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Reddit plans to reserve shares for its big users in IPO, WSJ reports
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Something about this is very bizarre to me. On the one hand, offering ownership to heavy users sounds like a great idea, albeit one quite counter to Reddit’s demeanor and behavior towards users over the last couple years. On the other hand, isn’t this kind of like Netflix offering shares to the subscribers who stream the most content? Just because you use a service more than anyone else doesn’t necessarily mean you should be invested in the company. I dunno, I have mixed feelings about this, but I’m generally skeptical that Reddit ever has its users best interests in mind.
Nah, it's like sharing ad revenue with content creators on youtube.
If they mean with big users, users that post and comment a lot and by that keep the community alive and kicking.
More incentive to repost trash, great.
Yeah that makes more sense. Kind of ironic though, they didn’t respect their users enough to continue allowing third party apps, but now that they realize they still need new content to sign over to some unnamed AI company, they’re suddenly willing to compensate their heaviest users by reserving shares.
Is this a way of using the users to implement their own personal pump and dump scheme once they become financially invested? It seems very circular to me. Where is the value that you're purchasing come from?
Not really, because a Netflix subscriber is purely a consumer of content. Someone who posts on Reddit is contributing real value which can be profited from.
A better comparison is the difference between a "Bank" and a "Credit Union". A bank has customers and shareholders. The shareholders profit by selling services to customers. With a Credit Union your customers are your shareholders.
Credit Unions don't sell services... they use the account holders money to pay for services which provided to account holders. They also use the account holder's money to invest and earn profits. Those profits are returned (in full, minus operational costs) to the account holders in the form of interest rates based on the amount of money in each account (banks do that too, but credit unions usually have better interest rates). PS: if you have an account with a bank, you should probably consider closing it and find a good Credit Union... especially in the modern world where transactions are online and you don't have as much need for cash/etc (banks tend to have more branches).
It seems like Reddit is planning to be somewhere in between. With shareholders, and customers, and "customers who are also shareholders". Maybe it's something the we should consider over here in the fediverse... because I certainly don't trust reddit's leadership to do anything good with the content I provided for them (which is why I deleted it...)