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Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

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Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#51

Post by HappySweeney »

reactordev wrote: post #28
madeofpalk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this possible? A website cannot just magically cross-domain get your Google account details...

By using the really, really, really badly designed listener auth flow... which just allows javascript to grab your google creds. https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/web/listeners

Doesn't this "bad" design allow Reddit to show a higher DAU? Isn't DAU correlated with ad prices? Sounds like a winning design to me, especially if it only appears that the design is bad, and not the intent behind it.

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#52

Post by foobarbaz33 »

theshackleford wrote: post #37
datenwolf wrote: post #35

What annoys me the most about Reddit is, that it's essentially just a rehash of Usenet with marginally more moderation features, up/down-voting and custom CSS for each group/subreddit. That's about it. If I were to attempt to implement a Reddit "clone", I'd merely spin up a couple of ISC InterNetNews NNTP servers and slap a web application in front of those. The only thing that Reddit did – on the interaction level –…

> If I were to attempt to implement a Reddit "clone" Go on champ. Show us how it’s done. > side effect of draining the user pool from Usenet Two different worlds. This is utter fantasy.

> Go on champ. Show us how it’s done.

The baseline product can and has been cloned by many people. Hacker news is one of those clones. Whipped up with minimal effort in a meme language no one ever used before.

Getting popular is the tricky part.

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#53

Post by reactordev »

HappySweeney wrote: post #51
reactordev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By using the really, really, really badly designed listener auth flow... which just allows javascript to grab your google creds. https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/web/listeners

Doesn't this "bad" design allow Reddit to show a higher DAU? Isn't DAU correlated with ad prices? Sounds like a winning design to me, especially if it only appears that the design is bad, and not the intent behind it.

Oh without a doubt this makes Reddit look like it has way more users than it actually does. 2/3rds of them single visits or visitors with no posts, no comments, no engagement, just someone following a google result.

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#54

Post by shmatt »

bko wrote: post #2

How has reddit community changed since it's API permission changes that removed all third party apps? A lot of people forecasted doom for the network and many subreddits went private to protest. Have the predictions come true? Presumably all those changes were to juice numbers pre IPO. In hindsight, did it work?

Of course it worked. No popular website gives people unlimited use of an API for free. Its financial death. Reddit kept it on far too long, Facebook was suitng anyone attempting to build an app based on unofficial APIs more than a decade ago, and it worked great for them

I also haven't really seen any of the major (Reddit mods are not spread out, a very small group control the majority of large subreddits) mod just quit. Anyone who edited their content "so reddit doesnt profit" just gave the internal Reddit DB more value to sell to the LLM companies

Reddit moderation, like Facebook Group moderation, works for free because people are bored and love the power grab. There are SO MANY Facebook Groups with over 100,000 and 1,000,000 users, their mods work endlessly 24/7 to stop spam and make sure everything is kosher. They've never once asked Zuckerberg for cash, the ego boost is just too big to give up

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#55

Post by mamonster »

causal wrote: post #33
gizmo wrote: post #10

> In 2023, the company’s revenue was $804.0 million. Research and development, at $438.3 million, was more than half, an awfully big number for a company of this age. Total costs and expenses were $944.2 million. The net loss was $90.8 million, which at least is an improvement over 2022, with its $666.7 million in revenue and $158.6 million in losses. [1] These expenditures blow my mind. But if reddit can grow revenu…

Was also shocked by those numbers. And supposedly each DAU even generates more revenue than Pinterest and Snap - what is Reddit doing to make operations that much more expensive?

Simple answer: 2000 employees for a social media website doing 800 mil in revenue is too much(remember that mods are also not being paid which should technically be a tailwind to profitability). IMO once this is out in the open there will be no way around 30% headcount cut over 2-3 years.

The monetization has also been very bad historically(selling awards is really dumb), so there are definitely ways to pump revenue up fast as well. But once again, headcount cuts will probably accelerate once its public

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#56

Post by bilchly »

boston_clone wrote: post #49
bilchly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who enjoys writing ragebait posts, I can confirm that in recent months it's been easier than ever to get thousands of people raging over some nonsense. The relative lack of moderation has been very useful in this regard. Perhaps that actually benefits Reddit though? More engagement even if it is mostly dimwits responding in earnest to troll posts.

Why do you think you enjoy doing that? Tangentially, are you below the age of 25?

I'm actually 72 years old and this is my retirement hobby. It keeps my mind busy and I find it amusing.

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#57

Post by gizmo »

ActionHank wrote: post #32
gizmo wrote: post #10

> In 2023, the company’s revenue was $804.0 million. Research and development, at $438.3 million, was more than half, an awfully big number for a company of this age. Total costs and expenses were $944.2 million. The net loss was $90.8 million, which at least is an improvement over 2022, with its $666.7 million in revenue and $158.6 million in losses. [1] These expenditures blow my mind. But if reddit can grow revenu…

Best place to cut costs would be to retrench their whole video player team. At this point I am not even sure how it is possible to make a product that so routinely fails to function for so many people.

You also have to fire a lot of management that allowed the org chart to explode in the first place. Maybe take a few lessons from the Elon Twitter playbook.

Re: Reddit: Return of the Junk Stock IPO

#59

Post by bcye »

reactordev wrote: post #50
madeofpalk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this never worked on browsers that disables third party cookies by default, like Safari and Firefox?

incorrect. This works on all browsers, on all platforms. It's a hook into their exposed OAuth2.0 flow. You'd have to disable javascript to stop it. signIn action can be a fetch and you're f$&ked. You'll get the "Sign In With Google" popup (with you're username already snatched).

I've always wondered how on earth this is compliant with GDPR, you do not consent to anything of it.
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