Reddit's cofounder said that at first the company felt like 'a homework assignment that got out of hand' rather than a business
www.businessinsider.com
Reddit's cofounder Steve Huffman said in its early days he filled up most of the site with content using different accounts until it got more users.

Now the social media platform is aiming for an IPO in the first quarter of 2024 with a valuation of $15 billion, and has been in talks with potential investors like Goldman Sachs and and Morgan Stanley, per Bloomberg.

    • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
      801·
      1 year ago

      Nah, they don’t need to do that when they can already influence user decisions by faking a consensus.

      They “fuzz” votes. They give themselves “gold” and promote articles. Then they have the first few comments all say the same opinion in a few different ways, and suddenly people start agreeing for fear of being “in the out-group”. It takes so much effort to flip the tone of the components section once it’s got a vibe.

      If not, delete and restart until it works.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
        292·
        1 year ago

        As a public company, not disclosing that they manufacuter conversation and opinion with fake data and instead saying it’s all natural would be fraud and they would face fines or go to jail if discovered.

        Edit: reddit could turn a blind eye to others doing it, but they cant do it themselves and say otherwise.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          23·
          1 year ago

          As a public company, not disclosing that they manufacuter conversation and opinion with fake data

          You gave it backwards. As a public company, if they can make money doing that but choose not to, they can be sued by the shareholders.

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
            21·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think there’s any problems with doing it, as long as they aren’t claiming otherwise.

            If they lie about it it becomes fraud.

            Edit: And what are they going to do once asked on a public earnings call? Lie?

            Edit: Falsely posting stuff might also open up a can of worms around the site no longer being protected by being user generated content?

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        6·
        1 year ago

        It’s scary how easy it is to just completely control the conversation with a few astroturf comments near yours. Suddenly people reading the astroturf start coming at you with the same talking points because every single individual on reddit is a free thinker.

    • dankestnug420@lemmy.ml
      23·
      1 year ago

      I bet it’ll be like the old days where they use bots to post fake comments to appear more populated.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        20·
        1 year ago

        My conspiracy theory is that this is half the reason they disabled the API. They want it to happen, but don’t want to be on the hook for overtly deceiving investors, so as a workaround with plausible deniability they hobble the ability of users to do anything about third party spam.

    • MimicJar@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Yes, that is literally the plan.

      Reddit executives reasoned that the changes were needed to prevent companies, especially artificial intelligence startups creating large language models, from using Reddit’s data for free. With rumors of an imminent IPO swirling, the company is under pressure to make money – and CEO Huffman has acknowledged as much, stating at the time of the change: “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”

      Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/30/reddit-moderator-protest-communities-social-media?

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      I think they basically blocked their API for third-party apps and push everyone to use their app for this reason.