Summary

Reddit shares have dropped 50% from their February peak, when the stock had soared over 500% from its $34 IPO price last March.

Much of the early enthusiasm came from AI-related deals allowing Reddit’s content to be used for training models, but recent doubts about long-term growth in the AI sector have dimmed that optimism.

Analysts remain skeptical and some call the stock “super overvalued,” noting Reddit still is not making any money.

Market uncertainty and early investor sell-offs continue to weigh on Reddit and the broader tech sector.

Non-paywall link

  • MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    159
    ·
    1 month ago

    Lets take a platform driven by community participation and ostracize community users. Yeah that’ll work out well.

    Reddit getting Digged and me likey.

    • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      36
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      That is a deep cut reference. They are relaunching as an AI play.

      That will bring back the people who were providing the free content.

      (/s on the last part)

      • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 month ago

        Seriously. I remember Digg. My life’s social media path has been slashdot->digg->reddit->lemmy.

        I was there! I saw it all! <shakes cane>

    • arrow74@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Yep the train from being offered early access to their IPO as a “power user” to a permanent account ban did not take long.

      So here I am

  • Madrigal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    112
    ·
    1 month ago

    Aww, did Spez trade the family cow for some “magic” beans?

    Good luck rebuilding the farm now, buddy.

    • Talaraine@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      1 month ago

      My parting message to Spez when I changed all my posts was, “Enjoy the IPO asshat!” While I wish I could update that message, it’ll still do. xD

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 month ago

        hi i am the human male, called spez, i was birthed from a alien space ship , and hatched from an egg and sent to earth to manipulate the populace.

  • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    92
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    I remember the early days of Reddit when it really felt like a community project. Back then, they had the goodwill necessary that Redditors would have personally financed a chunk of the costs of running particular Subreddits. Not anymore. That goodwill is gone.

  • antisocialite@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    82
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    The censorship going on there is crazy. I understand a site needs to tamp down on violent rhetoric but they crossed the line into absurdity. They banned me for calling out the racism in the GOP platform.

        • imvii@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          ·
          1 month ago

          Same. 11 year old account got banned for saying something. I’m not even entirely sure what it was. They deleted it and gave me the finger.

          Fine with me.

          • carrion0409@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            19
            ·
            1 month ago

            I had my account since the pandemic and I got one 3 day ban for “inciting violence” a few weeks ago and they didnt tell me what I actually did. It was lifted so I moved on and kept following the rules. Then a day after the article about spez caving to musk came out I was given a perma site wide ban for “inciting violence” with no working link to what I actually did. The admins wouldn’t tell me either. I assume it’s because of my activity in left leaning subs and my comments calling Musk a shithead and saying his toy cars are garbage.

            • antisocialite@lemmy.today
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              19
              ·
              1 month ago

              They’ll sweep ban entire comment sections of a submission they don’t approve of and they’re using AI to do it, so there are lots of false positives and dubious reasoning. They’ll send you a message lecturing you on your behavior but delete your comment so you’re left with only a vague idea of what they’re referring to.

              • carrion0409@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                1 month ago

                And they wonder why their stock is tanking. The only outcome I see for reddit in it’s current state is being bought out by Google and turned into a telemetry farm.

              • futatorius@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 month ago

                Before they used shitty AI, they just hired autistic mods who would exaggerate anything into a bannable offense of some kind.

        • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          I want to see the comedy-of-errors timeline where Luigi beats the rap based on a technicality or jury nullification…He finally gets out of jail…Then he immediately does it again.

      • lythium@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 month ago

        Thanks! I came from Reddit too. Looking for a safer place to stay in touch with the community. Are we allowed to say the name of Mario’s brother here?

        • exixx@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          17
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          You can not only say Luigi, but you can also say that you wished it had started a trend.

          • Monstrosity@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 month ago

            Just keep in mind, “it’s called the Fediverse because it’s crawling with Feds.”

            Don’t get stupid.

        • cynar@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 month ago

          The basic rule is that you can say what you want (and people can call you what they want for it!).

          It would be polite to self moderate to an extent. No point getting the instance owners in to legal hot water. That’s a massively higher bar than Reddit has set however. Chatting about and admiring Luigi is completely fine.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      1 month ago

      I have to admit I never thought they would punish users for simply upvoting content that went against their corporate overlords’ interests. True thought policing.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 month ago

      they are tamping down on the wrong kind of content, anything that disagree with israel, luigis incarceration, or elon and trump is an auto ban.

  • TomMasz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    ·
    1 month ago

    Spez fundamentally misunderstands what Reddit is and who it belongs to: the people making the posts and providing the content. The more he alienates the users, the less value Reddit will have. He’s shot himself in the foot and he’s getting ready to fire again.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    58
    ·
    1 month ago

    It’s not just the AI bubble, it’s a distinct lack of faith in Huffman and as a CEO. He’s not forward-thinking enough, he hasn’t understood where the company’s value lies, and he’s ridiculously distracted by the latest shiny tech things (reddit NFT avatars, reddit crypto, reddit AI).

    I fully expect Google to buy reddit at some point, exclusively harvesting all the info for their search engine, all the content for their AI models, and all the submission/view/voting data for their user profiles (what are you interested in, what do you think of these concepts, where are you connecting from, here are more ads we can send you, and these are arguments that might sway you in purchasing or other decisions).

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 month ago

      If Google weren’t under antitrust pressure, I think that would have already happened.

      In many ways, a Google owner would probably make Reddit better for a while. Google cares a lot more about the data people are generating than making the site itself profitable. They could afford to run it at a loss for years, whereas Reddit investors want to ensure they make money soon.

      But, I’m glad it might not happen. Then again, who knows what will happen to Google and antitrust in the Trump admin, where bribery is now perfectly legal.

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 month ago

    If you deleted your content, reminder to go back and check it again. Despite running a deletion from my GDPR export data, yesterday I noticed a bunch of comments suddenly showing up on my account that weren’t there before so I i had to rerun the deletion.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Should also go back and check to see if you were unbanned. I was banned during the API purge, for mass editing+deleting my comments. First automod banned me from various pro-Spez subs when I started editing my old comments. Then when I repeated the edit+delete with my second/third/etc accounts, it “permanently” banned them site wide for ban evasion.

      Went back a little while later, and all of my accounts were magically unbanned and all of the edits+deletes were undone. The benign explanation is likely that the ban(s) prevented any of the edits from actually committing. But the more tinfoil-hat explanation is that the admins want the site to look more active, so they rolled back bans so old content was still available and their user count appeared higher than reality.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 month ago

        it does explain why you could comment in subs you were banned years ago. i heard at least from the modhelp sub that permabans were supposodely to be 1-year before it gets unbanned, obvious repeat offendors get a lifetime ban(the spammers excessive account bottings). but thing is some subs dont update thier filters so they can ban you again, and trigger a sitewide ban.

    • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 month ago

      There’s a non-malicious reason for this - if you used a script based on interacting with the website, when subreddits went hidden, it actually hidden your own comments from you. So they aren’t visible to automated scripts and then when subreddits go visible again, suddenly it looks like comments “came back”.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 month ago

        And this is compliant with GDPR?

        “Your stuff was hidden when you made the delete request. But then later we made it un-hidden so oh well 🤷”

        • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          No, because what he’s describing is a self-run comment editing and deleting script.

          GDPR account deletion works very differently.

          Note I’m not defending Reddit here, as much as anything it’s advice for anyone (like me) who has to go back and re-run the script every few months because of those brave people whose form of protest is very temporarily inconveniencing themselves.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 month ago

      i noticed when i deleted my primary comments, it was ommiting other posts, like controversial.

    • muusemuuse@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 month ago

      Is there a way I as an american can delete all my posts from my banned accounts?

  • Fingolfinz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    1 month ago

    Spez can suck a taint. I was on there forever and immediately bounced once that bullshit banning stuff started happening. Should have left sooner but that was the final straw

    • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 month ago

      Who could have foreseen that banning all the highly active, long-term accounts in the same month would have a negative effect? Now they can live with all their bots, puns, Russian Karma Farmers, novelty accounts, and trolls.

    • ceph@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yeah, same here. It took a few things over time to ultimately get me to leave, but my finding out many of my comments were being shadow-removed was it.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 month ago

        I commented on a niche sub a few days ago, and it got shadow removed by the mod, don’t even show up as a violation on the inbox, then it triggered a “suspicious activity on account ban, until I change password”, also because I used a Firefox fork instead of the chromium browser

  • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    1 month ago

    lol. It’s only going to get worse. The site used to be the top place to look something up, now it’s just going to be full of deleted answers and disappointment.

    • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 month ago

      Its already increasing hard to find relevant posts when doing a Google search with reddit in search. Most posts are from 2 years ago with low upvotes for niche topics.

      This does make me happy

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        It makes me sad. Such a great resource, gone, with no replacement.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        For some medical inquire it’s still useful. But if your looking for politics or news, not a good idea, or subs where there’s para social fans of a specific show or actor.

        • futatorius@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          For some medical inquire it’s still useful.

          Anyone who would make a medical inquiry on Reddit, then believe what they’re told, deserves whatever dire consequence happens to them as a result.

  • ShittDickk@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    ·
    1 month ago

    Maybe if they didn’t ban their (majority) liberal users for having “opinions” on the current government, after nonstop rhetoric from conservatives.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      banning people for also calling out right wingers and trolls, worst is banning people for misconstrued statements, and also reporting people,g ets you banned.

      like one time '18 a person asked why people were calling MICHELLE obama a certain way, i said the conservatives called her a gorilla, with gorilla arms, insta-banned.

      they allowed astroturfing on reddit, which makes worst because they are tryint to “look fair” but refuse to do anything about the right wingers control certain subs.

      actual POLICE(former and active) individuals control the legal and videos related subs.

  • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    After the Inauguration, they had a bloodbath in February, permabanning many long-term, high karma accounts like mine (12yrs, 900K+).

    These were the members who built Reddit into what it was, and after over a decade of high volume posting without getting banned, suddenly all of us made comments that earned permanent bans in the same month. Yeah, that’s plausible.

    Now that they’ve ejected many if the members that made Reddit a lively place to debate, they’re stuck with novelty accounts, puns, bots, Russian Karma Farmers, shitposters, trolls, and general bullshit. I just went over to read some subs I love, and literally the first post I read was complaining about how long they had to scroll to get past the stupid puns to get to the real discussion.

    Its been getting increasingly bad for a long time, but apparently it’s gotten far worse lately, now that they decided to get rid of the red meat and go vegan.

    I like Lemmy, but they don’t have anything close to the active guitar forums that Reddit had.

    • El_Azulito@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 month ago

      Can confirm—I was a member since 2010. Got banned for logically going after MAGATs. Apparently, that’s not allowed anymore. What’s happening to this country—that people don’t even seem to have the cognitive capacity or basic mental equipment to recognize the freedoms being stripped from them in real time—is beyond disillusioning. It’s disappointing, devastating, and honestly hard to watch. And seeing younger generations, raised on flashing lights and internet brainrot, now stepping into adulthood? Oof.