athos77

Nah, he wants the money for his doomsday bunker. I'm sure he considers the $93m for the COO to be fair game, though ...

some other article these days said they’re going to sell everything to AI services that are going to train themselves on Reddit for a lot of dollars. Would this be enough to keep them afloat?

That's an interesting question. It was some deal with Google, to help train Google's AI. Honestly, Google probably grabbed much of what they needed for their AI while the APIs were still open, but I can still see things Google should want from reddit. First off, just on the "helping with AI" front, they'd be interested in ongoing data for Google's AI; more importantly, some kind of exclusivity to limit the amount of data other AI companies can get from reddit.

Other data they'd want: given the noticable-even-to-muggles decline in search results during the APIcalypse, I'm certain that Google wants continued access to reddit's data for their search engine (and again, some manner of limiting other companies access to that data).

As a final, admittedly paranoid thought: I'm sure Google would love access to reddit's non-public data: the IP addresses of various accounts could be used to flesh out consumer profiles, comments you made could narrow down your actual identity, upvotes and downvotes reveal your opinions, what you clicked through to reveals things of interest, etc. Yeah, they probably have a bunch of that already, but this would strengthen and increase the quality of the data that they have.

But I don't see Google really making a huge investment into reddit, either. Reddit is too toxic for a corporate giant, and their corporate cultures are almost literally polar opposites. They'll buy the data, but they're not going to fairy-godmother reddit, or give it anything except the minimum number of dollars to get the data that they want.

Oh, ouch! If this is similar, it's a bit ironic that they've pissed off the people who would've been most likely to invest in the IPO.

I'd be really interested to see their R&D costs for 2022. I'm wondering how much of 2023's R&D was spurred by restricting the API code, and then allowing certain applications access; having to finally take seriously their decade-old promise to develop mod tools with no planning or preparation; their total surprise at having to provide access to disabled people; and having to update their app. Those are all areas where they were extremely happy to let languish, and which they suddenly had to provide expedited support for after the protests.

Oh, lmao!

I made a comment below about which of my old accounts were receiving the buy-shares offer. I don't know if what they're doing raises any speculation to someone with your background, but I'd be interested in hearing if it does.

Because spez insists on chasing the newest tech shiny - but only after it's peaked - NFTs, crypto, RPAN, etc. And although it may yet turn around for him and for reddit, notice that he only jumped onto the AI boom three months after last spring's series of AI announcements, showing that he's once again way behind the times.

Edit: one thing has always struck me since his interview last summer. spez said something like "reddit will continue to be profit-driven until the profits arrive". Like the arrival of profits was inevitable. Like he didn't need to do anything except wait. Just be patient and the profits will arrive in their own time, not like things have to be envisioned and planned and put in place to get profits, just ... they'll arrive. Some day.

It seems a remarkably lackadaisical attitude for a CEO to have.

So, three of my old accounts apparently qualified for the buy-shares offer. Two of them were over the 200k karma threshold to get the offer. Interestingly, the third account had only 191k karma and got the message a day or two later.

Even more interestingly, yesterday a fourth account that I haven't posted to in over a decade received the offer, and this one only had 50k karma. Admittedly, several accounts were mods, but they were mods of extremely small, very inactive subs, and I had de-modded myself after deleting my data. They also sent an email to the my registered email address for the fourth account (but I don't know if that's relevant because none of my other accounts had emails registered).

I'm not sure what's going on. Did they get so little response from the early offers that they're going to the accounts of former mods or lowering the karma requirements? I know a couple of my accounts ended up connected by IP information; did they try to contact my old fourth account by PM and email because it was somehow connected to the higher-level accounts, or because they're getting desperate? Maybe they're just trying to get lots of numbers to show that redditors are eager to participate, to gin up an ignorant public's enthusiasm prior to the IPO?

I have to think that, at some level, they're getting desperate, because it seems so much effort to go to, to dig up an account that hasn't posted in a decade and then send PMs and emails to it.

They had a bad update: https://abcnews.go.com/US/att-outage-impacting-us-customers-company/story?id=107440297

A number of the Five Eyes have restrictions that they're not supposed to spy on their own nationals. They get around this by having arrangements where they each spy on each other's nationals and then share the data. That way it isn't "spying on their own nationals", it's "a partner country ran across this in the course of their own activities and felt we should be informed".

You see, of course, how those two things are entirely different, right? Nothing to see here ...

When we're feeling whimsical, we call it Fionn mac Cumhail, because in our minds fins and flippers are the same thing.

Is there some way we can DM across instances?