Reddit files to go public, karma to vest at $0

Originally published at: Reddit files to go public, karma to vest at $0 | Boing Boing

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The due diligence ought to be fun.

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Countdown the reddit’s nsfw apocalypse.

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I do think that there are still interesting subs in the site but i don’t think it’d be worth dumping money into it

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Not just the nsfw apocalypse but also the death knell for anti-corporate movements like r/antiwork and r/wallstreetbets.

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yea. maybe. I think it would be much harder to remove those groups than just a straight up ban on porn.

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On a complete tangent, what is karma used for on that site other than bragging rights?

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Just bragging rights, though i do know that in some subs you can’t comment unless you have a certain amount of karma. Which devolves into people going to places where they just farm karma (yes, that’s a thing)

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Ah. I see.

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Conde Nast Publications acquired Reddit in 2006.

Fun Fact - Conde Nast also owns the rights to The Shadow.

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I’ve not personally verified it, but supposedly you can sell a high karma account with a legitimate comment history to a spammer who will use your account history to appear legitimate while shilling for stuff. I don’t imagine you could get a lot for it though since the spammer could just automate bots to build karma over time with generally agreeable comments.

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I’m sure we’ll lose something good like r/antiwork, but hopefully this will push Reddit to ban more of the covid denial subs. R/conspiracy is where all the crazy Trump supporters and NoNewNormal nutjobs went when their subs were banned.

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I doubt that. What would public ownership do to those sorts of discussions that advertising revenue hadn’t already? If a company didn’t want to be advertising on a site that carried those subreddits, they already wouldn’t have been.

I don’t even think the nsfw world is necessarily affected here - it is far more likely to be affected once reddit starts going after larger institutional advertisers, something that seems likely to happen given their revenue trajectory regardless of whether or not they IPO.

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Conde Nast has owned a lot of notable sites over the years, and some have flourished and others gone away entirely. They own Ars Technica, which has remained pretty high quality. But then, I mourn for some of the good ones that went away. Anyone remember Swoon.com?

I guess I might not remember Swoon either, except for the fact I met my spouse in their personals section (the “Swoon-o-matic”) back in the late 90s.

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The more time I spend there, the more bot activity I see. Like on a subreddit dedicated to an obscure hobby where popular posts usually see a few dozen upvotes, a user who isn’t a regular there posts a relevant link (at least as far as keywords are concerned) and gets several hundred upvotes. I assume it’s all automated to slowly generate high-karma accounts with long histories.

I also see shill-accounts that post low-effort, off-topic garbage exclusively to subreddits that are no longer actively moderated but still have subscribers. At least it reminds me unsub.

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On balance, my feelings toward reddit aren’t positive enough for me to see this as a tragedy.

But if “reddit” were the same thing as “the better parts of reddit on a good day” then I guess I’d be bummed.

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Reddit says it has “confidentially” filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of the process to list publicly.

The company, which boasts an online community of 52 million daily users (up 44 per cent year-on-year from its previous published stats), did not announce number of shares to be offered or price range.

[…]

The hunt to find the right personnel to make the step was on in September, according to Reuters. And it looks like one of the people Reddit found to lead the IPO as head of Investor Relations is former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) vice president Michael Guido.

Up until last month, Guido was the primary analyst and investor contact for the company responsible for such famous physical theatre performers as John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and, of course, the OG – Hulk Hogan. The WWE is known for using its own terminology and lingo, as well as having a niche, almost cult-like, group of users that often display their enthusiasm intensely.

[…]

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