seemed to morph in to some fetish material. Hey, sex sells... but there's already a lot of it on the Internet. How many online-only trashy romance novel authors are worth $6 billion?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 29, @05:24PM
>How many online-only trashy romance novel authors are worth $6 billion?
I guess the trick is: they reach billions of readers... which is more than the dead trees sellers can do these days.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday March 29, @07:10PM
sex sells, and outrage over people having sex sells even better.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday March 29, @06:56PM (3 children)
and what I left, I modified to be full of nonsense and misinformation.
I figured if Spez wants to sell the data I gave him to train AI for profit, let the AI train on poisoned data. And the conversations I've participated in are now full of holes where my posts used to me, making the threads incomprehensible, lowering the quality and value of the site.
And let me tell you, in the process of doing that, I realized I'm far from the only one.
I also realized some of the posters I know in the same certain "touchy" categories I used to post in have pulled all their posts too. When I inquired, one of them told me that since Reddit was going full ahead with data monetization and the Reddit data was about to be fed to AIs, he didn't want the AIs to learn that he had a disability. So he deleted all his posting history in the subreddits dealing with his disability just in case. And I did that too for the same reason, not just out of spite to do my part to fuck up Spez' bottom line.
Of course, that implies Reddit actually did delete the posts I removed, which it probably didn't. And so it'll be interesting in a little while to query ChatGPT and figure out if the AI spews out the information I removed. If it does, it means Reddit lied to everybody and never actually deleted anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29, @10:47PM (1 child)
I modded you interesting in the hope that you will report back on SN whether you can get an AI to spout one of your deleted posts. How long before the reddit data gets into a AI?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday March 29, @11:13PM
I have no idea. But if / when any AI is fed any of what I posted on Reddit, I will know immediately. It was very specific advice for people who have the same very specific and rather uncommon disability I have, which I only ever posted on Reddit. All I have to do is ask ChatGPT or Bard or whichever other mechanical Turk precise advice on how to deal with certain aspects of my disability and I'll know immediately if it spews out the stuff I removed from Reddit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 01, @12:14AM
You think Spez doesn't keep copies of what gets deleted?
That's the juicy stuff.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Friday March 29, @07:41PM
LOL he's got the perfect job title to comment upon Reddit.