Technology

I still remember clicking a bunch of irrelevant ads for knives and other weird shit on a forum I visited regularly because the owner said they get slightly more money when ads get clicked on site.

I'm doing my part!

There was a simple version of reddit that could be profitable without compromising what made it enjoyable for the users, but the suits had to go chasing after a bunch of fads (remember bow they tries to produce a series of video AMAs?).

The "old internet" hasn't gone away. It's easier than ever for your average person to set up their own website. Look at all the shit you can do with WordPress, usually for free and usually with minimal technical knowledge or experience. Reddit/Facebook/Google/etc have done nothing at all to prevent people from doing that. The people still choose reddit/Facebook/google. I don't know we're supposed to change that without actually removing people's freedom of choice.

I have no qualms with a person making a comfortable living off of building a website like Reddit. None at all. I’d rather have someone who’s able to dedicate their full time and even a team to making an experience great for users and making a very healthy living off of it.

But yea, spez is a greedy fuck and the ELT at Reddit are all greedy fucks. Reddit has no business being a publicly traded company.

But it isn't gambling ... It's managed and calculated financing in companies that need the investment in order to grow

I'm kidding, this is sarcasm .. the stock market is a freakin casino with built in cheats and frauds that favor the rich and wealthy.

The stock market, much like capitalism in general, is useful if regulated properly, but the inherent corrosive nature of human greed on any regulatory system will eventually erode those regulations down and let this shit run rampant. There are genuine benefits to it, but they're buried beneath the sheer scale of wealth begetting more wealth at the expense of everyone else.

Part of it is that, to spite it being "gambling", it sure doesn't feel like there's a lot of losing going on with the biggest players. They don't seem to need to be as careful as you or I would need to be. It'd be one thing if it was fair gambling, but it isn't.

Not to be that guy, but I think he makes 300k and was given 193m in stock options last year based on some whack evaluation.

Still an utterly insane number, hope they get crushed on the public market

Hollywood accounting tactics probably aswell

Next is that pesky porn problem that makes up most of the traffic.

If a business was actually losing money for 20 years straight then how does it continue to grow? Think about Amazon and how long it wasn't profitable despite being one of the largest businesses ever in recorded history.

It's a business scam that's a legal way of pay significantly less taxes than they normally would.

Any company that has no profit is worth nothing in an IPO.

I envy people with the bravery to speak passionately about something they don't understand at all.

How much is it worth for the power to push an agenda onto 850,000,000 people?

He's going to take it all.

I feel like the average Reddit user is more likely to be running Adblock than the average Facebook user.

People talk about Reddit and AI in terms of what Reddit will do for those LLMs. But I imagine another part of it has to be what they’ll do for Reddit. Like redditors volunteer sooo much information that it’s really an advertises dream if you can start to thread it together.

Why on earth would they give those sweet pre-IPO shares up to the unwashed masses if they thought there was even a remote chance the IPO would at least break even?

I suspect it's because they're worried that their users are going to short them and encourage others to do the same, so they're trying to get them involved and committed. They don't want WSB causing shit. My guess is that the share prices will do pretty well, at least initially. There are plenty of ignorant investors who want to get in on the next big tech stock. Just a guess though, I don't know enough about this stuff to invest in stocks myself.

Imagine the absolute conflict of interest that is r/WSB

You keep telling the next investor it'll be profitable soon. I believe the guy that came up with this scheme first went to prison or something, but afterwards we all collectively decided we were cool with it.