this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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That is a great point. I never considered this to be an effect of interest rates increasing. But I think Reddit was already profitable.
But it recently went public and I think the board is like, "Make more money now!"
They really just want to get everyone on the Reddit app so they can collect user data to sell and to show advertisements.
Profitable is probably a big word here, but they were surviving and without any real ambitions, not a lot of money was necessary. Originally, the Reddit gold awards seemed to be enough for them to pay for server usage and the handful of developers/admins.
However, the last couple of years things felt like they were changing behind the scenes. More investors were attracted and growth became an objective. The low interest rates indeed meant a lot of money was available and that investors wanted more growth as there were plenty of alternatives that WERE growing. If your growth is/was disappointing, you'd lose the investors as they would go elsewhere. The current situation is likely just the tail end of that process.
I think you are right. Investors just want more money than they have and it is ruining the platform. I guess that is why I love these federated platforms. It is not really easy for them to be taken over.
They can, however, be misrepresented by media, to the general public, using sometimes fabricated other times exaggerated events. And that agenda can be pushed, more than ever from July onward, by lobbying. Not that I care, because I don't give a **** about what other people think of the place where I spend my time, but a lot of people do. Even reddit had a time like that "oh, isn't that the network where the CP / jailbait scandal broke?". I'm sure Lemmy will have some of these growing pains.
Reddit hasn't gone public yet (it's planned for this year) and very likely isn't profitable — we don't know for sure because it hasn't published its financials.
Thanks for the heads up. I thought that it already happened.
Was there some sort article or post, I only heard people say they will.
It's the thing with capitalism, init. Moar!!