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

  • Fingolfinz
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    486 days 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
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      155 days 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
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      96 days 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
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        56 days 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

  • @barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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    5 days 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
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      125 days 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.

  • @MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
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    1787 days 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.

    • 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
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        86 days 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
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      6 days 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

      • @rice@lemmy.org
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        66 days ago

        yep they will, it’ll be grok running 99% of twitter and 95% of reddit in the next 5 years. (and those numbers are probably already near there)

  • @antisocialite@lemmy.today
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    877 days 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.

        • Avid Amoeba
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          7 days ago

          But joke aside, socialism and Marx aren’t bad words around here. ☺️

        • @WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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          56 days 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.

        • @imvii@lemmy.ca
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          237 days 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
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            207 days 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
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              196 days 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
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                96 days 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
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                25 days ago

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

          • @rice@lemmy.org
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            96 days ago

            I got a 15 year old account banned for logging in via tor… they run a tor website for tor access on the tor network lmfao.

      • @lythium@lemm.ee
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        146 days 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?

    • @samus12345@lemm.ee
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      306 days 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
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      96 days 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.

  • @52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org
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    997 days 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.

  • @El_Azulito@lemmy.world
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    205 days ago

    I still have no idea why I got permanently banned. The interestingasfuck subreddit said I had multiple violations across accounts—something vague about participating in the Trump subreddit. Apparently, if you so much as post in that subreddit—whether you’re agreeing with them or talking shit to the MAGAts—then go back to interestingasfuck or any other sub with the same rules, they’ll permaban your account. And not just that one—they’ll ban any new accounts you try to make too. So honestly… I guess I DO know why I was banned, but compared to the vitriol I’ve seen on there, mine was not warranted. I’ve even appealed. Fucking hate Reddit now. Cowards.

    • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      95 days ago

      You were banned because you were obviously a person.

      Have you seen the comments lately? Most of it looks like AI bots are replying to AI, upvoted by other AI bots.

      • @TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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        45 days ago

        You got me really curious so I prompted ChatGPT to give me a redditor style comment that’s anti-Trump followed by another far-left redditor’s reply to it and this is what it gave me:

        Original Comment (Left-Leaning Anti-Trump Perspective):

        “It’s honestly mind-blowing how Trump still has a cult following after everything. The man was impeached twice, incited an insurrection, and openly grifts his supporters with fake fundraising schemes. And yet, somehow, people still think he’s their ‘savior.’ The cognitive dissonance is off the charts.”

        Far-Left Redditor Response:

        “Because the system is fundamentally broken. Liberals act like voting blue is enough when the entire establishment—from corporate Dems to the GOP—is complicit in maintaining capitalism’s stranglehold. Trump is just a symptom of the rot. The real solution isn’t ‘vote harder’; it’s dismantling the system that enabled him in the first place.”

        ^ – this seems to be disturbingly accurate, I can only imagine this being produced at automated scale at this point.

    • @Necroscope0@lemm.ee
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      95 days ago

      Apparently all you have to do to get banned from Reddit these days is to hope Musk’s penis implant explodes and burns him to death from the dick up. Worked for me!

      • @TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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        65 days ago

        Yep, someone in another sub once said “I hope your plant dies” and their whole account was permbanned for “inciting violence”. Against a plant. Hysterical. That site is cooked.

    • @Rin@lemm.ee
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      45 days ago

      Same with offmychest. Banning people like that is also against reddit tos but reddit couldn’t give less of a shit.

    • @turnip@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      Its a really weird place during elections, they’ve basically banned anyone with the opposing view on enough issues that its a full blown echo chamber. People then go crazy during elections trying to get their guy to win and the echo chamber grows exponentially.

    • @Montreal_Metro@lemmy.ca
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      45 days ago

      I don’t care about being banned and I never read replies or check my inbox because it’s the internet and I don’t care.

  • Madrigal
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    1257 days ago

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

    Good luck rebuilding the farm now, buddy.

      • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        66 days 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.

    • Talaraine
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      337 days 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

  • TomMasz
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    867 days 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.

  • @catloaf@lemm.ee
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    547 days 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.

    • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      56 days ago

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

    • The Octonaut
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      86 days 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
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        146 days 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
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          6 days 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.

      • @catloaf@lemm.ee
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        116 days ago

        I’m not sure. If you can log in, probably. You can try a GDPR request, but reddit has refused to delete data under GDPR, saying deleting your name off posts and comments is sufficient.

    • @mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days 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
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        36 days 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.

    • @humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      There are plenty of well-funded organizations willing to pay good money to shift various Overton windows. Especially now that Google is so enshitified that people append “Reddit” to the end of searches.

      • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Yeah I mean there’s that but the reddit demo uses ad blockers frequently and ad-based content on reddit is already probably not that profitable. There’s a lot of people running astroturf campaigns for various things, but how are you seeing revenue out of that? Some schmuck buying the wrong type of portable speaker because of a crappy recommendation won’t add to reddit’s bottom line when it’s the speaker maker’s internal marketing intern. If anything, it’ll just further cause people to lose confidence in them.

        The only path they had toward profitability was feeding all of their user data into AIs for revenue from AI companies, but chatbots are also unprofitable and that revenue probably won’t even cover the costs to run the servers, and besides how many companies are going to be dumb enough to pay for that privilege? We’re talking about folks that already stole every piece of artwork, literature, and news article they could get their grubby little mitts on. Why would they continue to pay reddit?

        Ultimately the biggest conceit of the “attention economy” is the idea that attention automatically translates into dollars.

        (And they’re bleeding attention too.)

  • @MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
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    297 days ago

    Everyone with half a brain knows that enshitification and pandering to CEObro echo chambers result in the platform losing large amounts of users or even dying.

  • Dr. Moose
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    207 days ago

    Honestly reddit is still underrated in terms of social media value but it’s a doomed platform from management pov. Its just so leaderless and spineless rn.

    • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      46 days ago

      they already made thier bank by selling thier shares a while ago, they dont care anymore.