"Investors are fed up. Fidelity, which led Reddit’s $700 million funding round in 2021 with a $10 billion valuation, has cut its Reddit company valuation by 41% since it invested. This could scupper Reddit’s plans to eventually go public with a reported valuation of $15 billion."
That Fidelity valuation change happened back in May 2022, so it's unrelated to the API clusterfuck beyond perhaps being a factor in motivating spez to be more of a greedy pig boy.
Either way, I'm not crazy about this Forbes article being so misleading about that point and I'm glad you seem to have gotten some people set straight. Never fun to see people arguing for a side I agree with while using incorrect information.
The reddit CEO presuming victory is EXACTLY what will help people hold the line. "Oh it's over huh? You were double-faced, caught in the act, totally unreasonable and now you win? Hmmm"
I absolutely hope subs stay dark indefinitely following this response. Make it absolutely hurt. Make it a pain to build the site back to what it was on June 11th.
Or have a second coordinated blackout on July 1st, with all the mods asking their users to migrate to the fediverse. If literally thousands of subreddits close and ask their users to migrate, it could kick off a significantly larger wave than the current one.
There isn't even a fraction of enough capacity in the fediverse to absorb 450 million daily active users overnight unfortunately. Kbin struggled yesterday growing to ~125,000 users.
And now the game is being played on the field that u/spez actually cares about--the field full of cash machines.
He clearly doesn't give a fuck about users or mods, but here's a bit of proof that there is a relationship between we the little people, and he the raging greed-machine.
Listen up spez, and listen up all you other greedy fucks lining your pockets around the world, power concentration throughout history has often led to breaking points, and that doesn't always end so well for those who own yachts.
No matter how you may pronounce guillotine, the blade remains razor sharp.
After reading the article the API fees make a lot more sense. AIs are using Reddit comments to train and massive companies are getting it for free. The data the community has generated is insanely valuable for training models, and big guys liked Microsoft and Google are getting it for free.
Best case scenario is Reddit makes a "developer" tier with lower cost API access.
Forbes (echoing spez) argues that the role of Reddit's data in training LLMs is what's driving the API cost increase. But the fact that nobody is mentioning web scraping -- i.e. the way LLM training data is taken from the rest of the web, and the way that LLM training data will be taken from Reddit in the absence of API access -- the fact that no one is mentioning that LLMs will continue collecting and training on Reddit data for free through scraping, tells me that this was only ever a fig leaf and an excuse to kill 3rd party apps.
I'm really glad someone finally said it! It's to force everyone into their ad revenue machine. Web Scraping will still show up as impressions for ads and the API pricing snafu will force everyone to Reddit's native app with... gues what? ads.
Not to mention that scraping web data has been happening for the entire existence of reddit, or the LLMs doing the same didn't just start in 2022 or 2023. It became a mainstream story in the last few months, however, and thus is a sufficiently techy cover story to sell the financial bros!
Plus it is always an option to offer different prices for different users. They could charge 10x as much for AI usage if they wanted to. That's perfectly legal.
The app owners will work with him to prevent AI training from taking data from the site for free. And any issues the third party apps have doing that will be shared by the official app. They're not special in that regard. You can't really have public secrets behind a paywall. It doesn't really work.
There are many, many options here that are only being held back by Huffman's ego. Imagine losing billions in valuation because of personal ego. I bet investors are thrilled.
Getting info out of an API is generally easier, because it will always give you data in a format that's easy to parse.
But all this will probably see more web crawling bots crop up
It's not just his ego but also his incompetence which has been very apparent for his entire tenure. I really don't get how they've be never managed to find someone who's up to the job.
Very much so! Personally I'm taking on my own Reddit Blackout in solidarity with mods and frankly, I'm hoping Kbin/Lemmy win out in this whole thing. People make and moderate the content that Reddit lives by. I lived through /. (slashdot) and Digg exoduses and it seems that we've finally hit the inflection point with Reddit. I'd rather stay off Reddit and give my contributions to someplace that actually cares and isn't beholden to a corporate behemoth and that will grow with it's users, not abuse them.
For anyone not in the know, shorting and/or buying puts is not a good idea in an IPO even if you think the IPO is doomed. The real reason most IPOs happen these days is so insiders and shareholders can dump their bags on the unwitting public. Volatility crush will likely wreck any options bought at IPO. The days of buying a company at their public offering price because you believe the company is a good one are long gone, so really the only people that are in a position to profit from having an IPO are previous shareholders and market makers who profit from options spreads and front-running retail.
Just as a general warning to anyone who sees shorting reddit as any kind of protest move, you will get fucked.
Note that this cut in valuation has nothing to do with the blackout. It's actually old news. Forbes did mention it in their most recent article, but the majority of the drop in valuation was last year.
Fidelity, the lead investor in Reddit’s most recent funding round in 2021, has slashed the estimated worth of its equity stake in the popular social media platform by 41% since the investment.
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund’s stake in Reddit was valued at $16.6 million as of April 28, according to the fund’s monthly disclosure released over the weekend. That’s down 41.1% cumulatively since August 2021 when the asset manager spent $28.2 million to acquire the Reddit shares, according to disclosures the firm has made in its annual and semi-annual reports. […]
The substantial markdown of Reddit’s value by Fidelity predominantly occurred by the previous year. Nevertheless, it merits pointing out that Fidelity has persistently implemented minor reductions in the worth of Reddit’s shares in the ensuing months.
I think the whole article is actually more charitable to Reddit and Steve Huffman than it ought to be.
The author mentions that the API changes were "announced in April" and go into effect July 1, but failed to mention that the April announcement didn't include pricing info. That is a very important detail for Forbes to include considering it's central motivator for the entire protest!
The other miss is not at least questioning if Huffman's claim that LLM/AI data scraping was a big motivator for the API changes. I can't say that is false without evidence, but it doesn't hold up to my own scrutiny, and it should certainly be challenge and interrogated from a journalism perspective. However, I will give them a pass on this one since it's not financial and that is this publication's focus and expertise.
I think most of the mainstream articles about this have been more charitable to Reddit and Steve Huffman than they ought to be. Someone coming in cold with no sense of the context here could easily walk away with the idea that Reddit is behaving reasonably (e.g., why shouldn't they charge for API usage? they're a company trying to make money!) and users and mods are completely out of control. These articles rarely address the concerning accessibility issues being created by the API changes. They rarely address the price to be charged is vastly larger than the price that it costs to provide API access/recoup losses from inability to advertise to 3P users. They don't address the fact that the changes were announced with barely any lead time to allow 3P apps to make necessary changes on their end to avoid insane fees. They also don't address the fact that Steve Huffman pointedly lied about Christian Selig threatening to blackmail Reddit, that he doubled down on this in his AMA, and that if you sift through his c&p statements, he doesn't actually answer questions or provide any kind of information or reassurance. It's annoying. But hey! At least there's significant coverage of this, I guess. (And at least Huffman is still making idiotic statements, thereby throwing fuel onto the fire.)
The article the quote was pulled from is about the blackout. The bit in it about Fidelity dropping their valuation 41% cites news from April, well before any of this drama really started.
I’m not surprised that Fidelity is losing faith in Reddit. The way Steve completely alienated the whole community, well he's basically shooting himself in the foot.
I've personally watched a CEO torpedo his own company's IPO before, so don't think it's in any way impossible.
This was a couple decades ago during the dot-com boom. The CEO made some really boneheaded mistakes, like letting some of his salespeople sell shares before the offering. There were other problems, including anti-customer behavior and sketchy terminations.
The underwriters looked at the facts and said 'nope', and that was during the dot-com boom. That company no longer exists as its own entity. I can't imagine that investors and underwriters today aren't a LOT more careful.
Frankly, I wonder how Spez is still employed at Reddit. If I were on the board and saw 8000+ subs go dark, I'd be asking for his letter, golden parachute or no.
Also he admitted they don't make money and said they need to be profit driven til they do.
To me that says he's not sure this will actually make Reddit profitable; so looking at it from a detached, "I just care about the money" perspective I'd be really nervous about investing in Reddit. Feels like Spez would just light it all on fire.
Wait until he starts retroactively editing posts and/or deleting and shadowbanning against mutinous mods. I really hope the blackout keeps rolling a week or two and they see their ad rev and user impressions tank.
Spez already said they aren't changing their minds. And by the time the realize they might want to, it's going to be too late.
I posted about kbin.social in a comment thread from RIF and saw my comment posted, but when I checked under my profile the next day, the comment was gone. Not deleted by mods or reddit....just gone, like it never existed.
This was shortly after reddit banned the kbin subreddit for "spamming".
First time something like that has ever happened in the 10+ years I've been on there. Pretty much cemented my decision to stay away unless major changes happen.
I dunno about you, but I rather like it here - it's a bit more old school on KBin and reminds me of my youth. Maybe this will be the renaissance of the BBS and forum, but now federated across the internet in beautiful FOSS and distributed networks.
Exactly it's very much reminds me of old school forums sites but with interconnectivity. I am very much loving Kbin and it's made me much more social then I was on Reddit.
I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I'm liking Kbin and the fediverse idea. I thought I'd hate it. It's not... bad. And there is a lot of promise. I think it helps a TON that there are a bunch of us here all at once. It needed a moment like this to take off.
I'm really enjoying Kbin as well. Ironically the people left on reddit are saying they're enjoying reddit more too with the blackout, as they're seeing smaller subreddits they used to not see, and the large subs filled with spam and reposts are mostly dark.
I think the lesson here is that reddit got too big for quality, which is ultimately what the admins want. Quantity over quality, more users to sell advertising too, and more users to sell their analytics.
I like the smaller conversation lately. I realized I became more of a lurker the last few years because the conversation either got too unwieldy. If I try to make a comment, it just got lost in the sea. Or the threads were filled with same old tired jokes or messaging. I like the older style forum because I felt anyone can participate in a discussion.
Hard to believe people are liking it more. I noticed that before the maintenance yesterday morning, there seemed to be a decent amount of mourning, frustration and annoyance. After the maintenance, everyone seemed cheery, happy and tend to ignore the situation. Also comments seemed to have surged after the maintenance, every post on /r/all had in the thousands of comments when normally you'd see 1k+ comments once or twice every 10 posts.
I just grabbed 2 random dates. You can see there's like 4 at most threads with over 1k comments. Crazy how every page today and yesterday on r/all has several 5k+ comments and only 3 posts total below 1k in the first 25 posts. Some of those subreddits aren't particularly interesting enough to form a discussion yet it's got a few thousand comments.
I'm personally sensing larger AI bot activity. Like some sort of counter measure to make reddit continue to look like it's being used more than it is?
I was there for the migration from kbin to reddit and I'm here for the migration from reddit to kbin. There's no need to prove anything to spez. Reddit is already in the past.
Exactly. The 48 hour black out won't change a thing. The only way anything could change is if the black out is indefinite. Personally, I feel like wiping my account and moving on is the best course of action.
Yeah, Reddit was fun but it's time to move on. The one thing that Reddit and Twitter have proven is that the entire community could just disappear at any time if the management thinks they could improve their margin, and 97% of both of them were just tired in-jokes anyway.
I'm planning to begin to wipe my old account once the blackout ends, starting phase two of our protest, the dismantling of Reddit. They should not be allowed to profit from our content in perpetuity. I will delete what I've contributed.
Yup, same here. Planning on popping in tomorrow to see where things stand. After that I plan on finding new places for more of the niche/hobby subs I follow. Then it's time to wipe it clean.
Reddit relies on moderators to mod the subs free of charge. Mods use API powered bots to help make life easier.
If mods are dumb enough to open up after two days and continue moderating subs, they're going to learn real hard on July 1st how much more difficult it is to manage a sub without all those automod bots.
We'll see what happens next month when the brown stuff hits the fan.
yeah, if they can keep the protest up they will win. They may already have. As soon as users take the trouble to create new accounts on things like Kbin, the less likely they'll retreat back to reddit. Honestly for being in its infancy I think this has been a good platform.
Yeah, even if they reverse course and offer a public apology I'll probably end up primarily staying here. Yeah it's a smaller community, but sometimes that's for the best.
A lot of us have just been waiting for the next big thing to come along, the quality there just gets worse and worse, the large amount of users seems to be only thing reddit has going for it. I'd be thrilled if the Fediverse took off, I'd never go back to the other site again.
This is where I am with it. The API thing is bad, but I'm not necessarily up in arms about that on its own. I've been increasingly dissatisfied with Reddit for a while now and looking for somewhere else to go. The stars just happened to align to nudge me over the line, and now that I'm out I'm not going back.
I'm looking forward to the next thing, and I hope a decentralized thing like this is what takes hold. I'm also hoping the artificial hive-mind thing a la bots and such can be staved off.
I've been frustrated by the quality on Reddit for awhile. Every sub degrades as time goes on. Users just upvote anything they like regardless of whether it fits the purpose of the sub. Bots run rampant in even the smallest of subs.
personally never created account on reddit because the default user interface was so bad BUT giving kbin a try because comments are encouraged. A desperately missing feature on mastodon.
Reddit just today made my decision super easy. I reported an off topic post in /r/politics, the mods agreed with that and removed the post for being off topic, and then a few hours later my account was permanently banned by the admins for "Report Abuse"
So that's nice. 14 year old account just permanently banned for... trying to help the quality of the content on the site. I see no reason to ever go back now.
That happens CONSTANTLY. I'll report a post that's racist, transphobic, homophobic, etc. and either it's in a rightwing sub and the rightwing moderator reports it as "report abuse" so you get a ban for reporting it and get told to read the Reddit Code of Conduct which specifically states that type of content isn't allowed.
Or get told that the reported post "doesn't violate the rules" when the content has been removed because it does violate the rules.
Anything at the admin level is 100% automated. There is no way any human is actually reading what comes through at the admin level, they rely 100% on the moderators to be accurate, and do not care if the moderators are breaking the rules.
The only site worse than reddit in terms of moderation is YouTube.
I never understood why I was getting replies from various reports despite the fact I made sure I reported it for breaking a subreddit rule, not a sitewide rule (which I did specifically in hopes of avoiding this problem).
Relay for Reddit for me, it had an interface that just made sense to me. A bit sad to see reddit go because I never spent a ridiculous amount of time on it, more just 10m waiting for a bus here and there. Guess that's being replaced by kbin and hacker news.
RIF for me on Android. Reddit killed the mobile site (you can't open any NSFW posts there at all nowadays and it constantly buggers you to switch to the app). The official Reddit app is dogshit and you get all the ads on top.
So at least on mobile there's zero chance I'll keep using Reddit without RIF.
On the desktop I only use old.reddit.com and even that with RES. But I nuked my 11 year old account (overwrote all my comments and posts) and I don't really want to go back. The only subs I'm missing on here are things like /r/nvidia and /r/amd for tech news so far.
I really need to stress that it’s so important that the subs on Reddit remain private until action is taken, I’m still not sure why the 2 day blackout was chosen in favour of an all out black out.
From what I understand, in the past when subs have gone dark indefinitely in the past Reddit retaliated by simply handing over moderating privileges to others. By stating off the bat that this is temporary they hoped to prevent that.
Reddit has essentially already threatened that. They've told moderators that going dark has to be a unanimous decision and not the decision of the head mod, and that if they disagree they can take control of the sub by messaging the admins.
I think if they started out with indefinite, there would have been a lot fewer subs participating and that would have reduced the impact of the blackout. By starting with 2 days, they made it easy for many subs to make the choice to blackout. And as we're seeing, they always can upgrade to indefinite when the 2 day blackout doesn't work.
They probably weren't sure at the start of how much support they'd get so they decided to have a set date just so people could unite easier and would be more likely to take action. I'm sure they'd have suggested a longer period if they knew they'd get this much support. They probably also hoped Spez would've backed off by now.
The blackout may pass but the third-party developers and power users of the community have already been shown they're not valued. Not sure there's much Reddit can do to make those who left come back. Even if they give developers more time and a price reduction what's to say they won't go back on their word.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” -George W. Bush
I don't even feel affected by the app changes. But I'm not comfortable in general staying there, seeing what they are doing and will keep doing to their people.
My take: It doesn't matter that most currently private subs will go back to being public, and that posting on those subs will return mostly to normal.
What does matter is that several thousand of us were inspired to look at something different and are intrigued enough to keep plugging along, helping to further the case of decentralization and demonstrate, in a small way, what a better future can look like.
I'm likely going to return to Reddit, but I'll do it with an eye on making something better for the subs I'm active in.
Exactly! The damage has been done, there is no reversal. Reddit has put it in no uncertain terms that they are not to be trusted, and that continuing to invest in their "community" is for fools.
Honestly, I'm glad. Regardless of management, Reddit has gotten too big.
Let's be honest: it's not a couple thousands people that will change anything. For sure, it will strengthen the alternatives, but people using 3rd party apps already don't watch ads and probably don't pay premium. At the end, most users will remain, on the official app, and Reddit will be back to normal.
This may be different on the long game if the alternatives get enough contribution and adoption and become real things. Just look at Kbin' repo, a lot of PR came since two days ago, a lot of new adoption, and if this momentum can be kept and transformed, it will be a win for decentralised alternatives, even if it's not a noticeable loss for Reddit.
Good job Steve Huffman, well done. I was contemplating opening up r/Moustache if Reddit reverses their decision regarding the API pricing and killing off 3rd party apps. But after reading this, do you think this is a joke Steve? Go f**k yourself, r/Moustache and my other 3 subs will be permanently shut down forever.✌🏼
Lol!! Can’t tell if it’s sarcasm but if it is it was a good one🤣🤣. Moustaches are quite a niche topic I agree. I opened a magazine for Moustache’s here just incase an issue like this happened with Reddit. It’s empty right now but anyone is free to post!! Moustache Magazine on Kbin
I guess this is the new Reddit! Time to kick our feet up.
I expected as much. 2 days is a pitiful protest length. I will not be using Reddit any longer whilst keeping an eye on updates from here and other news sites. I'm hoping this memo encourages all subreddits to protest idnefinitely until this assclown of a CEO is willing to negotiate lower API prices. And if he's not, onto greener pastures. And watching /r/wallstreetbets figure out a way to destroy their IPO when it eventually launches.
Is this not like...almost exactly beat for beat what happened to Digg? Does the CEO of Reddit, of all places, truly not understand how powerful of a motivator spite is??? I am baffled.
Many of us who moderated subreddits tried our best to help Reddit avoid this. The admins went and permabanned us for not towing the corporate line where money is more important than community. Reddit hasn't announced yet that they are taking away old Reddit to force their users to their new design. Getting rid of third party apps was just step one.
Well, to be fair, Digg's hayday wasn't very long, and many people were used to migrating from place to place. EZBoards, SomethingAwful, Newgrounds, etc. Reddit was the first time where all of our interests were in one place, and we just kind of stayed. Many of us were there for like 15 years.
It feels weird and wrong not having Reddit. Gotta get over it, though.
Yeah, Louis Rossman quite thoroughly made the point that a 2-3 day protest would not be effective, and he made excellent, logical points.
If we want to pressure spez/Huffman effectively, this needs to go on much longer. A month, 3 months, a year... indefinitely unless meaningful change is forthcoming.
It's been painful to completely stay off Reddit, but it needs to be done, and the pressure needs to be maintained, either with the hopes of improvement, or by making a visible, public statement (again, since the lesson of Digg v4 didn't last) that sites that require user generated content and free moderator labor to function actually need to pay attention to the needs and wants of it's userbase.
Luckily that will get easier with time. Today kbin is already loading better than it did yesterday. And things are looking positive for the reddit alternatives for atleast the near future. As more people come and the fediverse grows things will expand to fill the same niches that filled before.
I fully support an indefinite blackout, and I personally won't be going back until atleast they give in. Though if it takes long enough and I get comfortable enough with using the fediverse I may never go back even if they do.
I agree i'm in no hurry to use Reddit. I'll be satisfied if enough people stick around and keep the place interesting. In fact i would say sticking around the fediverse is the only answer to dystopic corporate domination. Those who return, enjoy your exploitation, lol.
That's what's killing me. Problem solving without reddit is very difficult. If you want a solution to a problem, or a recommendation, or anything involving crowdsourcing, reddit is the knowledge base.
That whole "internal memo" reeks of PR, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was designed to get "leaked", in the first place. There's a line to garner sympathy for Reddit, and a paragraph to gaslight the public into thinking there's progress being made; because employees, and a good number of the Reddit community, are well aware of what progress is being made, which is not much.
I think a lot of moderators are going to fold come 14th June and return to Reddit. And the rare few that don't are quickly going to be replaced by Spez.
Actually baffled by the lack of unity surrounding the blackout. I mean /r/Worldnews and /r/news have continued being business-as-usual without even addressing the blackout.
/r/news specifically had it's moderation staff wiped and replaced with admin-appointed moderators awhile back, so no one ever had any assumptions of them supporting the blackout.
I feel like the most political subreddits stayed open, and the ones that were sick of that shut down. I've only seen one political post on here so far and half the time I'm scrolling through ALL. Been very nice not to have everything revolve or devolve into American politics. Especially as a non American, the longer you get those politics shoved down your throat, the more you realize they don't affect you in your own country, even Canada where I am, and it's next door.
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