this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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In unsurprising news, Reddit prepares IPO (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Now the social media platform is aiming for an IPO in the first quarter of 2024 with a valuation of $15 billion, and has been in talks with potential investors like Goldman Sachs and and Morgan Stanley, per Bloomberg.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 11 months ago (7 children)

The only way reddit is worth $15 billion is if they have plans to sell user data to AI companies.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Nah, they don't need to do that when they can already influence user decisions by faking a consensus.

They "fuzz" votes. They give themselves "gold" and promote articles. Then they have the first few comments all say the same opinion in a few different ways, and suddenly people start agreeing for fear of being "in the out-group". It takes so much effort to flip the tone of the components section once it's got a vibe.

If not, delete and restart until it works.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

As a public company, not disclosing that they manufacuter conversation and opinion with fake data and instead saying it's all natural would be fraud and they would face fines or go to jail if discovered.

Edit: reddit could turn a blind eye to others doing it, but they cant do it themselves and say otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

When was the last time you saw anyone in charge of a 15 billion dollar company go to jail for fraud?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Oh, and FTX

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Theranos had a 10b valuation at one point?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As a public company, not disclosing that they manufacuter conversation and opinion with fake data

You gave it backwards. As a public company, if they can make money doing that but choose not to, they can be sued by the shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I don't think there's any problems with doing it, as long as they aren't claiming otherwise.

If they lie about it it becomes fraud.

Edit: And what are they going to do once asked on a public earnings call? Lie?

Edit: Falsely posting stuff might also open up a can of worms around the site no longer being protected by being user generated content?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Yea imagine for a small country like slovakia πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡° or some crap a few thousand dollars can go a long long way for a local election or whatever through reddit xitter facebook

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I bet it'll be like the old days where they use bots to post fake comments to appear more populated.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

My conspiracy theory is that this is half the reason they disabled the API. They want it to happen, but don't want to be on the hook for overtly deceiving investors, so as a workaround with plausible deniability they hobble the ability of users to do anything about third party spam.

[–] can 6 points 11 months ago

I don't think that's ever actually stopped.

[–] Fuck_u_spez_ 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Plans? I'd almost be surprised if they weren't already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I don't know how far along they are but I know it's why they restricted API access for mobile web apps.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Too late, the AI companies already got that data for free

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Yes, that is literally the plan.

Reddit executives reasoned that the changes were needed to prevent companies, especially artificial intelligence startups creating large language models, from using Reddit’s data for free. With rumors of an imminent IPO swirling, the company is under pressure to make money – and CEO Huffman has acknowledged as much, stating at the time of the change: β€œReddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/30/reddit-moderator-protest-communities-social-media?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

If reddit user data is worth 15 billion i'll eat my goddamn shoes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I think they basically blocked their API for third-party apps and push everyone to use their app for this reason.