I want to see updates on the protest on r/ModCoord without affecting Reddit in a positive way.
A lot of people are incorrectly obsessing over Reddit’s revenue
A social media platform IPO valuation is based on a speculative value… A “reasonable prediction of potential value”, and that is driven primarily by traffic and engagement metrics.
So, unfortunately, even a “read only with blocked ads” interaction w/ Reddit would still be helping Bost IPO value.
Spez has been correctly advised that investors are going to be concerned with profitability, or at least a viable pathway to profitability.
There’s a huge startup bubble starting to burst. Companies reliant on cheap money to supplement a business model that at best is years away from profitability but in some cases decades or will never be profitable.
Uber and Doordash IPO’d when money was cheap and investors were fine with speculating on these disruptive, yet unprofitable, companies.
I work broadly in the VC funded start-up world. My observation is that money is running out. All of these companies are trying to commercialize, even if the product isn’t fully ready, because they have to show revenue and there has to be a path to profitability of that revenue. That’s the only way they’ll get more money.
In this context, Reddit is more like these startups. They’ve been funded by investors, including big ones like Condé Nast and Ten Cent, and they need more money, so they have to show a path to profitable revenue.
The IPO is going to be a shit show. I wouldn’t touch it with a 9 foot pole. Reddit has been notoriously unprofitable for its entire existence. Now there’s no more juice to squeeze and their backers want to pawn it off on retail investors.
Is there anyway to check up on the protests without helping Reddit?
It depends on how strictly you want to define “helping Reddit”.
If you have a very strict definition: then you probably shouldn’t access Reddit at all in any way. Ive heard references to some sites that are tracking Reddit protests, but haven’t seen them myself. If they’ve aggregated protest data you could try and find/use them as a source.
Recognizing that although any access to Reddit is helping them, you’re still a drop in the bucket… Simply limiting you time/engagement to a bare minimum still reduces any value you are providing to Reddit. Along with what others are saying: use a VPN, don’t sign in, use an ad blocker. You can minimize your value in that way. But it won’t be zero.
I can understand the interest in watching the drama unfold. It’s like reality tv.
But you should also ask yourself, deep down, why do you care?
Reddit will never go back. It was going downhill long before the 3PA-crisis. Spez will never back down. Even if Spez gets fired it’ll be an Ellen Pao situation all over again. The new CEO will say nice things and then not undo anything Spez did.
At this point the most anyone left on Reddit can do is damage Reddit’s valuation. It’s retribution for destroying the community we all enjoyed.
The mods can do this by impacting what subs can be monetized. Users can do this by decreasing traffic. Even being on the site is traffic.
Your comment is spot on, and it’s what led me to ultimately cutting bait entirely, after 12 years of heavy daily use: it’s never coming back to what I remember it as.
Reddit is certainly not going to die anything – the website itself will likely be around 10 years from now – but it won’t be the reddit I remember or loved. So I moved on. I toyed around with Squabbles for awhile but this feels much more like the reddit experience I’m looking for.
