this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Reddit Is Letting Power Users In on Its IPO. Not Everyone’s Buying::Reddit says it wants to reward users by letting them buy into the company’s public listing. Some say it’s too risky—others say they won’t pay a company they’ve already given hours of free labor to.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 149 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They're just trying to get people to tie their real names, addresses, email, and financial information to their profiles, especially the ones with established post histories going back years.

They can figure some of that out, but all rolled up and verified by the account holder?

That makes their data on users waaaaaay more valuable to the people who buy data.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 44 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Now this is one part where I believe them. Public companies have strict controls on their investor relations. I can believe that they are going out of their way to keep their investor info separate from their user info. They will probably get fined by the SEC if they don't.

That doesn't make it a good investment, of course. I don't want to be King Steven's exit liquidity.

[–] YrRhyfelwr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I think they just want memestock-like bag holders, people invested in reddit "as a company/platform" who are unlikely to sell

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

With Spez at the helm I'd be surprised if they didn't wind up getting in trouble either way, guess time will tell.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I actually got an email from Reddit about the offering today. They specifically, in bold, say they don't have access to this information as it is only provided to the plan administrator.

You would still have to be idiotic to join this IPO.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 59 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I got an invite, too. I reported of as spam.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I also got one. I have a little bit of money sitting in a brokerage holding account, and I was already thinking of buying a single share as a joke (so I had the option to heckle them "as an investor in the company"). But I wouldn't do it via their stupid IPO insider process. That requires the buyer to share some PII with reddit. And I don't trust them as far as I could throw them.

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How far could you throw reddit?

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 51 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I'm guessing I know why I didn't get let in on its IPO.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Not enough karma?

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[–] crypticthree@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They sent me an offer. I ain't buying

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 26 points 8 months ago (8 children)

There have been quite a few comments like yours here. Is everyone on Lemmy a former 'power user'. That would be great.

In another thread a former mod said that both they and their bot had been given the offer.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

Someone replied to me in another thread and said that they were giving invites out in stages based on number of mod actions or karma. The first cutoff was "only" 200k karma. The lowest was 20k.

I was thinking of signing up just to see the information but then I read the prospectus and realized it was a losing investment, plain and simple.

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago

I apparently must be as I got one as well.

[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Last I checked my account was in the top 1% of karma.

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[–] db2@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago

I got it via email. Reported it as spam. 🤣

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[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 27 points 8 months ago

They are going to try and fleece users even more by doing an IPO way too high. Its going to get shorted into oblivion and then settle in at about -70% of IPO value.

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] archchan@lemmy.ml 37 points 8 months ago

Some enshittified Lemmy alternative run by a megalomaniac who sucks Elon's dick behind Wendy's dumpsters and milks his userbase (but not in the fun way)

[–] just_change_it@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

This asshole is just exercising his options to take money from the same moderators that were up in arms over his changes last year. Make no mistake, this is Spez's revenge.

I really hope this whole thing backfires on reddit, but I think the reality is that it will further enshittify until it's profitable, and it's already so big it's unlikely to fail.

Lemmy just isn't a replacement and I think the nature of lemmy will stop it from ever being one unless someone throws godlike resources at one giant instance that federates with basically nobody.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 20 points 8 months ago (5 children)

What is holding lemmy back? I use it almost exclusively for months and find it to be a great replacement.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 27 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I think the main thing holding it back is the lack of active niche communities.

[–] Pirky@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

This is the big thing. There are multiple niche, and not-so-niche, subreddits that just don't exist here. Or they have nowhere near the presence as on Reddit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to fix that by contributing where I can, but I am just one person.

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[–] T156@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Lemmy has relatively poor automation and moderation tools compared to Reddit. There is no automatic moderator, for example, and you also don't have usability tools and things that other people have coded, unlike if you were to use Reddit today, or some years ago in its heyday. Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world because the tools at the time meant that anyone can sign up at .world, and post to beehaw, bypassing their registration restrictions.

Federation can also be a bit of a headache to get around if you're a layman. Do you need to go to all of the instances, or risk losing out on content that is hosted on other places? How do you sign up to it, etc. It's a good bit more complicated, and less intuitive compared to a centralised service like Reddit.

The user base also isn't big enough. Lemmy doesn't quite have the critical mass of users to make it into the mainstream, and put it in more direct competition with a place like Reddit. Even busy communities are really quiet compared to a relatively active thread. This community is arguably only as active as it seems to be because of the bot posts.

Finally, Lemmy is still pretty young, and has a fair few teething issues. It wasn't all that long ago that servers that updated to 0.18 couldn't see any posts from older servers, because they didn't Federate properly, and not all that long before that where Lemmy's UI had some serious glitches, such as by seeming to signing you in as someone else's account. People might want something that's a bit more stable, rather than moving over for sure.

It's probably part of why a fair few Subreddits moved to Discord, since it doesn't have a few of those issues, and is relatively mature.

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[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Sounds like you should buy.

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[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Tbh if they'd made an offer like this a couple years ago I probably would've taken them up on it. In fact, I remember when spez first took over he made a thread that floated a similar idea.

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Then they started listening to consultants, and now Im here

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[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 21 points 8 months ago

Here's my Reddit Gold. 🪙 One share please!

[–] SkippingRelax@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We are letting you in to take a slice if this juicy juicy pie only because you are special. Seems sometging out of a dodgy salesman or a conmans playnook to me

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[–] kraftpudding@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago (22 children)

I wonder what's considered a power user. Because I got one, and I wouldn't have considered myself one...

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (5 children)

It's based on Karma or mod actions and the invites are going out in waves. I've taken a screenshot from reddit's faq page regarding the program that shows the tiers.

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[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I got an invite. Couldn't invest even if I wanted to because I'm not a US resident.

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[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago

I did laugh when I was sent an offer for a stock preorder.

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I may actually try to do the thing where you bet against the stock on this one. Smallest amount possible but it could be fun

[–] gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Please make sure you read up on how shorting a stock works! Your losses are theoretically infinite if you short a stock. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100913/basics-short-selling.asp

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But they said they'll only do a small amount, so they'll only risk losing a small infinite amount of money.

[–] gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Options contracts for strategies like this typically cover 100 shares minimum though, so if Reddit's stock goes public at say $10.00 per share and they buy 1 contract, they're going to need $1000 just to buy the contract, and if the share price ends up going up to say $11 instead of going down, that $1000 is gone plus they're down another $100.

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[–] wurosh@lemmy.ml 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just make sure you put in a stop-loss order

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Never heard of it, I'm sure it'll be fine though

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[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You know what I did with the message I got from Reddit about this? BALEETED

[–] flicker@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Mine was DACHEATED.

[–] hamid@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I got the invite but unprofitable companies don't really make up a large part of my portfolio

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[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

If it gave me the right to short then yeah, I'd be in on that.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 18 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It concerns me that you are so eager to short yet think that one needs to buy shares in order to short. You should probably just stay away from financial instruments you don't understand

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[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I got a message from them today and I haven't used reddit since last June or so. They must be desperate.

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[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I got one even though I've not posted in months, let it go when I made an account here. Old account though so maybe whatever algorithm they used didn't look for recency. I don't think I'm interested, it seems to me they have already passed the peak and are on their way down, and going public will surely just accelerate the decline.

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[–] superduperpirate@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Fuuuuuuuuuuck that shit

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