Reddit’s revenue per user is much lower than that of other social networks

It makes sense when you consider how many "throw away" accounts are out there. You couldn't get away with creating those kind of accounts on other platforms.

Not shocked honestly.

A lot of Reddit users are against the idea of being advertised to or having their data sold. In addition to this semi-anonymous and throwaway accounts are common which must lower the worth of any data collected.

I personally have 3 different accounts, One for work, one for politics and a final one for games. I'm more then happy to rotate (throw away and recreate) any of these accounts at any time.

That’s a good thing folks.

Talking about the user being the product, I’d try to choose a platform where my value is minimal since I think it’s fair to assume that there’s less data collection and profiling going on.

I assume that they measure active users, though, which would ignore these throwaways. And Reddit's approach lets users opt in to "higher-value" features anyway - a Reddit user can opt for an experience much like any other social network (and with comparable "value" flowing to Reddit themselves) if they so choose.

The problem for Reddit is that no one sane would choose to do this at the moment, simply because the abysmal performance of the "new" site and app severely impacts usability, which alone makes them uncompetitive! (And no, this is not just a HN user's typical bias talking: try using the app or the new site designs, and you'll see what I mean. They're even more terrible than FB! And this especially bad for engagement with Reddit in countries outside the U.S., where legacy or underpowered hardware is far more common.) This is entirely a self-inflicted problem from the Reddit leadership.

The commercial value would seem to correlate rather well with other values. Sure, there are some subreddits that are well-moderated, and where some genuinely creative stuff happens. But when weighted by the number of users and comments, most of reddit is just the lowest common denominator of entertainment.

In contrast, Twitter can at least claim that it is the place where news increasingly happens. And whatever the reason, I find a politician’s twitter stream far better than any ama (which really are rather terrible, for the most part).

Similarly, many professional communities seem to congregate on Twitter far more than on reddit.

Facebook obviously owns the real-world-relationship angle, which puts them above the others.