This is one of the more scathing pieces to come out on Ars about Reddit. As the site did not respond to inquiries, all that was available to report on was profoundly negative statements that Advance is unlikely to enjoy seeing.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    8 months ago

    If there’s one thing that says “hot IPO,” it’s delaying 3 years and then sending invites to 75,000 random members of the general public inviting them to buy at pre-IPO prices.

    I KNOW the stock is gonna take off like a rocket, but I just want cumguzzler1057 to be holding it instead, I have enough money already. He should share in the gain.

    • Zworf@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      They forgot to include the Nigerian prince in the story! Now nobody will believe it.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      It’s going to be a glorious disaster. Didn’t they slash the initial IPO estimate about six months after announcing it and shortly before the whole API thing? I haven’t cared enough to follow it closely, especially since abandoning the platform, but it really seems like the stakeholders wanting to cash in on a sinking ship before it finally goes down.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Guarantee that the line of reasoning here is

      We can stop the inevitable fact that people aren’t going to buy our shares by pushing them on the most chronically addicted users of our platform and disguising it as a premium exclusive offer

      I mean, who else is susceptible enough to the sunken cost fallacy that they would pour actual money into reddit? The answer is the demographic that’s already put in a substantial amount of investment in the form of time spent on content creation.

      To those people, they might very well bite because it means their useless, time consuming hobby finally might become a source of income.

      It’s honestly an intelligent business move by reddit, even if it’s scummy as fuck and ultimately setting up their own best content creators to spectacularly fail and lose a ton of money when the shares tank.

      Reddit still goes public. Reddit still pays their CEOs obscenely before they jump ship. Only the creators lose.